Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiObama Sides With Bush: No Rights for Bagram Prisoners
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights
![[A US soldier belonging to NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) patrols a village near Bagram air base, some 50 kms north of Kabul. President Barack Obama's administration has sided with predecessor George W. Bush on the rights of detainees at Bagram air base, saying they cannot challenge their detention in US courts.
(AFP/Shah Marai)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/bagram.jpg "bagram.jpg")
In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys.
"The hope we all had in President Obama to lead us on a different path has not turned out as we'd hoped," said Tina Monshipour Foster, a human rights attorney representing a detainee at the Bagram Airfield. "We all expected better."
The Supreme Court last summer gave al-Qaida and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention. With about 600 detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and thousands more held in Iraq, courts are grappling with whether they, too, can sue to be released.
Three months after the Supreme Court's ruling on Guantanamo Bay, four Afghan citizens being detained at Bagram tried to challenge their detentions in U.S. District Court in Washington. Court filings alleged that the U.S. military had held them without charges, repeatedly interrogating them without any means to contact an attorney. Their petition was filed by relatives on their behalf since they had no way of getting access to the legal system.
The military has determined that all the detainees at Bagram are "enemy combatants." The Bush administration said in a response to the petition last year that the enemy combatant status of the Bagram detainees is reviewed every six months, taking into consideration classified intelligence and testimony from those involved in their capture and interrogation.
Embracing Bush policy
After Barack Obama took office, a federal judge in Washington gave the new administration a month to decide whether it wanted to stand by Bush's legal argument. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd says the filing speaks for itself.
"They've now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees.
The Justice Department argues that Bagram is different from Guantanamo Bay because it is in an overseas war zone and the prisoners there are being held as part of an ongoing military action. The government argues that releasing enemy combatants into the Afghan war zone, or even diverting U.S. personnel there to consider their legal cases, could threaten security.
It's not the first time that the Obama administration has used a Bush administration legal argument after promising to review it. Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a review of every court case in which the Bush administration invoked the state secrets privilege, a separate legal tool it used to have lawsuits thrown out rather than reveal secrets.
The same day, however, Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter cited that privilege in asking an appeals court to uphold dismissal of a suit accusing a Boeing Co. subsidiary of illegally helping the CIA fly suspected terrorists to allied foreign nations that tortured them.
Letter said that Obama officials approved his argument.
50 Comments so far
Show AllMay life and the universe bless those who stand up to the injustices perpetuated by empire.
These people should be POW's and released when we make peace or proven not a POW.
Paul Siemering
all the prisoners who have done hard time in both places will tell you Bagram is the pits, they are happy when they hear they will go to Gitmo. This is also one reason I never got all excited about closing Gitmo- it was more visible than any other part of the gulag. Anyway, Bagram is a black hole- once people get out and tell individual stories, you can learn little bits, but most of it is still secret, still hidden. i suppose we can all agree that the worst thing about bush is his wars, but in second place for sure is these hateful secret prisons, and people being held without charges for no reason. Many are just poor slobs their next door neighbor did not like so they told the u.s. military "that dude's al qaeda" and off they go, into the oubliette, and their families are not notified. and np need to bting charges, or prove anything.
so. now Obama is going off to do his own stupid war, and locking people up the same stupid, and brutal way, and saying it's all ok they are - did he really say "enemy combatants"? anyway, they have no rights at all. How is this different? it isn't.
We have bounty hunters on the United States. They study the wanted lists and find those who have the largest reward, then dedicate themselves to catching the person or persons, to turn them in for the money. Suppose we just told them to go out and bring in everybody who they think is a lawbreaker and we'll pay you, say, a thousand bucks a head, no questions asked?
That's basically what is going on, or has gone on in the ME. The CIA put the word out that it would pay a bounty on each terrorist brought in. The war lords and clan leaders quickly got rid of any thorns in their sides by turning them over to the CIA for cash (probably in those shrink wrapped hundreds). When they used them up, they apparently just grabbed people off the streets and turned them over to the CIA. They got paid. One "terrorist" is just like another and the CIA could claim it was doing a helluva job. Look at all the terrorists we've captured!!!
This may well be Obomber's biggest disappointment yet, because some very grisly things have happened at Bagram, things that make Gitmo pale by comparison. Indeed by refusing to budge on Bagram, he cancels out what good might be symbolized by the closing of Gitmo. He makes the latter decision look simply like a political ploy, which is probably all it is.
