Shahzad Akbar is a Pakistani lawyer who founded the human rights organisation
Foundation for Fundamental Rights in 2010 and represents families whose
noncombatant relatives have been murdered by the United States' unmanned
aerial drones.

In May 2011, in response to a speaking invitation from Columbia University
in New York City, Akbar applied for a visa to the United STates.  He had
previously travelled to the United States, and worked as a consultant for
US-based agencies.  Nevertheless, in this instance his application was not
approved.

Akbar is now scheduled to speak at the First International Drone Summit
( http://www.codepink.org/article.php?id=6065 ) in Washington DC 28-29 April.
I cannot state Akbar's case for a visa any more effectively than he had done
already, in his op-ed in The Guardian last year: ""Instead of preventing
me from speaking with American colleagues about these legal cases, the US
government should support our attempt at justice within the law - even if
it disagrees with our view of the facts.  Let us debate and sometimes
disagree; after all, that is how American justice is supposed to be done."

I urge you, therefore, to grant Mr Akbar a visa, to enrich the legal
dialogue in America with opposing points of view.  That is what an
informed democracy is about - and an uninformed democracy is no true
democracy at all.