Nathaniel Raymond
Director of Operations, Satellite Sentinel Project
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Biography
Nathaniel Raymond has over a decade of experience as a human rights investigator specializing in civilian protection during complex humanitarian disasters, the treatment of prisoners in national security settings, and crimes of war. Based at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, he leads the Satellite Sentinel Project’s (SSP) day-to-day collection and analysis of satellite imagery and other information to produce SSP’s reports on the current human security situation in Sudan. Raymond was a 2010 Rockwood Leadership Institute National Security and Human Rights Reform Fellow.
Previously, Raymond served as Director of the Campaign Against Torture at Physicians for Human Rights, as well as lead investigator into the 2001 Dasht-e-Leili massacre in Northern Afghanistan. He was lead author of the 2010 report Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program, which was the first peer reviewed paper to show evidence that detainees interrogated by the CIA after 9/11 underwent illegal human subject research. The report’s allegations are being examined as part of an ongoing Senate Select Committee on Intelligence probe of detainee abuse by the CIA.
Raymond’s investigation of the Dasht-e-Leili massacre was the subject of a 2009 New York Times front-page story by James Risen. The article revealed that the Bush White House actively interfered with efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department, and the Department of Defense to investigate the alleged suffocation deaths of more than a 1,000 Afghan and foreign fighters who died in the custody of the Northern Alliance and US special forces. The disclosures by PHR and the New York Times caused President Obama to authorize a US National Security Council investigation into the incident.
From 2002 through 2006, Raymond served in a variety of capacities with Oxfam America, including interim Communications Coordinator for the $250 million, seven country response by Oxfam International to the 2004 South Asian tsunami. Raymond served in the field with Oxfam America as a communications advisor for humanitarian response in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. He is a 1999 graduate of Drew University with honors in Religious studies and a minor in Asian studies.