{"id":349,"date":"2016-03-06T20:17:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T01:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/?p=349"},"modified":"2018-09-22T00:59:17","modified_gmt":"2018-09-22T04:59:17","slug":"un-office-of-the-high-commissioner-for-human-rights-inquiry-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/2016\/03\/06\/un-office-of-the-high-commissioner-for-human-rights-inquiry-reports\/","title":{"rendered":"UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights inquiry reports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NCSTN is giving a big <strong>shout-out<\/strong> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.unc.edu\/faculty\/directory\/weissmandeborahm\/\">Prof. Deborah Weissman<\/a>, Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Chapel Hill, and her former law students, who in October 2014 filed a petition on behalf of CIA rendition survivor <strong>Abou ElKassim Britel<\/strong> (also known as Kassim Britel) with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/EN\/Issues\/Torture\/SRTorture\/Pages\/JuanMendez.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We just learned that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has released its communications with <strong>five governments<\/strong> on the case of Kassim Britel. This UN inquiry is the direct result of the work by Deborah and her students, which was covered by McClatchy DC in the article, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcclatchydc.com\/news\/nation-world\/national\/national-security\/article24774508.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">UNC legal team, rights advocates take up cause of tortured ex-prisoner<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The case is important, both for Kassim and his family, and also because Kassim is one of many survivors of CIA-directed torture whose cases did <strong><em>not<\/em><\/strong> appear in the Senate Torture Report because they were never held at a CIA-run black site.<\/p>\n<p>Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez used Prof. Weissman and students&#8217; brief to write allegation letters regarding Kassim&#8217;s case to the governments of the <strong>United States, Pakistan, Morocco, Italy<\/strong>, and <strong>Portugal<\/strong>. He found the governments&#8217; responses (or in the case of Morocco, non-response) completely inadequate.<\/p>\n<p>Prof. Mendez said, &#8220;<em>The Special Rapporteur urges the Government of the United States to conduct a fair and impartial investigation into the incidents, to prosecute and punish those responsible and to provide Mr. Elkassim Britel with adequate redress.<\/em>&#8221; He had similar messages for Pakistan, Morocco, Italy and Portugal.<\/p>\n<p>These communications and findings will be presented next week at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.<\/p>\n<p>Prof. Mendez&#8217;s report is at <a href=\"http:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/UN-Office-of-the-High-Commissioner-for-Human-Rights-Kassim-Britel-2015.pdf\" rel=\"\">UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights &#8211; Kassim Britel &#8211; 2015<\/a>, with Italy at paragraph 280, Morocco at 354, Pakistan at 398, Portugal at 451 and the U.S. at 653. <a href=\"http:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/UN-Office-of-the-High-Commissioner-for-Human-Rights-2015-US-response.pdf\">Here is the response from the United States.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NCSTN is giving a big shout-out to Prof. Deborah Weissman, Reef C. Ivey II Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Chapel Hill, and her former law students, who in October 2014 filed a petition on behalf of CIA rendition survivor Abou ElKassim Britel (also known as Kassim Britel) with the UN Special Rapporteur&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":588,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349\/revisions\/588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncstn.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}