Colin Nee, the former chief executive of Charities Evaluation Services, is to join human rights charity Reprieve as interim executive director for around a year.

Nee will cover the maternity absences of both the executive director Clare Algar and operations director Jane Pickering. It is the first time Reprieve, still a young organisation, has had a maternity leave, let alone two at once and the two most senior employees.

Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.  It was founded by human rights lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith in 1999 to investigate cases of injustice, provide advocacy on behalf of prisoners, help them to resettle upon release, and promote debate around human rights abuses.

Nee (pictured) is joining just as the government has announced plans to hold a judge-led inquiry into the extent of Britain’s complicity in torture.

He left Charities Evaluation Services last autumn after eight years at its helm, to join the Ireland Fund of Great Britain as executive director.  But that interim post ended in March and he has been doing consultancy since then.  He will take up the Reprieve directorship on 5 July.

Nee is also a trustee of the Directory of Social Change.