Career
A Member of the Steering Committee of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, Gunaratna is also Senior Fellow both at Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy's Jebsen Centre for Counter Terrorism Studies and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, Oklahoma. A former Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, he holds a masters in international peace studies from Notre Dame, US, where he was Hesburgh Scholar and a doctorate in international relations from St Andrews, Scotland, where he was British Chevening Scholar.
Invited to testify before the 9-11 Commission on the structure of al Qaeda, Gunaratna led the specialist team that built the UN Database on al Qaeda, Taliban and their Entities. He debriefed detainees in the U.S., Asia, Middle East, including high value al Qaeda detainees in Iraq. He served as trainer for law enforcement, the intelligence community, and the military. He served as counter terrorism instructor for GIGN, CTSO, D88, US NAVY SEALS, Swiss Federal Police, NYPD, and the Australian Federal Police. He conducted field research in conflict zones including in Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Colombia.
Author and editor of 12 books including “Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror” (Columbia University Press), an international bestseller, Gunaratna is also the lead author of Jane’s Counter Terrorism, a handbook for counter terrorism practitioners. His latest book with Michael Chandler, former Chairman of the UN Monitoring Group into the Mobility, Weapons and Finance is "Countering Terrorism: Can We Meet the Threat of Global Violence?” He also serves on the editorial boards of "Studies in Conflict and Terrorism" and "Terrorism and Political Violence," the leading academic journals in the field, and on the advisory council of “Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.”
A litigation consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice, Gunaratna was United States expert in the Jose Padilla trial.
Gunaratna said that Al-Qaeda commander Hambali had regularly visited Australia. This claim was later refuted by Australian authorities as lacking in evidence. Commenting on one of his books, the Pacific Journalism Review stated "his writing here on Indonesia reveals a remarkably narrow selection of sources, a profound lack of knowledge, and a flawed understanding of the history of the Indonesian armed forces and of their intelligence operates".
Following an investigation by The Sunday Age, Gunaratna retracted some of the credentials that are found in many his books.
Read more about this topic: Rohan Gunaratna
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