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Articles by Letta Tayler
Even Suspected ISIS Members Deserve Justice
For the past seven years, thousands of men from around the world have been held in squalid, overcrowded prisons in northeastern Syria in violation of international law. Trapped in a legal limbo, they are accused of membership in the Islamic State, or ISIS, though none apart from Syrians have yet to be charged with a crime, much less convicted. It seemed the men’s circumstances couldn’t get worse.
Opinion | Stop the Illegal Transfer of ISIS Suspects
For the past seven years, thousands of men from around the world have been held in squalid, overcrowded prisons in northeastern Syria in violation of international law. Trapped in a legal limbo, they are accused of membership in the Islamic State, or ISIS, though none apart from Syrians have yet to be charged with a crime, much less convicted. It seemed the men’s circumstances couldn’t get worse.
In the media: Letta Tayler on the mass transfer of IS detainees from Syria to Iraq
On Friday, January 30, Reuters reported on the U.S. military’s decision to move Islamic State detainees from Syria to Iraq. The article cited ICCT Associate Fellow Letta M. Tayler, who described the large-scale transfer as carrying “mind-boggling legal implications, none of them positive". Tayler warned that the transfer could extend detainees’ indefinite detention without trial and expose them to the risk of torture or execution following flawed convictions.
ISIS Suspects Held in Syria: Repatriation Reset under New US, Syrian Leaders?
Six years after the collapse of the so-called Islamic State caliphate in March 2019, dramatic leadership changes in Washington, DC and Damascus open a rare window of opportunity to end the continuing, unlawful detentions of some 26,000 foreign ISIS suspects and family members in northeast Syria. The detainees, who come from dozens of countries, are held in camps and prisons. Most of those held in the camps are children, 40 percent of them under age 12. Conditions in the camps and prisons are dire.
South Africa Should Bring Home Grandmother and Other Nationals From Northeast Syria
South Africa Should Bring Home Grandmother and Other Nationals From Northeast Syria press release By Letta Tayler "I'm an 'accidental terrorist,'" Khadija, a 54-year-old South African woman, told me with a rueful laugh. She was seated in a battered tent in Roj, a detention camp on a windswept desert in northeast Syria. "Coming in was easy. Getting out?
OPINION | Letta Tayler: Failed quest leaves SA grandmother trapped in Northeast Syria for 7 years
The South African government should repatriate or help bring home about 17 of its nationals detained for years in camps in Syria. It should help rehabilitate and reintegrate the returnees, recognising that children are victims of ISIS and that many women may be, too, writes Letta Taylor. "I’m an 'accidental terrorist,'" Khadija, a 54-year-old South African woman, told me with a rueful laugh. She was seated in a battered tent in Roj, a detention camp on a windswept desert in northeast Syria.
India’s Abuses at Home Raise Concerns About Its Global Counterterrorism Role
Filed under: Civilian Harm, Counterterrorism, freedom of expression, India, International Human Rights, Social Media Platforms, Technology, terrorism, UN Security Council, United Nations, United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy India’s role on the international counterterrorism stage is expanding, even as its broad-brush responses to armed extremist threats at home become more troubling. On Oct.
Legacy of the “Dark Side”
The first foreign Muslim men imprisoned by the US military at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in the so-called “global war on terror.” Since January 2002, the US has held nearly 800 men and boys at Guantánamo. Of the 39 who currently remain, 27 have never been charged.
Foreign ISIS Suspects, Families: Why a Single “R” Word Matters at the UN
by Letta Tayler and Alison Huyghe June 17, 2021 The cry for help from a mother who was locked with her two young children inside a camp for Islamic State suspects and family members was desperate. All around her, she said, was disease, fear, and death. “It never gets better here. Always worse,” she wrote Human Rights Watch in a furtive, clipped text message in March. “Majority of the children the camp are sick. Almost everyday something bad happens. Children trapped in burning tents and dies.
Despite US Veto, Desperate ISIS Suspects and Families Remain at Risk
There is good news and bad news from the Aug. 31 United Nations Security Council vote on a dangerously flawed draft resolution on so-called “foreign terrorist fighters,” the council’s catch-all phrase for members and affiliates of groups like the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS).
“The Beatles” and the Bomber: Barr’s Decisions on Executing Terrorists
Attorney General William Barr announced two troubling death penalty decisions last week in high-profile terrorism cases, one regarding two Islamic State suspects and another on the so-called Boston Marathon bomber. Each underscores the need to ensure fair trials and end capital punishment, even for the most heinous crimes, such as acts of terrorism. In one sense, Barr’s first decision, on August 19, is welcome news.
“Bring Me Back to Canada”
“Please, bring me back to Canada. … Please, forgive me. Let me be who I am, a Canadian.” —Kimberly Polman, Canadian detained in camp for ISIS family members in Northeast Syria More than one year ago, in March 2019, local fighters aided by a US-led, international coalition routed the Islamic State (ISIS) from the Syrian town of Baghouz, the last holdout of the group’s self-declared caliphate.
