Nancy J. Paul is an officer in the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Air force, air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its ori ...

Education

Military career

Paul received a direct commission into the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate General in 1988. Lieutenant Colonel Paul is notable for her appointment as a Presiding Officer for a

Guantanamo military commission The Guantanamo military commissions were established by President George W. Bush through a military order on November 13, 2001, to try certain non-citizen terrorism suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison. To date, there have been a total of eight ...

. Paul is the most junior officer appointed to serve as a Presiding Officer. All the other Presiding Officers are full

Colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...

s or

Captains Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the naval warfare, maritime military branch, service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest Displacement (ship), displacement, at 4.5 millio ...

Presided over Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Al Qosi's Commission

Paul was appointed the Presiding Officer of Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud Al Qosi's military commission in early 2008. On May 22, 2008, after hearing that Al Qosi didn't trust his assigned military lawyer, and had refused to meet with her, and had not been allowed to communicate with his family she ordered that a phone call be arranged, so they could secure civilian lawyers to aid in his defense. This order stirred controversy when Pauline Storum, a Guantanamo spokesman falsely claimed the next day that the call had already been completed. At his July 2009 hearing the court's new audio equipment malfunctioned. The

Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. Ob ...

Presidency A presidency is an administration or the executive, the collective administrative and governmental entity that exists around an office of president of a state or nation. Although often the executive branch of government, and often personified b ...

requested a series of continuances, so it could study alternatives to the military commission system. Paul granted a final continuance on October 21, 2009. On December 3, 2009, Paul convened the first hearing of a military commission following the October 2009 passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2009. She ruled that the charges against Al Qosi should be limited to crimes he was alleged to have committed in Afghanistan. She ruled that crimes he was alleged to have committed when al Qaeda was based in Sudan were beyond the mandate of the military commission system.

Carol Rosenberg Carol Rosenberg is a senior journalist at ''The New York Times.'' Long a military-affairs reporter at the ''Miami Herald'', from January 2002 into 2019 she reported on the operation of the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camps, at its nav ...

, writing in the ''

Miami Herald The ''Miami Herald'' is an American daily newspaper owned by McClatchy, The McClatchy Company and headquartered in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth-largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward County, Fl ...

'', reported that Paul scheduled hearings for January 6, 2010, to determine whether Al Qosi met the eligibility criteria laid out in the

Military Commissions Act of 2006 The Military Commissions Act of 2006, also known as HR-6166, was an Act of Congress signed by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. The Act's stated purpose was "to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of ...

. Rosenberg described Paul as the first Presiding Officer of a Military Commission to address changes the US Congress set in place in the Military Commissions Act of 2009. Andrea Prasow, a senior counsel with

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Headquartered in New York City, the group investigates and reports on issues including War crime, war crimes, crim ...

, was critical of Paul for proceeding with the Commission, even though the rules of procedure hadn't been drafted.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paul, Nancy J. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people United States Air Force officers Guantanamo Military Commission members Women in the United States Air Force University of Nebraska Omaha alumni Creighton University School of Law alumni