Katherine Cornell Gorka Executive Director, Westminster Institute
Katherine Cornell Gorka is Executive Director of The Westminster Institute, which is based in McLean, Virginia. The Westminster Institute was established in March 2009 to promote individual dignity and freedom for people throughout the world by sponsoring high-quality research, with a particular focus on the threats from extremism and radical ideologies.
Dr. Shakil Afridi, a Pakistani physician who helped the U.S. locate Osama bin Laden, has been in jail in Pakistan since he was arrested days after the raid on bin Laden's compound in 2011. In 2013, he was granted a retrial, with a new charge that appears politically motivated: charged with murder in regard to the death, eight years earlier, of a patient he had treated. Afridi has gone on a hunger strike protest his unspeakable prison conditions -- including torture. His former lawyer, Samiullah Khan Afridi, was murdered by the Taliban in March 2015.