Targeting environmental activists with counterterrorism measures is an abuse of the law ǀ View
• last updated: 28/11/2019 - 17:28 By Letta Tayler, Cara Schulte Opinions expressed in View articles are solely those of the authors. Protecting the endangered Asiatic cheetah. Tweeting a satirical poem. Attending a climate conference. Campaigning against a power plant. These actions hardly conjure images of suicide bombers or coup plotters.
Targeted: Counterterrorism Measures Take Aim at Environmental Activists
On November 29, 2019, young people will gather at locations around the world for a Fridays for Future Global Climate Strike. On December 2, United Nations delegates, world leaders, business executives, and activists will meet at the 25th Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP25) in Madrid to discuss ways to protect the environment.
Opinion | Fear grips women and children trapped in Syria camps. Their countries of origin must bring them home.
Letta Tayler focuses on counterterrorism as a senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They won’t shoot us, my darling. Mummy is right here with you, don’t worry.” The German mother’s words, spoken in almost a whisper, did not stop her young son’s whimpers.
Australian Mother's Plea to Come Home from Crowded Camp After Fleeing Islamic State
Al-Hawl camp in Syria © 2019 Human Rights Watch (Al-Hol Camp, northeast Syria) –Sitting on the floor of a shack in a locked desert camp in north-east Syria, her baby boy in her lap and her two other children nestled by her side, Radhia* had only one question. "Please, can you tell me," she asked, "when will Australia bring us home?" That same week in June, Australia evacuated eight Australian children from al-Hawl, the same camp where Radhia and her children have been detained since January.
Australian mother's plea to come home from crowded camp after fleeing Islamic State
By Letta Tayler Posted August 20, 2019 05:16:55 Sitting on the floor of a shack in a locked desert camp in north-east Syria, her baby boy in her lap and her two other children nestled by her side, Radhia* had only one question. "Please, can you tell me," she asked, "when will Australia bring us home?" That same week in June, Australia evacuated eight Australian children from al-Hawl, the same camp where Radhia and her children have been detained since January.
Evropa mora vratiti ISIL-ove borce i njihove porodice
Nepopustljivost zapadne Evrope u osiguravanju da se njeni državljani koji su u inozemstvu zadržani kao osumnjičeni članovi oružane grupe Islamska država Irak i Levant ili članovi njihovih porodica mogu vratiti kući dospjela je na naslovnice svjetskih medija nedavno, kada je irački sud osudio devet Francuza na smrt nakon suđenja okaljanih navodima o mučenju.
Western Europe must repatriate its ISIL fighters and families
Western European intransigence on ensuring that citizens detained abroad as ISIL suspects or their family members can return home made world headlines recently when an Iraqi court sentenced nine French citizens to death following trials tainted by allegations of torture.
‘Flying Ginsu’ Missile Won’t Resolve U.S. Targeted Killing Controversy
Last week, the Wall Street Journal revealed a noteworthy development in the U.S. targeted killing program: a modified Hellfire missile that strikes without exploding, reportedly leaving those close to the target unscathed. The CIA and the U.S. military have used the hitherto secret weapon at least a half-dozen times in recent years to kill terrorism suspects in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, the Journal reported.
America’s new “flying ginsu” missile can reduce civilian casualties, but it won’t end the controversy over targeted killing.
Proponents say the more precise weapon is a game changer for preventing civilian casualties. But the legal and moral dilemmas remain. A Predator MQ-9 drone on display at the International Aerospace Exhibition near Berlin on May 30, 2016. Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Getty Images This piece was originally published on Just Security, an online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy.
- Just Security A United Nations team is visiting Washington this week to conduct its first review of U.S. counterterrorism policy.
A United Nations team is visiting Washington this week to conduct its first review of U.S. counterterrorism policy. In announcing the visit, the White House touted the United States as a “global leader in counterterrorism” promoting a “rule-of-law” and “whole-of-society” approach. U.N. Assistant-Secretary-General Michele Coninsx, who is leading the U.N. visit, would do well to examine the facts behind this rhetoric before reaching a conclusion. Since the Sept.
Yemen's Hijacked Revolution
Last week in Yemen, in the worst bloodshed since anti-government rallies began in January, attacks by government security forces against peaceful protesters devolved into armed clashes in the heart of the capital.
How Far Can a Rogue Kremlin Push International Law?
The ongoing Russian-Ukrainian drama at the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov shows that the Kremlin attitude to international law has changed. Russia used to be legalistic but not legal. Now it is just ignoring international law. Has Russia become a rogue state? The United States and the West need to adjust accordingly. Under Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union was surprisingly legalistic.
The Early Edition: December 13, 2018
Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here. Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news.
