Elisa Epstein

Learning @uchicagolaw • Most recently @hrw, prev @timepdc • tweets on human rights, US foreign & natsec policy, MENA • 🐱🌱 enthusiast • she/her

[Elisa Epstein @elisacepstein]

I can’t decide what’s more disturbing:

spending a week in #Guantanamo listening to James Mitchell describe the torture he inflicted

or, after said week, finding a shot glass adorned unironically with a war crime as a souvenir at the #GITMO airport

[Elisa Epstein @elisacepstein]

Bringing my account out of semi retirement to share some very exciting personal news!

[Equal Justice Works @EJW_org]

A @UChicagoLaw alum, Elisa Epstein will work with @ACLU National Prison Project to litigate and advocate for the release of incarcerated youth with disabilities in order to ensure they receive necessary support. Elisa is supported by an anonymous sponsor.

[Joey Shea @joey_shea]

I write for @ForeignPolicy on how repeated US failures to hold Saudi to account for a litany of human rights violations has emboldened the Saudi govt, allowing it to act with impunity.

Strong, decisive, public action is needed to counter mounting abuses.

https://t.co/vpjgRLtXny

[mohamed soltan | محمد سلطان @soltan]

My family has publicly and privately condemned my dad’s decade and half old problematic views… knowing all too well that it was only a crutch the regime was using to deter westerners from advocating for him.

My dad’s imperfect victimhood is deserving of sympathy and support.

He shouldn’t die in prison bc his case isn’t as “sexy” or “publicly rewarding” as others.

#SaveSoltan

[Carol Rosenberg @carolrosenberg]

Here at the war court, a former CIA psychologist demonstrated interrogation tactics short of waterboarding for a military judge wrestling with the legacy of torture after the 9/11 attacks.
My latest dispatch from Guantanamo Bay.
https://t.co/m223eHLLBx

[Elisa Epstein @elisacepstein]

@ryanthoreson HUGE congrats; what a lucky kid to have you as parents.

And, though I haven’t finished Last Of Us, Ellie seems like a strong badass independent namesake too.

[Clive Baldwin @cliveabaldwin]

The forced displacement of the entire Chagossian people from their homeland by the UK & US, and the UK's continued blocking of their return and racial persecution are crimes against humanity.
#Chagos #RightToGoHome

New @hrw report & video on colonial crimes and reparations

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

On Feb. 10, U.S. forces in Africa conducted an operation that killed 12 al-Shabaab militants.

Most Americans have no idea we are at war in Somalia, and the idea that the 2001 AUMF authorizes this war is ridiculous. Congress needs to step up and rewrite the 2001 law or sunset it.

[Sara Kayyali @skayyali1]

In aftermath of an earthquake, every minute matters. How fast one mobilizes directs how many lives are saved. Yet for days no help came to NW #Syria. Why? My latest w @ArabReform_ARI on how longstanding flaws in aid operations led to unforgivable paralysis https://t.co/KV4AzsTFuC

[Margaret Wurth @MargaretWurth]

📢📢Florida judges are blocking young people's access to abortion care. Youth under 18 without a supportive parent to consent to abortion must go through a traumatizing & arbitrary court process. Too many are denied. A 🧵on our new @hrw report out today https://t.co/dD1ZC1sWj0

[Elisa Epstein @elisacepstein]

Welcome to @UChicagoLaw, where the students are tackling the really big and important issues of today … by making them worse apparently.

[Allegra Harpootlian @ally_harp]

I can't understate the importance of this oped from Ted Olson, who was Bush's Solicitor General during 9/11.

He says he now understands the Gitmo military commissions were doomed from the start and calls for acceptance of 9/11 defendants' plea bargains. https://t.co/3NUVPSs2YM

[Seth Binder @seth_binder]

Three years later and there has still been no accountability or justice for Moustafa Kassem, an American citizen who was unjustly detained for six years and tragically died inside an Egyptian prison.

[Elisa Epstein @elisacepstein]

I just want to know who decided to call this weather “breezy”

[Elisa Epstein @elisacepstein]

A peer asked @RepLizCheney, speaking at @UChicagoLaw, if she would denounce waterboarding.

She said: “my view is that waterboarding saved lives”

… besides for it violating both US & Intl Law, & being generally abhorrent, it was also very clearly ineffective.

[Mona Seif @Monasosh]

Sanaa made it safely to Sharm ElSheikh to attend #Cop27
She has an event tomorrow wt @amnesty @hrw and the German Climate Convoy

Let's hope @alaa makes it safely out of prison as well soon

All we ask for is an end to this chapter with all of our family together safe
#FreeAlaa

[Aya Majzoub @Aya_Majzoub]

Read @hrw's new investigation into #Iran's security forces unlawfully using excessive & lethal force against protesters in 13 cities across Iran based on verifying videos, analyzing photos, & witness testimony of brutal crackdown. https://t.co/xC3pgiC9Uf

[Elisa Epstein @elisacepstein]

@ryanthoreson This is vastly better than the free cupcakes we got when the Supreme Court term began last fall…. each with a Justice’s photo on top

[Julia Ioffe @juliaioffe]

20% of Biden's ambassadorships are vacant.
One reason? Women nominees have a hell of a time getting out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Republican members hold them up because they don't like their "tone" or assume they are rabid abortionists.
https://t.co/kdWZ1G48Uq

[Brad Parker @baparkr]

Layan died alone in a hospital in Jerusalem. No family at her side. No mother or father holding her hand.

Hospital staff prayed over her body because Israel didn't allow any family members to accompany her to the hospital.

[ACLU of Illinois @ACLUofIL]

In a city struggling to build public trust in the police department, particularly in Black and Brown communities, City officials must study CPD’s traffic stop data—embrace it as a tool to solve this urgent problem—and then explain their policy choices.