WarCriminalsWatch Events

CHRGJ Litigating Human Rights Series:
Seeking Accountability for 
Rendition and Secret Detention through Litigation 
before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights

Event will be followed by a brief reception. 
Please RSVP to Audrey Watne at 

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This panel will explore the strategy and 
processes behind Al-Asad v. Djibouti, a case 
filed by the Global Justice Clinic at NYU School 
of Law on behalf of Mohammed al-Asad at the 
African Commission on Human and Peoples’ 
Rights.  This groundbreaking case is the first to 
address the role of an African state in 
committing violations of human rights in 
connection with the U.S. “War on Terror.”  The 
case was filed in December 2009 in conjunction 
with Interights on behalf of Mr. al-Asad, a 
Yemeni national who was detained in Djibouti in 
December 2003 and January 2004 as part of the 
CIA’s secret detention and rendition program. In 
addition to secretly detaining al-Asad, Djibouti 
was responsible for transferring him into the 
“black site” prison program, where he spent some 
more than a year in secret and incommunicado 
detention. In May 2005, al-Asad was transferred 
to Yemen, where he resides freely today.

Despite extensive evidence—including an 
exhaustive U.N. report on secret detention in 
February 2010 that includes al-Asad’s 
case—neither the U.S. government nor the 
government of Djibouti have even acknowledged 
al-Asad’s detention. As al-Asad’s entryway into 
the secret detention and rendition program, 
Djibouti played an especially crucial role in his 
abuse. The cooperation of countries all over the 
world—including Djibouti in the Horn of 
Africa—was central to the operation of the U.S. 
rendition, secret detention, and torture program. 
While the role of European partners such as 
Poland and Romania has been the subject of much 
reporting and investigation, the assistance of 
countries like Djibouti has yet to be scrutinized.

Featuring two students and two professors who 
have worked on the case, the panel will explore 
the dilemmas and opportunities presented when 
using a regional forum to challenge a global system of human rights abuse.

Gabe Armas-Cardona is a 3L at NYU School of Law. 
He came to law school to be a human rights 
activist and has focused academically on the 
application of the human rights framework both 
here and abroad. He has worked in El Salvador on 
immigrant rights and in the Human Rights Law 
Section of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 
DHS. He was a student in the Global Justice 
Clinic taught by Meg Satterthwaite and Jayne 
Huckerby in the fall of 2010. He is currently a 
Managing Editor of the Review of Law & Social 
Change and is an active member of the 
International Committee of the National Lawyers Guild.

Jayne Huckerby is Adjunct Assistant Professor of 
Law of the Global Justice Clinic and Research 
Director at the Center for Human Rights and 
Global Justice, where she directs the Center’s 
project on Gender, National Security and 
Counter-Terrorism. She co-taught the 
International Human Rights Clinic from Spring 
2009 to Spring 2010. She has worked with various 
inter-governmental and non-governmental entities, 
including with the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the 
promotion and protection of human rights while 
countering terrorism, the Global Alliance Against 
Traffic in Women (GAATW), the International 
Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), the U.N. 
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), and the U.N. 
Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its 
causes and consequences, in the areas of gender 
and counter-terrorism, gender and 
anti-trafficking initiatives, gender and 
transitional justice programming, gender budget 
initiatives, and gender and the political economy.

Wade McMullen is a 3L at NYU School of Law, and 
worked on Mohammed Al-Asad's case from 2009-10 as 
a clinic student. Before law school, Wade studied 
business at the University of Southern California 
and worked for NGOs in Nicaragua, DC, and India. 
At NYU Wade has served as a Research Assistant to 
Professor Philip Alston and was also a founding 
Board Member of the African Law Association and 
the Law and Social Entrepreneurship Association. 
As an International Human Rights Fellow in 2009, 
Wade helped organize communities in rural Sierra 
Leone affected by a multinational gold mining 
operation, and he is currently working on a 
project in Eastern Congo utilizing media in local 
communities to advocate for the prevention of the 
recruitment and use of child soldiers. After 
graduation, Wade plans to join Baker & McKenzie 
in their Investor-State Treaty Arbitration group.

Meg Satterthwaite is Associate Professor of 
Clinical Law at NYU School of Law, where she is a 
Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights 
and Global Justice (CHRGJ) and director of the 
Global Justice Clinic. She graduated magna cum 
laude from NYU School of Law and served as a law 
clerk to Judge Betty B. Fletcher of the Ninth 
Circuit Court of Appeals in 1999-2000 and to the 
judges of the International Court of Justice in 
2001-2002. Professor Satterthwaite has worked for 
a variety of human rights organizations, 
including Amnesty International and Human Rights 
First, and has consulted with several U.N. 
agencies.  Her research focuses on economic and 
social rights, human rights and 
counter-terrorism, gender and human rights, and 
rights-based approaches to development and emergency.