Our Team


Headshot of Mansoor Adayfi

Mansoor Adayfi, Director of Outreach

Mansoor Adayfi is an award-winning author and the Guantanamo Project coordinator for CAGE.  He was wrongfully detained in Guantanamo for over 14 years.  In 2016, he was transferred to Serbia, where he is striving to make a new life for himself and to transcend the label of “suspected terrorist.”  His book, Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found at Guantanamo, earned the Arab American National Museum’s Evelyn Shakir Non-Fiction Award and the Muslim Bookstagram Best Adult Book Award.  His writing has been featured in numerous publications including The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times Modern Love column, and he received the Richard J. Margolis Award for nonfiction writers of social-justice journalism.  He is a dedicated advocate for the rights of the men still detained in Guantanamo, and he has established and maintains contact with many Guantanamo survivors to provide support and solidarity for them as they seek to rebuild their lives.

Dr. Maha Hilal, Steering Committee

Dr. Maha Hilal is a Muslim Arab American and an expert on institutionalized Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and counternarrative work. Dr. Hilal is the author of the book Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror, and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11.  Her writings have appeared in Vox, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, Newsweek, Business Insider, and Truthout, among others.  Dr. Hilal is the founding Executive Director of Muslim Counterpublics Lab, an organization that works to disrupt and subvert dehumanizing narratives that are designed and deployed to justify state violence against Muslims. Additionally, Dr. Hilal is an organizer with Witness Against Torture, an organization that organizes and advocates for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison and an end to torture.  Dr. Hilal earned her doctorate in May 2014 from the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University in Washington, D.C.  She received her Master’s Degree in Counseling and her Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Headshot of Dan Norland

Dan Norland, Steering Committee

Dan Norland is a high school history teacher at La Jolla Country Day School in San Diego, California.  He co-edited Witnesses of the Unseen: Seven Years in Guantanamo, the joint memoir of Guantanamo survivors Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir.

Headshot of Helen Schietinger

Helen Schietinger, Steering Committee

Helen Schietinger is an organizer for Witness Against Torture, a grassroots campaign that since 2005 has centered the Muslim men imprisoned and abused by the US in Guantanamo Prison.  She volunteered for many years with the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition. Her articles and letters decry torture, challenging media coverage of and government participation in torture. A retired nurse, she was a leader and outspoken activist from the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Headshot of Nancy Talanian

Nancy Talanian, Steering Committee

Nancy Talanian served as the director of No More Guantanamos since its founding in 2009.  No More Guantanamos became the Guantanamo Survivors Fund in 2024.  From 2002 to 2008, she served as founding executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), a national grassroots initiative to uphold the protections of the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution, and international treaties threatened by new, post-9/11 laws and policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act, torture, and detention without charge at the prison at Guantanamo Bay and at ‘black sites’.  BORDC is now called Defending Rights & Dissent.

Board of Directors


Helen Schietinger, President

See bio above

Nancy Talanian, Clerk/Secretary & Treasurer

See bio above

Headshot of Sherrill Hogen

Sherrill Hogen, Vice President

Sherrill Hogen is a retired social worker and long-time political activist.  Of major concern to her is the use of torture by anyone anywhere, as it dehumanizes both victim and perpetrator.  The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, crystalizes issues of the harm and injustice involved with war, when the powerful are addicted to the use of force and cannot see how they are destroying human and planetary life.

Headshot of Beth D Jacob

Beth D. Jacob

Beth Jacob has represented Guantánamo prisoners since 2005, starting while she was in private practice at corporate law firms in New York City, and was a senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She is the founder, president and managing attorney of Healing and Recovery after Trauma, which supports men who are or were imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, as well as other torture survivors. She is a graduate of Radcliffe College (Harvard University) and Yale Law School.

Dan Norland

See bio above

Headshot of Paki Wieland

Paki Wieland

Paki Wieland is an elder peace and justice maker, radio host, and filmmaker who participates in creative endeavors and acts of civil resistance within the United States and Internationally. Her work has brought her to Afghanistan, Cuba, Haiti, India, Gaza, the Rafah, Egypt, border to Gaza, and Cairo Egypt.  She is active in CODEPINK.

In Western Mass., Paki works with the Northampton Committee to Stop Wars, the American Friends Service Committee of Western Mass., the Raging Grannies, and Springfield No One Leaves as well as No More Guantanamos.  She co-hosts two community radio programs and creates videos of local protests for Northampton Community Television.