Human Rights

At Walden Macht Haran & Williams, we are committed to combating the transnational repression of dissidents, journalists, and people exercising their right to freedom of speech in the United States.

At the center of WMHW’s Human Rights Practice Group is the belief that the law can and should be a vehicle for positive social change. Foreign state actors are increasingly targeting people across borders, infringing the rights to liberty, equality, freedom of expression and association with diverse mechanisms of transnational repression. We represent individuals who have escaped oppressive governments, political prisoners, exiled activists, critics and their families, who face these forms of aggression. Our team of accomplished civil litigators and former government prosecutors utilizes its wide-ranging experience to pursue justice for victims of transnational repression in U.S. courts, to navigate complex foreign legal systems and employ innovative legal strategies to achieve relief, justice and accountability for our clients.

In addition to financial recoveries for our clients, our lawyers pursue civil litigation as a tool to hold foreign governments accountable and establish key legal precedents on behalf of victims of human rights abuses. WMHW works closely in partnership with non-profit human rights organizations to  resolve gaps in the law that limit recourse through U.S. courts and cross border cooperation for human rights abuses suffered by victims and their family members in the U.S. and abroad.

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Experience

  • Represent a US-Egyptian political commentator who was kidnapped, imprisoned, and prosecuted pursuant to pretextual Red Notices issued by Interpol and the Arab Interior Ministers Council and an extradition request from Egypt. WMHW brought suit against Interpol, the Arab Interior Ministers Council, Egypt, and others, under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
  • Represent Areej al-Sadhan, the sister of Abdulrahman al-Sadhan (“Abdul”), a humanitarian aid worker and online activist, who has been imprisoned and tortured by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for more than four years. Abdul is the son of an American family and since his sentencing in April 2021, has been denied contact with his family.
  • WMHW filed a lawsuit on behalf of the family of an online dissident who was among the targets of a Saudi government scheme to silence and disappear online critics. The litigation named the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (“KSA”), high-ranking Saudi officials, Twitter Inc., and former Twitter employees who acted as Saudi agents and leaked identifying information to Saudi officials.