Missing "Not" in al-Hajj
The memorandum opinion filed on May 23rd in al-Hajj v.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
in Cooperation With
The memorandum opinion filed on May 23rd in al-Hajj v. Obama (read Bobby's analysis here and Ben's here) apparently had a slight error.
Readers may have been confused by the first paragraph on page 10 of the court's opinion, which stated contradictorily:
The Court agrees that petitioner's statement does establish that he was subject to regular beatings at Bagram. Although a single beating can constitute abuse, petitioner's statement is not an allegation of ongoing torture. Moreover, there is no suggestion that petitioner considered the incident to have been part of an effort to coerce statements from him. In the absence of allegations or evidence to that effect, the Court finds that petitioner was not subject to coercion at Bagram.In fact, there was a fairly important word left out of this paragraph. The order filed on June 8th repairs that typo, so that the first sentence reads (emphasis is my own):
The Court agrees that petitioner’s statement does not establish that he was subject to regular beatings at Bagram.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
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