Why It Doesn’t Matter Whether It’d Be Constitutional to Indict Trump
I have an Op-Ed in the Times today with a headline you’ve seen 1001 times before: “Would Indicting Trump Be Constitutional?” My answer to that question is yes, it would be–even while he’s in office. And I briefly explain why I think my old office, OLC, was mistaken to conclude otherwise in 2000. (As the Op-Ed notes, I wasn’t involved in that opinion.) But the primary point of the Op-Ed is to say: So what?
UN Review Should Help Children Caught in ISIS Conflict
TUNIS — Baraa Zayani, a 4-year-old Tunisian boy, has been held for the past two years in a militia-run prison in Libya. In 2016, a bullet tore through his stomach during clashes between armed groups that killed his father, a member of the Islamic State. He has had five operations and needs one more. “We have asked every Tunisian authority we can think of to bring him home,” Baraa’s uncle, Moncef Abidi, told me last week in Tunis. “I keep begging them, ‘Save Baraa.
The Already-Strong Campaign Finance Case Against Donald Trump Just Got Stronger-Criminal offenses included
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal broke a story with specific details that strengthen the case against President Donald Trump for campaign finance law violations and that provide evidence that Trump and others knowingly and willfully violated federal laws, which makes these violations criminal.
Kyrgyzstan’s Crackdown on Extremist Material: Further Reforms Needed
“And what about the Amish?” a government security official in Kyrgyzstan asked, leaning forward intently. He was meeting in Bishkek with Human Rights Watch to discuss Kyrgyzstan’s crackdown on extremism. The official was noting similarities between the Amish, a traditionalist Christian group dedicated to the will of Jesus, and Yaqyn Inkar, an Islamic group dedicated to replicating the life of the Prophet Mohammed.
Interview: How Not to Fight Terrorism in Kyrgyzstan
Tell me about your new report on Kyrgyzstan’s crackdown on “extremist” material. This report documents the use of a little-known measure in Kyrgyzstan, article 299-2 of the criminal code, which allows authorities to throw people in prison for 3 to 10 years simply for possessing videos, pamphlets, and other material the authorities consider “extremist.” There are genuine concerns about Islamist armed groups in Central Asia, but we have many problems with this crackdown.
Lip Service Paid to Human Rights During UN Counterterrorism Week
Last week was counterterrorism week at United Nations headquarters in New York. Conference rooms and the General Assembly hall were abuzz as national intelligence and security chiefs from around the globe met with UN officials on how to confront the scourge of transnational extremist armed groups such as the Islamic State, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab. In one room, delegates from the African Union, France and Peru discussed freezing terrorist finances.
Before the Fall - Foreign Policy
BAGHDAD — One morning in January, two armed men entered the shop of a Christian metalworker, Laith Hadi Bahnam, in the Karama industrial zone of Mosul, and demanded that he repair a silencer for one of their guns. When Bahnam refused, according to two of his friends, one of the gunmen threatened, "I’m going to kill you." Ten days later, on January 29, the two armed men returned. As Bahnam, 56, pleaded for his life, the gunmen shot him three times in the face and chest, killing him instantly.
Somalia: Attack a Wake-Up Call to the West
opinion By Letta TaylerAnother day, another attack in a far-flung, volatile land. Westerners are likely to react with a shrug and a sigh to the October 14 truck bombing in Somalia, the world's deadliest attack on civilians in over a decade--if they heard about it at all. Yet the attack has direct implications for the United States and its allies.
How Obama’s Drones Rulebook Enabled Trump
In Trump’s New Drone Strike Policy: What’s Any Different? Why It Matters, Luke Hartig astutely flags some – but not all – of the key dangers in the Trump administration’s reported plan to rescind many, if not most, rules for US lethal operations against terrorism suspects outside conventional warzones. What Hartig largely ignores is how flaws in the existing targeted killing policy, crafted under President Barack Obama, helped pave the way for President Donald Trump to kill more civilians.
Trump Dangerously Conflates Islam With Violent Extremism
Amid the uproar over President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban, along comes yet another proposal in the same discriminatory spirit: to revamp a United States government program created to counter all violent ideologies so that it would focus solely on "Islamist extremism." Muslim women listen to remarks during a news conference held by House Democrats to introduce legislation "to ensure that no one is denied entry into the United States because of their religion" at the U.S. Capitol in...
The Women Who Escaped ISIS
From Abused to Accused By Letta Tayler March 11, 2017 Reuters Dressed in fitted slacks, a satin bomber jacket with a fake fur collar, and a black scarf that loosely framed her face, Nadia, 22, spoke in a dull monotone of her journey from life under the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) to life in a Kurdish prison. She said she had not seen her three-year-old daughter since she fled her abusive husband, a fugitive ISIS member, in March.
