Morton Sklar

Morton Sklar served as Founding Executive Director of Human Rights USA (originally the World Organization Against Torture USA) from 1995 to 2010. He successfully developed and litigated several ground-breaking human rights cases, such as The Ahmed Abu Ali case, the only successful legal challenge to the United States government’s policy of rendition to torture. The Shi Tao v. Yahoo! case that ended the practice of Yahoo! providing internet user identification information to the government of China, and the only human rights case against a sitting head of state (prime minister Hun Sen of Cambodia) that was able to overcome the “head of state immunity” defense. Morton was appointed to two terms (covering nine years) as a judge with an international court (the Labor Tribunal of the Organization of American States); and he also served with the United Nations ILO Commission of Inquiry for Burma (Myanmar) in 1997.