Just a brief description of some things that occurred at Baghram:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_torture_and_prisoner_abuse
Those involved got a slap on the wrist.
There was also an incident, not mentioned in your wikipedia link, in the early months of the Afghan war in which several hundred prisoners were crammed into some sort of metal container and left to die. Perhaps this wasn't at Bagram? Do you remember the incident I'm referring to?
Yes, though this report doesn't mention the deaths of anyone:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=13260&Cr=afghan&Cr1
Both there and in Kabul "conditions are below human standards by any means and they are in total violation of the UN Minimum Standards for the Treatment of Prisoners," he added, with small metal containers in which 10 human beings are kept, some of them shackled hand and foot with a metal bar for 24 hours a day for 6 weeks.
He noted that unpaid guards frequently shackled people so that those who can afford it pay to be unshackled and he underscored the lack of any medical facilities.
=====
This one does:
http://www.cageprisoners.com/campaigns.php?id=324
Along with hundreds of other prisoners, they are tied up and herded into containers. Ruhel Shafiq and Zahid are lucky. Their container has canvas sides. Asif is not lucky. His container is metal and airtight, and the prisoners begin to suffocate. Asif loses consciousness. When he comes round there are bullet holes in the sides of the container. Many prisoners are dead – either from bullets or suffocation. Asif has a gunshot wound. He licks the condensation on the walls of the metal container – a mixture of blood and water – to survive.
=====
These men were rounded up by the Northern Alliance.
Thanks for the links and info, anney. Go in peace.
Obama closes GITMO, obama nation cheers!!! but he doesn't say -in public- what he'll do with the prisoners.... hopeful assume the best will come.
obama nation assume prisoners we be let free or given a fair trial.
it appears there will be a series of one-way tickets to Bagram, in the dead of night....
Did Obama go to a law school where they mention the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in the curriculum?
He went to Harvard which has provided us with some of the biggest incompetents of the last fifty years.
The only place worse may be the University of Chicago, although some of the star alumni of Chicago have pranced through Harvard.
Yale too.
Joe
If prisoners have no rights, then Obama has no rights. Time for a new constitution that pares the office of the president down very considerably.
"Change" wast the magic world, and now it seems to have been con all the way. The Taliban, still on the rise, will welcome this new recruitment opportunity.
Maanav
It is too early to judge Obama. He is the only hope we got. He did certain good things since he is sworn. But the Bagram decision is not good. From the beginning
it is not obvious which way Obama will blow. My problem like too many others is that I want to believe that O is genuine and little more than a politician. That belief is quite unstable at the moment. Let us give him some more time before we ditch him or he ditches us. Or even better we should use him for our own interests as he uses us for his own so that our relation to Obama is pragmatic rather than idealistic, without losing our basic humanity. As Jeremaiah Wright said "he is just a politician" and he certainly knew him well. The past Clinton Bush years were a roller coaster and at last I hoped my stomach can unknot and relax. Now I see that is going to be brief, what have we done to deserve this?
Manaav, "What have we done to deserve this"?
I think you sound quite sincere, and i respect that quality. But the answer to your question is---We torture, invade and murder over a million civilians in iraq, give away our own constitutional rights, focus on mindless garbage for our entertainment, support military dictators, manufacture weapons that are like science fiction at its darkest and create markets so we can sell them to the world, hire mercenaries to work for those who control the planet, and the list goes on and on....
Obama never promised anything progressive. People projected on him like a movie screen. And made assumptions due to his personal story, rather than the way he voted in the very short time he had national office. His objections to the war in iraq was purely pragmatic as he made it known that he had no problem with invasions and wars.
Why did you think he was different? And please, can you explain what "Change you can believe in" meant to you? I am quite sincere here myself. That is a meaningless statement. In fact, at first it struck me as a religious, faith based kind of slogan.
Obama did promise progressive changes domestically, especially with regard to scientific issues, reproductive & educational rights, and workers' rights.
His opposition to invading & occupying Iraq was based on the irrefutable fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the September attacks (I'm going to stop calling them "9/11", which is an iconic way of enshrining the general holy war of the US), while the Taliban in power in Afghanistan did.
