Nancy J. Paul is an officer in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

Education

Military career

Paul received a direct commission into the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate General in 1988.

Lieutenant Colonel Lieutenant colonel ( , ) is a rank of commissioned officers in the armies, most marine forces and some air forces of the world, above a major and below a colonel. Several police forces in the United States use the rank of lieutenant colone ...

Paul is notable for her appointment as a Presiding Officer for a

Guantanamo military commission ThGuantanamo military commissionswere established by President George W. Bush – through a Military Order – on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of e ...

. Paul is the most junior officer appointed to serve as a Presiding Officer. All the other Presiding Officers are full

Colonel Colonel (abbreviated as Col., Col or COL) is a senior military officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, a colonel was typically in charge of ...

s or

Captains Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

Presided over Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Al Qosi's Commission

Paul was appointed the Presiding Officer of

Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Al Qosi Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi ( ar, إبراهيم أحمد محمود القوصي) (born July 1960) is a Sudanese militant and paymaster for al-Qaeda.Pauline Storum, a Guantanamo spokesman falsely claimed the next day that the call had already been completed. At his July 2009 hearing the court's new audio equipment malfunctioned. The

Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

Presidency A presidency is an administration or the executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of president of a state or nation. Although often the executive branch of government, and often personified by a ...

requested a series of continuances, so it could study alternatives to the military commission system. Paul granted a final continuance on October 21, 2009. On December 3, 2009, Paul convened the first hearing of a military commission following the October 2009 passage of the

Military Commissions Act of 2009 The Military Commissions Act of 2009, which amended the Military Commissions Act of 2006, was passed to address concerns by the United States Supreme Court. In ''Boumediene v. Bush'' (2008) the court had ruled that the Military Commissions Act ...

. She ruled that the charges against Al Qosi should be limited to crimes he was alleged to have committed in Afghanistan. She ruled that crimes he was alleged to have committed when al Qaeda was based in Sudan were beyond the mandate of the military commission system.

Carol Rosenberg Carol Rosenberg is a senior journalist at ''The New York Times.'' Long a military-affairs reporter at the ''Miami Herald'', from January 2002 into 2019 she reported on the operation of the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, at its nav ...

, writing in the ''

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by the McClatchy Company and headquartered in Doral, Florida, a List of communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida, city in western Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade County and the M ...

'', reported that Paul scheduled hearings for January 6, 2010, to determine whether Al Qosi met the eligibility criteria laid out in the

Military Commissions Act of 2006 The Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. The Act's stated purpose was "to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of ...

. Rosenberg described Paul as the first Presiding Officer of a Military Commission to address changes the US Congress set in place in the

. Andrea Prasow, a senior counsel with

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

, was critical of Paul for proceeding with the Commission, even though the rules of procedure hadn't been drafted.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paul, Nancy J. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people United States Air Force officers Guantanamo Military Commission members Women in the United States Air Force Creighton University School of Law alumni