Tina Monshipour Foster in 2008 Tina Monshipour Foster is an

Iranian-American Iranian Americans are United States citizens or nationals who are of Iranian ancestry or who hold Iranian citizenship. Iranian Americans are among the most highly educated people in the United States. They have historically excelled in busine ...

lawyer and director of the International Justice Network.

Legal career

Prior to working in the field of

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

, Foster worked at Clifford Chance LLP in New York City. She later worked for the

Center for Constitutional Rights The Center for Constitutional RightsThe Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) is a CCR v. Bush ''CCR v. Bush'' is a legal action by the Center for Constitutional Rights against the George W. Bush administration, challenging the National Security Agency's (NSA's) surveillance of people within the United States, including the interception of ...

, filed on July 9, 2007. Four other individuals filed this suit. Foster and her colleagues sued the US government objecting to the government's interception of their mail, email and phone calls. In 2006 Foster started International Justice Network ( IJNetwork) placing focus on detainees held without charge, incommunicado in Bagram Prison in Afghanistan.

Human rights

Foster submitted a writ of

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

Ruzatullah v. Robert Gates -- 06-CV-01707 on behalf of Ruzatullah a captive held in the

Bagram Theater internment facility The Parwan Detention Facility (also called Detention Facility in Parwan or Bagram prison) is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during t ...

. The ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' reported on June 29, 2008 on comments Foster made about

Jawed Ahmad Jawed Ahmad (Jojo) was an Afghan reporter working for Canadian media outlet CTV Television Network, CTV who was arrested by American troops and declared an enemy combatant, while working with NATO at Kandahar Airport on October 26, 2007. Ahmad was ...

's detention in Bagram. On July 20, 2008, Reuters reported the outrage Human Rights organizations are expressing over the seizing of journalists in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the "War on Terror". Foster was quoted as saying "there were no charges against Jawed, who was wounded while serving with U.S. Special Forces. He has not been accused of any crime either under U.S. law, Afghan law or international law," adding that "Jawed, like other detainees held by U.S., was regarded by Washington as an "enemy combatant". Foster, executive director for International Justice Network, said there were no charges against Jawed, who was wounded while serving with U.S. Special Forces.

Comments on the new plans for Bagram review

On September 12, 2009 it was widely reported that unnamed officials told

Eric Schmitt Eric Stephen Schmitt (born June 20, 1975) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Missouri since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, Schmitt served as a Missouri state senator from 2009 to 2017, ...

of the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' that the Obama administration was going to introduce new procedures that would allow the captives held in Bagram, and elsewhere in Afghanistan, to have their detention reviewed. Josh Gerstein, of

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...

, reported that Foster, who represents four Bagram captives, was critical of the new rules:

Comments on the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on torture

On December 15, 2014, the ''

'' published an op-ed by Foster after the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

Intelligence Committee published a 600-page unclassified summary of its classified report on the CIA's use of torture. Foster described how the report devoted a whole section to the CIA's torture of one of her clients,

Redha al-Najar Redha al-Najar is a citizen of Tunisia who was held in US custody in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. He is notable for being one of a very small number of the detainees held in Bagram to have had a writ of habeas corpus submitted on his b ...

. She listed all the torture techniques the CIA used on him, and asserted that the CIA tortured him for nearly 700 days.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Foster, Tina Monshipour Guantanamo Bay attorneys Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people)