Amrit Singh (lawyer)

Amrit Singh
Born 1969 (age 46–47)
Nationality Indian
Occupation Lawyer
Parent(s) Manmohan Singh
Gursharan Kaur

Amrit Singh (born 1969) is a human rights lawyer for the National Security and Counterterrorism program at the Open Society Justice Initiative.[1] She was formerly a staff attorney at the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.[2]

As Senior Legal Officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative,[1] since 2009, Ms. Singh directs a program that conducts strategic litigation and advocacy on national security-related human rights abuses across the globe. She is Counsel, among other cases, in al Nashiri v. Poland and al Nashiri v. Romania, lawsuits brought on behalf of Guantanamo prisoner Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri before the European Court of Human Rights that challenge the role of Poland and Romania in the CIA’s secret detention program.[3]

Singh is the author of Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition.[4] The 216-page report, released by OSJI in February 2013, is the most comprehensive account to date of the human rights abuses associated with the CIA’s post 9/11 secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations as well as of the large number of foreign governments implicated in these operations.[5] The report received global media attention and was the subject of editorials in leading newspapers.[6]

As Staff Attorney at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, from 2002-2009, Singh litigated numerous cases relating to immigrants’ rights and post 9/11-related abuses, including ACLU v. Department of Defense, a landmark lawsuit which yielded public disclosure of the “torture memos,”[7] among thousands of other government records[8] exposing the systemic nature of the Bush administration’s torture practices.[9] Ms. Singh was also Counsel in Khouzam v. Chertoff a successful challenge to the U.S. government’s use of anti-torture diplomatic assurances to transfer non-citizens without due process to countries known to employ torture; Ali v. Rumsfeld, a lawsuit against high-ranking officials on behalf of Iraqi and Afghan plaintiffs tortured in U.S. custody abroad, as well as a number of other cases challenging the prolonged detention of non-citizens in U.S. immigration custody.

Ms. Singh has testified before Congress on the subject of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” [10][11] She is co-author, with Jameel Jaffer, of Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. (Columbia University Press, 2007).[12] Prior to joining the ACLU, Singh served as a judicial law clerk to Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum of the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York. She is a graduate of the Yale Law School, Oxford University, and Cambridge University, U.K.

Author

Personal life

Her father is the 14th Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh. She is the youngest of three sisters. She is married to Barton Beebe, a professor of law at New York University.[17]

Awards

Singh received the India Abroad Publisher's Special Award for Excellence 2012, at an event organised by India Abroad on June 21, 2013, to honour Indian-American achievers in a wide range of professions.,[18][19]

Singh was honored for her human rights work with the Pursuit of Equal Justice Award, by the New York State Association of Criminal Defense lawyers, in 2011.[20]

References

  1. 1 2 http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/people/amrit-singh
  2. ↑ Scott Shane (2009-09-02). "PM's daughter helps nail US prison abuse". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 2009-09-04.
  3. ↑ Amrit Singh, US torture puts a stain on Europe, May 12, 2011, http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/imported/us-torture-puts-a-stain-on-europe/71045.aspx; Amrit Singh, Time for Romania to Face the Truth over Secret CIA Prison, http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/time-romania-face-truth-over-secret-cia-prison
  4. ↑ http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/globalizing-torture-cia-secret-detention-and-extraordinary-rendition
  5. ↑ Scott Shane, Report Says 54 Countries Helped C.I.A. After 9/11, New York Times, Feb. 4, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/us/politics/report-says-54-countries-helped-cia-with-interrogations-after-9-11.html?_r=0; Ian Cobain, CIA rendition report author believes UK could face human rights court, Feb. 5, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/cia-rendition-report-uk-court
  6. ↑ About those Black Sites, New York Times, Feb. 13, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/opinion/about-those-black-sites.html; Amrit Singh, Lets Lift the Veil on Rendition, Feb. 6, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/06/opinion/la-oe-singh-rendition-brennan-20130206;
  7. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-06-17. Retrieved 2013-06-28.
  8. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-07-01. Retrieved 2013-06-28.
  9. ↑ Scott Shane, A.C.L.U. Lawyers Mine Documents for Truth, New York Times, Aug. 29, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/world/30intel.html
  10. ↑ Testimony of Amrit Singh, Before The House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, Oversight Hearing on Torture and the Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Detainees: The Effectiveness and Consequences of "Enhanced" Interrogation, Nov. 8, 2007,
  11. ↑ https://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/singh_testimony_20071108.pdf
  12. ↑ https://www.aclu.org/national-security/administration-torture
  13. ↑ "PM’s daughter Amrit Singh exposes CIA’s global secret prisons" (Feb 7, 2013) Firstpost
  14. ↑ http://www.npr.org/blogs/talk/2007/10/administration_of_torture_1.html
  15. ↑ http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/death-drone
  16. ↑ https://www.project-syndicate.org/columnist/amrit-singh
  17. ↑ "Introducing Barton Beebe" (2009) The Law School Magazine, New York University School of Law
  18. ↑ "US honours Manmohan's rights activist daughter - The Times of India". The Times Of India. 2013-06-24.
  19. ↑ "PM's daughter honoured for pioneering work in human rights law". The Times Of India. 2013-06-23.
  20. ↑ http://www.nysacdl.org/2011/02/nysacdl-annual-dinner-january-27-2011/
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