The appeal for change was always for the type of liberal imperium, which sought to institute a degree of fairness at home; but that idea of fairness always implies also the use of the military to "spread democracy" -- rarely in the legitimate sense of combatting the Nazis & the Japanese empipre in WWII, more often in the racket that Gen. Smedley Butler described in the 1930s.
The true progress would be the abolition of the American empire with the abolition of capitalism. Capitalism has self-abolished itself & Obama, along with the rulers in the rest of the world, is trying very hard to shore up the ruins before the people in general grasp the meaning & the opportunity presented by the destruction.
SJ
Hate to burst your bubble, but apparently the Taliban had nothing to do with the attack -- the ONLY link the attack on 9/11 had to the Taliban was Osama bin Laden, only presumed in the beginning to have been behind the attack. The BIG problem is that OBL apparently had NOTHING to do with the attack that day. Though he was more securely linked to some other terrorist acts, American authorities were unable to link him to 9/11. Instead, the mastermind of 911 was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was caught, transported, held, interrogated, and tortured at Gitmo. Unfortunately, he is now insane.
So why did the US stay in Afghanistan? And why is Obama going to send even MORE troops there? It's a sovereign country and was not responsible for the Twin Towers attack. THAT invasion was illegal, too.
I agree with your comments up to the point where you assert that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did the dirty deed. Why should we believe a confession clearly obtained under torture? KSM also laid claim, don't forget, to a whole slew of other dastardly deeds as well, and in no instance do we have any forensic proof of anything, least of all that "masterminded" 9/11. Did he "mastermind" the demolition of Building 7? Did he turn concrete and steel to powder in a matter of seconds? Did he "mastermind" the standdown of air defenses? But you're right of course that we have no business in Afghanistan
Clovis
Yep, you're right. He conveniently confessed to all kinds of terrorist activities while being tortured. (The point is that US authorities can't pin the blame on OBL, who was the "reason" the US invaded Afghanistan. I, personally, think he's been dead for years.)
Mohammed cannot be legitimately convicted of any crimes to which he confessed while under torture, since torture is illegal. Besides, if he's mentally unfit now, he can't be brought to trial either.
And no, I doubt that he confessed to the other glaring questions you pose that are remaining about the attack on the Towers.
People on this site just love typing in all caps. It doesn't enhance your writing, it just serves to make you sound angry.
How many people do you meet each day that actually even know what our Constitution says? Yeah, the same ones who think we live in a 'free' country - besides, what do they care? They're not 'terrorists' - I've been told by many such idiots that 'people who have nothing to hide aren't affected' - just like all the Jews who never believed things would get 'that bad' in Nazi Germany.
In the US, there are 10 suckers born every minute - which is why mob-rule (democracy) is such a farce. Democracy is only workable in a civilized country with an educated population - the US simply doesn't qualify. People get the kind of rulers they deserve. So shut up and pay your taxes (Torture is expensive.) - or you're next.
what is evermore clear is :
regardless of who is president .. it is AMERICAN POLICY and BELIEF - as represented by officialy chosen leaders - that
IT IS AMERICAN PRIVILEGE to plant its foot anywhere in the world......decide what is "law" and decide to whom it applies and for what reason.
an article words it:
obama administration............."the bagram prisoners are not ENTITLED TO"........
but the USA is "ENTITLED TO"....lord it over the universe.
this is the TRUE american "spirit" as represented by its government . whether that is AMERICAN in spirit or from the people, intentionally, willingly, grudgingly, under duress, under misguidance....it doesn't matter.
THIS IS NOW what AMERICA IS to the world...
"america.......we have many fine qualities......seeing ourselves as others see us.....is NOT one of them"....
---Patrick Buchanan.
9/11. 3,000 dead Americans. Terrorists launched their attacks from Afghanistan. We defend ourselves by going in. Get sidetracked by monkey dictator who sends us into Iraq. Now that the grown ups are back in charge, we are actually going to defend ourselves.
What does defending your self have to do with no rights for prisoners?
You don't have a problem if captured American soldiers are subjected to various forms of torture or deprivation of rights?
Uh, when did you ever see any evidence that the "terrorists launched their attacks from Afghanistan"? Empirically, they launched their attacks from East Coast airports, and I doubt that what brought down three buildings on 9/11 originated in Afghanistan. Never was any Taliban complicity in the attacks ever demonstrated, and never, for that matter, was OBL's involvement ever proved. And, FYI, there were more than a few non-Americans among the 3000 dead.
