Topic: Jameel Jaffer

Jameel Jaffer is a human rights and civil liberties attorney who directs the national security project of the American Civil Liberties Union. He is particularly notable for the role he played in litigating Freedom of Information Act requests that led to the U.S. government's release of over one hundred thousand pages of documents related to the torture of prisoners held by the U.S. at Guantanamo and elsewhere. Among the documents released through that litigation were interrogation directives signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, emails written by FBI agents who witnessed the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, legal memos in which the Office of Legal Counsel stated that U.S. law did not prohibit the President from authorizing torture, and autopsy reports relating to prisoners who were killed in U.S. custody.

Jaffer grew up in Canada, and is a graduate of Upper Canada College, an exclusive private school in Toronto. His University education was at Williams College, Cambridge University, and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the law review. After law school, Jaffer was a law clerk to the Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada.

Jaffer is currently the Director of the ACLU's ACLU National Security Project.