Jameel Jaffer

Jameel Jaffer is a human rights and civil liberties attorney who is deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy, which houses the ACLU’s work relating to free speech, privacy, technology, national security, and international human rights. Since he joined the staff of the ACLU in 2002, Jaffer has litigated many leading cases relating to national security and human rights, including cases concerning surveillance, torture, rendition, and “targeted killing.”

Jaffer is particularly notable for the role he played in litigating Freedom of Information Act requests that led to the release of documents concerning the torture of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and in CIA black sites. Among the documents released were interrogation directives signed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, emails written by FBI agents who witnessed the torture of prisoners, 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. The New York Times billed the lawsuit "one of the most successful in the history of public disclosure."