13 Facts About Allan Nairn

Allan Nairn was born on 1956 and is an American investigative journalist.

Allan Nairn was imprisoned by Indonesian military forces under United States-backed strongman Suharto while reporting in East Timor.

Allan Nairn's writings have focused on US foreign policy in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala, Indonesia, and East Timor.

In 1980 Allan Nairn visited Guatemala in the middle of a campaign of assassination against student leaders amidst a chaotic counterinsurgency campaign against Marxist guerrillas active in both urban and rural areas.

Allan Nairn interviewed United States corporate executives there, who endorsed the death squads, and he decided to further investigate death squad activities in that country and in El Salvador, in the throes of civil war.

Subsequently, Allan Nairn became interested in East Timor and helped found the East Timor Action Network, which was instrumental in bringing the independence movement in East Timor to international attention.

Allan Nairn was beaten with the butts of M16 rifles and had his skull fractured in the melee.

Allan Nairn was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from East Timor, but he re-entered several times illegally, and his subsequent reports helped convince the US Congress to cut off military aid to Jakarta in 1993.

In 1999, Allan Nairn was detained briefly by the Indonesian Army in East Timor, where he had chosen to remain after most other media had evacuated following East Timor's independence referendum.

On March 24,2010, it was revealed that Allan Nairn could be facing possible detention and criminal charges in Indonesia for revealing Indonesian military assassinations of civilian activists.

In 1994, Allan Nairn won the George Polk Award for Journalism for Magazine Reporting.

Also in 1994, Allan Nairn received the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism for his writing on Haiti for The Nation magazine.

Allan Nairn was a recipient of the 1994 Joe A Callaway Award for Civic Courage.