Dennis Edward Skinner (born 11 February 1932) is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolsover since 1970, the Chairman of the Labour Party from 1988 to 1989, and has sat on the National Executive Committee numerous times since 1978.

Born in Clay Cross, Derbyshire, Skinner is the third of nine children of coal miner Edward Skinner, who was sacked after the 1926 general strike. Skinner himself worked as a miner for over 20 years, during which he became a NUM leader and Clay Cross Labour Party councillor. He is known for his left-wing views, acid tongue and for never missing a Commons session.

He is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs.

Skinner was educated at Tupton Hall Grammar School (now Tupton Hall School) after passing the Eleven-plus a year early. He worked in the mines from 1949 to 1970, at Parkhouse Colliery in Clay Cross until it closed in 1962, then at Glapwell Colliery near Chesterfield. He joined the Labour Party in 1956.

John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, the 10th most senior United States Senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 presidential election, but lost to then President George W. Bush.

The son of an Army Air Corps serviceman, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966 and, during 1968-1969, served a four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service he was awarded several combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesperson and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam war. During that period, he appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of "war crimes".

Binyam Ahmed Mohamed (Amharic: ብንያም መሐመድ^?) (Arabic: بنيام محمد‎) (also described as Benjamin Mohammed, Benyam (Ahmed) Mohammed and Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi) (born 24 July 1978) is an Ethiopian national, who was detained in Guantanamo Bay prison between 2004 and 2009. He was captured and transported under the US extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed's military representative reported that he had admitted while he was detained that he had trained in the Al-Qaeda terrorist training camp Al Farouq, but has since said that the evidence against him was obtained using torture. After charges against him were dropped, he was eventually released and arrived in the United Kingdom on 23 February 2009. In February 2010, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that he had been subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by the United States authorities".

Mohamed has said that he was tortured in US custody, and tortured while in nominally Moroccan custody. He was alleged to have played a role in what American counter-terrorism analysts characterized as a "dirty bomb plot" with Jose Padilla, despite the fact that it became clear, almost from the moment that Mohamed was seized, that the plot never existed. In June 2002, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy to US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, admitted that "there was not an actual plan" to set off a radioactive device in America, that Padilla had not begun trying to acquire materials, and that intelligence officials had stated that his research had not gone beyond surfing the internet.

Robert "Bob" Booker Baer (born July 1, 1952) is an American author and a former CIA case officer who was primarily assigned to the Middle East. He is currently TIME.com's intelligence columnist and has contributed to Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Baer is a frequent commentator and author about issues related to international relations, espionage and U.S. foreign policy.

Baer was born in Los Angeles, raised in Aspen, Colorado, and aspired to become a professional skier. He spent many years of his childhood with his mother in Europe before returning to the US. After a fairly poor academic performance during his freshman year at high school, his mother sent him to Indiana's Culver Military Academy. In 1976, after graduating from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and entering the University of California, Berkeley, Baer decided to join the CIA's Directorate of Operations (now the National Clandestine Service) as a case officer. Upon admittance to the CIA, Baer engaged in a year's training, which included a four-month paramilitary course and foreign language courses.