The former chief legal counsel for Guantanamo Bay’s detention camps leads the US agency the Irish Department of Defence has hired to advise Ireland on expanding the state’s military.
Ian Wexler was the top legal executive for the US’s detention camps when UN human rights experts demanded their closure, saying they’re defined by "arbitrary detention without trial, outside of the rule of law”. His LinkedIn says he was “charged with conducting safe, humane, and legal detention operations” at the US naval base on Cuban land.
He now leads the Institute for Security Governance (ISG), which the Irish Department of Defence has commissioned to advise on reorganising the Irish Air Corps, army and navy, as reported by the Journal. ISG has a history of supporting countries looking to join Nato.
ISG has worked with Nato through the Pentagon's Warsaw initiative fund to restructure foreign militaries and uses what it calls "American values and approaches".
‘Working to align foreign military institutions with US defence structures’
The Institute for Security Governance is part of the US Department of Defense’s Defense Security Cooperation University and its headquarters are in Monterey, California.
Its director Ian Wexler was chief legal counsel for the US’s Guantanamo Bay camps from 2015 to 2016. After positions with the US military he moved into roles focused on reshaping foreign militaries.
During Wexler's tenure in Guantanamo, UN special rapporteurs called for accountability "at the highest level of authority" for detention practices at the facility. The UN experts said Guantanamo detainees were "forgotten ones" held in violation of their human rights.
“The United States must clean up its own house – impunity only generates more abuses as states do not feel compelled to stop engaging in illegal practices,” the experts said. A 2023 Amnesty International report called the facility "an indelible stain" on US history, designed specifically to evade the rule of law.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, a UN human rights investigator who visited Guantanamo that year, found detainees still suffering "profound “and “ongoing" harm. She described "systematic practices of rendition, torture and arbitrary detention" with many prisoners never charged with a crime.
Along with being responsible for conducting “humane and legal detention operations” at the camps, Wexler supported “legal and administrative proceedings in Guantanamo”, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Before his time as legal head at the US torture facility, Wexler directed the law and order task force in Baghdad during the US occupation of Iraq. He also served as executive officer of the military liaison office at Iraq's Central Criminal Court during the war.
He retired as a captain in the US Navy's judge advocate general's corps after 25 years.
Wexler later worked with foreign militaries.
He led the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies, also under the US Department of Defense, for four years before taking charge of ISG in September 2023.
ISG says it has conducted more than 2,600 “advising activities” across 80-plus countries since 2018, working to align foreign military institutions with US defence structures.
Yesterday the Department of Defence said that it has established a new office of strategic force design to work with the Pentagon consultants. The department described ISG as "the most suitable and appropriate" choice for reorganising Ireland's military.
The Department of Defence and the Institute for Security Governance have been contacted for comment.