The Kurdish Government Is Torturing Boys
ERBIL, Iraq — Seated in a metal chair, with his skinny legs barely reaching the floor and his voice almost a whisper, “Ali,” 14, pushed up his shirt sleeves. The thin scars near one elbow, he said, were from electric shocks. The dark, circular scar near one wrist, he said, was a cigarette burn. The torturers, he said, were agents of Asayish, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) security forces.
World Report 2017: Overreach
News from the terrorism and counterterrorism fronts has been grim of late. Extremists—with or without the support of armed groups—have staged a horrific run of attacks on the general population.
Grounds for Concern
On November 13, 2015 coordinated attacks in Paris at sites including a concert hall and sports stadium killed 130 people and injured hundreds. The extremist armed group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility. Four months later, on March 22, 2016, coordinated attacks at the Brussels international airport and a metro station killed 32 people and injured hundreds. ISIS again claimed responsibility. The attacks were the deadliest in the two countries in decades.
Belgium: Response to Attacks Raises Rights Concerns
(Brussels) – Belgium has enacted a raft of problematic counterterrorism laws and its police have carried out heavy-handed operations in the past year, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Those responsible for horrific attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, and in Brussels on March 22, 2016, the deadliest in those countries in decades, were linked to Belgium.
France’s Emergency Powers: The New Normal
France’s latest renewal of its emergency law has made few headlines abroad—except perhaps in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, fresh from passing his own sweeping state of emergency, may have relished watching the champion of liberté, égalité, and fraternité once again suspend rights in the name of security. But European countries, rattled by a new spate of deadly attacks in France and Germany, may yet be tempted to turn to the new French law as a model.
Airstrike Transparency We Can’t Believe In
The Bedouins were sleeping in their huts when US cruise missiles struck the hamlet of Al-Majalah in southern Yemen, showering them with hundreds of cluster munitions and thousands of shards of steel. Sheikh Saleh bin Fareed, a tribal leader who rushed to the scene, described the carnage: “Goats, sheep, cows, dogs and people, you could see their bodies everywhere,” bin Fareed told me.
Libya: Why Isis Gets Away With Murder in Sirte
By Letta TaylerAmjad bin Sasi was a cocky 23-year-old who didn't mind his tongue, even after the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) took over his home city of Sirte on Libya's coast. Last December, ISIS executed bin Sasi for swearing. His horror story was one of dozens I heard on a recent trip to Libya to speak with people fleeing Sirte, where for the past year ISIS has extended its grip. Bin Sasi's capital offense was naming God in a curse while brawling with a neighbor.
UN: End Overbroad Foreign Terrorist Fighter Laws
(New York) – Governments should ensure that their laws criminalizing membership in foreign terrorist groups meet the human rights standards laid out in a new United Nations report. The Working Group on Mercenaries, in a report to the UN General Assembly on November 2, 2015, said that recent laws “disproportionately restrict” human rights and “unnecessarily expand” surveillance powers.
Syria: Deliberate Killing of Civilians by ISIS
(New York) – Armed militants believed to be members of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, deliberately targeted people they knew were civilians in a June 25, 2015, attack in and around the northern Syrian city of Kobani. Syrian Kurdish authorities and local human rights groups said that 233 to 262 civilians were killed and at least 273 wounded. Mohammed, 42 and three of his relatives who were orphaned in the attack on June 25, 2015 in Kobani, Syria.
Dispatches: Kill the Bill, Canada
It isn’t often that Margaret Atwood, the celebrated, left-leaning Canadian author of The Handmaid’s Tale, joins forces with 60 of her country’s most prominent conservatives, including the heads of Canada’s National Firearms Association and its Libertarian Party. What aligns these unlikely bedfellows is their outrage over bill C-51, a perilously overbroad counterterrorism draft law that the Canadian Senate is poised to vote on any day.
Germany and US Drones
One balmy August night in 2012, a US drone strike killed five men gathered behind a mosque in Khashamir, a village in southeast Yemen. Three were suspected members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The other two were pillars of their community. One was Salim bin Ali Jaber, a cleric who had preached against AQAP’s violent tactics. The other was his cousin Walid, a policeman.
A Wedding That Became a Funeral
On December 12, 2013, a United States aerial drone launched four Hellfire missiles on a convoy of 11 cars and pickup trucks during a counterterrorism operation in rural Yemen. The strike killed at least 12 men and wounded at least 15 others, 6 of them seriously.
No Direction Home
Returns from Guantanamo to Yemen Summary Recommendations To the Government of the United States To the Government of Yemen To the League of Arab States, Member States of the European Union, and United Nations Specialized Programs Methodology Background A Resurgent al Qaeda The US-Yemeni Relationship Counterterrorism Abuses The Yemeni Detainee Population Yemenis at Bagram Roadblocks to Repatriation Not Even a Shell of an Agreement Security Concerns Proxy Guantanamo?
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