Healing and Recovery After Trauma (HeaRT) is a nonprofit legal institute that focuses on providing legal representation to detainees at Guantanamo Bay and operates other projects concerning art and public awareness.

HeaRT was founded in 2020 by Beth Jacob, an attorney who began representing Guantanamo Bay detainees in 2005 while working at a private law firm. She previously worked for the left-of-center Southern Poverty Law Center. HeaRT is led by Jacob and is comprised of other volunteers from academia and law. The organization is also connected with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a left-of-center legal advocacy group that has also represented Guantanamo Bay detainees. ^{1 2}

Background

Healing and Recovery After Trauma was founded in 2020 by Beth Jacob, who was described by one news publication as having “represented both victims of the 9/11 attacks and the men imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay suspected of committing terrorism against the United States.” Jacob has represented nine men since 2005, four of whom were released and resettled in tertiary countries. Her clients have included artists and authors, and the work of HeaRT is also intended to highlight the art and writings of detainees. ^{3 4}

Tax returns from the organization indicate that the organization was granted independent nonprofit status in late 2020. ProPublica’s nonprofit explorer reported no financial information from the organization was available as of mid-2023. ⁵

Activity

Healing and Recovery After Trauma operates several programs in addition to providing an avenue for founder Beth Jacob to provide legal representation to detainees. The organization operates a Ramadan Gift Project to send Ramadan gift packages to Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The organization states that such gift packages go to “the men imprisoned without charges, those whom the government has labelled ‘non-High Value Detainees.’” ⁶

The organization has also raised funds to sell art in order to provide reparations to Guantanamo Bay detainees, stating that “In anticipation of the US Government acknowledging and being held accountable for the use of torture and extralegal detention at Guantanamo, the Fund for Guantanamo Survivors is sending financial relief directly to Guantanamo survivors.” ⁷

People and Related Organizations

Beth D. Jacob is the founder and president of Healing and Recovery After Trauma, she worked as a lawyer and partner at several large New York-based law firms from 1987 to 2018, and briefly worked as a senior supervising attorney at the left-of-center Southern Poverty Law Center from 2018 through 2019. ⁸

Other volunteers for the organization include Marc Falkoff, a law professor at Northern Illinois University and Luna Martinez, who coordinates HeaRT’s Ramadan campaign. Martinez has worked for EarthJustice and the Center for Constitutional Rights and co-chairs the Palestine Subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild. ⁹

1. “About.” HEART. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://www.hrtlaw.org/about
2. MacDougall, Clair. “A US Lawyer Who Has Worked With Gitmo Detainees Details Her Journey Into a ‘Kafkaesque’ World.” PassBlue. October 11, 2021. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://www.passblue.com/2021/10/11/a-us-lawyer-who-has-worked-with-gitmo-detainees-details-her-journey-into-a-kafkaesque-world/
3. “About.” HEART. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://www.hrtlaw.org/about
4. MacDougall, Clair. “A US Lawyer Who Has Worked With Gitmo Detainees Details Her Journey Into a ‘Kafkaesque’ World.” PassBlue. October 11, 2021. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://www.passblue.com/2021/10/11/a-us-lawyer-who-has-worked-with-gitmo-detainees-details-her-journey-into-a-kafkaesque-world/
5. “Healing and Recovery After Trauma.” ProPublica. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/850889796
6. “Ramadan Gift Project.” HEART. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://www.hrtlaw.org/ramadan-gift-project
7. “The Tea Project Reparations Fund.” HEART. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://www.hrtlaw.org/the-tea-project-reparations-fund
8. “Beth D. Jacob.” LinkedIn Profile. Accessed June 12, 2023.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/beth-d-jacob-8076a78/details/experience/
9. “About.” HEART. Accessed June 12, 2023. https://www.hrtlaw.org/about