In what way were these attacks launched from Afghanistan?
They were launched by from the ramps of US airports. They were planned in Hamburg, Germany, and in various US locations. No planning was done in Afghanistan. At very most, Al-Quieda members, including Bin Laden, may have been aware that an attack of some sort was planned; possibly some funding decisions for Atta's Hamburg cell was made in Afghanistan, but none of this has been proven. Most of the fund owners were Arab Al-Quieda members in Europe.
The Taliban government of Afghanistan was almost certainly completely unaware of the Sept 11 planning or funding. They were willing to cooperate with some sort of extradition of Bin Laden if some kind evidence was furnished. Their main concern was that their sovereignty be respected. Any other sovereign nation state would have done likewise.
So, please explain how the attacks on Afghanistan, in leiu of any kind of diplomatic efforts, were ever justified? Please, no Manichean, fairy-tale "you can't bargain with pure evil" arguments. This is the real world, not a Tolkien novel.
---USAn---
First of all, 911 was an inside job. The terrorists took over our government in the November election coup of 2000. Second, Iraq was not a matter of being side-tracked. That was planned well in advance of 911, in a plan to break the country into pieces and gain control over oil production. (Joe Biden himself thought that was a nifty idea.) By the way, I was thinking of the country being Iraq, but on second thought, I'm thinking that another goal, in terms of the international banker-engineered economic 911, that it is the U.S. which is also meant to be broken into pieces. Third, Obama represents the same neocon/neoliberal globalist game plan and I would think twice before looking up to him as a "grownup" who will defend us. I think the signs are pointing in the other direction.
Are you arguing that occupying Afghanistan is an appropriate means of defending ourselves against "terrorists"? And maybe expanding the war into Pakistan?
So how are we going to convince the Afghani people that we're on our side?
Maybe we should continue to occupy their country, ride around in heavily armed convoys shooting up the countryside, bomb a few wedding parties a month killing mostly women and children, imprision 20,000 of their citizens without recourse to legal rights, torture some, stand by while 2,000 surrendered Taleban are suffocated in shipping containers, then shot, torture tens of prisoners to death (some used for punching / kickboxing practice by American troops or CIA civilians, dying of repeated "knee stikes"). Then perhaps we can install a puppet head of state (a former oil compan executive might do). Maybe we can watch as the peasants eat grass in the winters and try to keep their kids alive and a corrupt government of warlords, installed by us, lords it over their wrecked nation.
Sound like a good plan? I knew you would approve! :) I'm sure engaging in these activities will make all of us, in our beds at night, more safe from the "terrsts".
After Obama got elected, members of our local peace vigil (which has been protesting every week for the past five years), began to leave in droves. Why?
Because they thought that now that Obama would be the messiah who would save us all - all troops home, no more unlawful detentions, peace and justice for all. Many thought that Obama's election was a cause for celebration, and that there was no further need for protest. In fact, peace vigils were suddenly considered counter-revolutionary, a signal of disloyalty to the Obama administration. Let Barack do it.
Now, thanks to the bogus promises of the Barack administration, which caused people to leave our vigil, it will be gone by the end of next month and the last little spark of sanity in our area will be extinguished. They wouldn't listen to people like me, who voted for Cynthia McKinney because we knew that Obama, for all his good qualities (and anyone would look good next to Bush & Cheney)was still a warmonger who would substitute a war in Iraq for a war in Afghanistan.
I will come to the final "celebration" of the vigil. I shall be dressed all in black, and have one leg in a splint and walk with a cane to symbolize our crippled nation. And I will not have kindly words for my fellow vigilers. Instead I will yell at them, "Come back, you idiots, and protest like you've never protested before, or be responsible for the death of your nation!"
Paul Siemering
way to go Iris!
Good for you irisf. I'm very disappointed too.
If at first we don't secede then ...
Bless you, irisf!
A nation of laws?
Why is it that clear laws, like habeas corpus (from 1200 or so a.d.), are so easily broken? We're all taught in civics 101 that this sort of thing can't happen because the three branches will check such abuses of power.
I wonder when things will just explode in this country. In a way, Obama did represent the last hope of the status quo powers. Now, all bets are off and the country drifts.
-TIA
"I wonder when things will just explode in this country."
When the economy causes mass food hunger, 25 percent unemployment, massive homelessness and a shrunken middle class.
