Gita Gutierrez

civil rights attorney, Ctr. for Constitutional Rights

Gitanjali S. Gutierrez is an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York-based human rights organization litigating extensive challenges to the executive's post-9/11 anti-terrorism policies. Ms. Gutierrez's work focuses on challenges to unlawful detention and torture, national security issues, and anti-terrorism practices. Ms. Gutierrez was a member of the legal team representing the Guantanamo detainees in Rasul v. Bush before the United States Supreme Court in 2004 and in Boumediene v. Bush in 2008. Following CCR's 2004 victory in Rasul, she conducted the first visit by a habeas attorney to Guantanamo in September 2004. Since that time, she has been meeting frequently at the military prison with clients from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and the Sudan. Ms. Gutierrez is counsel for Mohammed al Qahtani, a Saudi citizen detained in Guantanamo, who was subjected to the first special interrogation plan, a regime of torture and inhuman treatment authorized by the Secretary of Defense and whose capital charges were dismissed by the Military Commissions Convening Authority in May 2008. She also represents Majid Khan, a Baltimore resident and citizen of Pakistan transferred from secret CIA detention to imprisonment at Guantanamo in September 2006.