Seeking Accountability for Torture—Photography as Evidence

Matthew Alexander spent 14 years in the U.S. Air Force.  An "investigator turned interrogator," he deployed to Iraq in 2006 where he conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised more than 1,000.  Alexander was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his achievements in leading the team that located Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, who was killed by coalition forces.  He is the author of How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq. 

Chris Bartlett's portraits of Abu Ghraib detainees are featured in OSI's Moving Walls 15 exhibition.  By juxtaposing descriptions of treatment at Abu Ghraib with straightforward portraits and biographical information, Bartlett depicts the individuals behind the torture. 

Bartlett is a freelance still-life photographer working for most of the top fashion publications, including Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Town & Country. His interest in photographing detainees came from a desire to use his professional skills to create images that have broader implications than current fashion trends.

Susan L. Burke is a founding member of Burke O'Neil LLC, a litigation boutique with offices in Philadelphia, D.C., Chicago, Charlottesville, and Baghdad.  Burke, who focuses on complex civil litigation, currently serves as lead counsel in a class action brought on behalf of the torture victims of the Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq.  The class-action challenges the actions by two defense contractors whose employees directly participated in the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners.  Burke has welcomed a number of writers, artists, and filmmakers to listen to the stories of the detainees to help the world understand the gravity and extent of the detainee abuse in Iraq.

Allen Keller is an associate professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine and director of the NYU School of Medicine Center for Health and Human Rights.  Dr. Keller is cofounder and director of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. Since 1995 the program has provided comprehensive medical, mental health social and legal services to approximately 2,500 men, women and children from over 80 countries who have endured torture and other human rights abuses. The program is recognized internationally for excellence in its clinical, educational and research activities. 

Keller is a leading expert in the evaluation, documentation and treatment of victims of torture and human rights abuses. He has coaouthored over 50 scholarly articles and reports concerning human rights. Recently, he coauthored a report from Physicians for Human Rights, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, which documented the physical and psychological health consequences of torture and abuse experienced by eight former Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib detainees. 

Keller was one of the founding Soros Advocacy Fellows.  At that time, he completed a groundbreaking study documenting the health consequences of immigration detention and barriers in accessing health care for detained immigrants.  Keller has received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Barbara Chester Award from the Hopi Foundation and the Arthur C. Helton Human Rights Award from the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Stephen Rickard is the director of the Washington office of the Open Society Foundations. Under his direction, the office engages in advocacy on U.S. and international issues, including promotion of human rights and support for open societies abroad.

Rickard has a distinguished career as a Washington advocate for human rights. Before joining the Foundations, Rickard served as the director of the Nuremberg Legacy Project, working to promote U.S. support for international justice. Rickard was also the director of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights (2000-2001) and the Washington director for Amnesty International USA (1996-2000).

Rickard spent many years working for the U.S. government. He was the senior advisor for South Asian Affairs at the State Department where he focused on economic and global issues, including human rights. He also served as senior foreign policy advisor to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During his time on Capitol Hill, he helped secure Senate approval for numerous treaties on international human rights and labor rights.

In the 1980s, Rickard worked as a litigator with the law firm, White & Case in New York, Washington, and Stockholm. At the firm, he specialized in international arbitration. He helped manage the firm's pro bono legal aid program and served as secretary of the New York City Bar Association's Committee on Legal Assistance.

Rickard received his JD from Yale Law School where he was a member of the Moot Court Board and an editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. He holds an MA in public affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He graduated summa cum laude from Adrian College with a BA in political science and English.

Amy Yenkin is the director of the Open Society Documentary Photography Project, based in New York City. She joined the Open Society Foundations in 1994 as the deputy director of scholarships and later held the positions of associate director of the Open Media Research Institute (an Open Society Foundations-related organization based in Prague) and associate director of Open Society U.S. Programs.

Yenkin helped establish the Moving Walls exhibition in 1998, and in 2004 developed and launched the Open Society Documentary Photography Project.

Prior to the Open Society Foundations, she worked in Washington, D.C., as the director of government relations for NAFSA: Association of International Educators, where she represented U.S. colleges and universities in lobbying the U.S. Congress and government agencies on immigration policies affecting foreign students and the hiring of foreign faculty and researchers. She received her BA in history from the University of Michigan.