Bagram Prison: Hiding the Mess at Guantanomo?

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Warren Richey at the Christian Science Monitor described the legal showdown over Bagram Prison in Afghanistan on Feb. 11:

At the height of its operation, the terror detention camp at Guantánamo was viewed as a legal black hole, a place where Al Qaeda suspects could be held and questioned beyond the glare of judicial scrutiny.
President Obama has made the closing of the detention facility a priority. But as Guantánamo is being drawn down, large-scale construction is under way at a US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.
-- snip --
At the heart of a looming legal showdown at Bagram is the same fundamental question asked in the Guantánamo litigation: Are detainees in a US military prison overseas entitled to any legal rights?
But there is an additional twist. After the Supreme Court's 2004 decision, the Bush administration stopped sending detainees to Guantánamo and instead routed them to Bagram, where they were held and interrogated without judicial scrutiny. Until now.

And the Obama Administration has, so far, sided with Bush.

But the new administration faced a February 20 deadline to tell U.S. District Court Judge John Bates whether it would "refine" the Bush administration's position on four men being held at Bagram who have filed suit against their detention.

In a brief filing with the court on Friday, the Justice Department said it would stick to the previous government's position, which argued the four men -- who have been detained at Bagram for over six years -- had no right to challenge their detention in a U.S. court.
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[haddayr.livejournal.com]

ARGH!