Although President Obama ended the U.S. torture program, there have been no prosecutions or accountability within the U.S. Now with the incoming Trump administration, there is the real danger that torture may return. CCR and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), together with the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and Ligue des droits de l'Homme (LDH), will bring some of the most important and outspoken critics of the U.S. torture program to Paris for a series of dynamic discussion. 

In France, for the first time worldwide a summons was issued against former Guantánamo Bay Detention Center Commander Geoffrey Miller for March 2016. Further investigative steps in the ongoing investigation of torture of French citizens have been requested by William Bourdon, the acting lawyer in this case. ECCHR and CCR support the French proceedings. 

CCR Senior Staff Attorney Katherine Gallagher and Advocacy Program Manager Aliya Hussain will be joining former detainees, international lawyers and advocates, and former U.S. government officials to examine what accountability looks like.

17:45 - 18:45: The US torture program, its development and its damage
Lawrence Wilkerson, Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell
Alberto Mora, Senior Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, and former General Counsel of the Navy 
Mark Fallon, Former U.S. counterterrorism investigator
Janis Karpinski, Former Commander of the Military Police in Iraq from 2003-2005
Moderated by Andreas Schüller, ECCHR

19:00 - 19:30: Guantánamo survivors talk about their quest for justice
Mourad Benchellali, French Guantanamo survivor
Nizar Sassi, French Guantanamo survivor
Aliya Hussain, CCR 
Moderated by Yves Prigent, Amnesty International France

19:45 - 20:45: Accountability for torture - the French Guantánamo case 
William Bourdon, lawyer of Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi
Clemence Bectarte, FIDH
Katherine Gallagher, CCR
Wolfgang Kaleck, ECCHR
Moderated by Karine Bonneau, FIDH

The event will take place in English and French with direct translations.

Please register at: [email protected].