Col. Morris Davis, anti-torture and humanitarian law advocate, will speak about “Confronting Torture: How it Makes America Less Safe” Jan. 31 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The free public lecture will begin at noon in Room 5042 at the School of Law and is sponsored by the school’s Immigration and Human Rights Policy Clinic.
Col. Morris Davis, anti-torture and humanitarian law advocate, will speak about “Confronting Torture: How it Makes America Less Safe” Jan. 31 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The free public lecture will begin at noon in Room 5042 at the School of Law and is sponsored by the school’s Immigration and Human Rights Policy Clinic.
“More than 4,000 American troops died and more than 30,000 were wounded after we invaded Iraq on the false claim that Saddam Hussein supported al Qaeda, a claim based on a lie a man told his torturers so they would stop torturing him,” Davis said. “Condoning torture does not just sanction torturing American troops if they are captured, it can put their lives at risk for no good reason.”
Davis served in the U.S. Air Force from 1983 to 2008. He was the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay from 2005 to 2007. Davis resigned that position because he objected to the use of evidence obtained by torture and political interference in the trials. Davis is currently a national security and military law commentator and a professor at Howard University School of Law.
The Immigration/Human Rights Policy is a two-semester clinic that provides students with an opportunity to represent clients in immigration cases and work on legal projects addressing human rights initiatives. For more about the clinic, visit http://www.law.unc.edu/academics/clinic/ihrp/.
School of Law contact: Allison Reid, (919) 843-7148, allison_reid@unc.edu