Or about six months to a year for this above to happen.
The people are ignorant of the dismal facts about the economy, but hunger in the bellies will wake them from their stupor.
When certain Oregon legislators sold our lumber milling industry down the river by making a deal with the Japanese to send them LOGS instead of wood products (logs were loaded onto factory ships that arrived at their home base as milled lumber), local unemployment went up above 25% - as it had in Washington state when Boeing left - and you didn't see anyone in the streets protesting this egregious sell-out. Poaching, gambling, and crime went up - but even then people didn't demand justice. They just tightened their belts and blamed 'outsiders' (and Californians) for the devastated economy. People never can see how 'politics' affects their lives - even their very survival. They don't want to get involved in this 'taboo' subject - it's like attacking their religion or favorite sports team (aren't these all one and the same anyway?). So sorry to say, but hunger will NOT bring all those ignorant people out of their stupor - they're just too damned stupid. Watch and see - this country will NEVER 'explode' - too many decades of relentless propaganda. (And this happened before the big media mergers that eliminated 'news' from the News desks of TV 'journalists' - read 'entertainers')
That's the way it's been all along - the union busting, Walmartization, off-shoring decent jobs, importing H1B workers, doing away with any social safety nets - none of these things made Americans 'wake up' - and I'll guarantee you there were lots of empty stomachs from every one of these traitorous attacks on civil society. Americans would rather blame immigrants (especially 'illegal' ones) for all their woes - that way they don't have to get up off the couch(and/or barstool)and actually DO SOMETHING about the state of 'our' society.
isn't this,
"importing H1B workers"
a contradiction of this,
"would rather blame immigrants (especially 'illegal' ones)"?
Sounds to me like you are also blaming immigrants.
An alternate view - your "lumber milling industry" needs to be closely constrained so as not to damage the environment further .. and a "decent" job at Boeing might be seen as participating in the war-making-for-profit that is seen as decent, respectable employment by most. The dollar isn't the bottom line, in my opinion.
Whenever such a point of view comes up , I try my very best to set aside my own personal opinions and tell myself "Maybe they are right and *I* am the one wrong here so let me look at this from THEIR perspective and try and justify it"
There is no way I can do so. Throwing a label of "illegal Combatants" on them makes absolutely NO DIFFERENCE"
We could label them Satans Minions and it makes NO Difference.
TORTURE is wrong. Claiming a subset of people have no Rights is wrong.
How we define them does not justify the wrongs we commit against them.
A wrong is a wrong. Even were these proven child molesters (which i consider the lowest of the low) they would have rights and our ill treatment of them with tortures would still be wrong.
So forget about what one administration or the next wants to LABEL them as. get down to the heart of the question.
Is it justified, proper or right that a person be suspended from his or her arms from an overhang, and then have his or her bones beaten with a stick so that said bones turn to jelly?
I say it NEVER justified.
I say that as soon as we have people who say "except when"....then it becomes an exception to the point that it becomes routine.
See the example of dropping bombs on children.
Gw---Excellent post!
And many of those held there are victims of bounty hunters. The u.s. pays for insurgents to be turned in.
So. - The Bagram prisoners are held by USA but USAn laws don't apply to them because they're "overseas".
Afghan laws don't apply to Bagram prisoners because they are held at a USAn Airfield.
Conclusion: Prisoners at Bagram Airfield are not held in any country.
*
That must be why it's called Bagram "Airfield", indeed. - They've found a field in the air where prisoners are kept, ah... hanging in the air?
Evidently, the Geneva conventions do not apply to such fields in the air, according to the Obama-crew's interpretation.
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration, siding with the Bush White House, contended Friday that detainees in Afghanistan have no constitutional rights
In a two-sentence court filing, the Justice Department said it agreed that detainees at Bagram Airfield cannot use U.S. courts to challenge their detention. The filing shocked human rights attorneys....
"They've now embraced the Bush policy that you can create prisons outside the law," said Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees....
---------------------------
- Dear Dem Party Apologists & Change-You-Can-Believe-In suckers: the above is a nice illustration of "New Boss, Same as the Old Boss."
Please submit below any excuses you can come up with, to try to justify this. (For example, you could argue that Obama is "just doing this to try to win bipartisan support for his soon-to-be-unveiled incredibly-progressive agenda.")
yes, it was always that whatever he voted for was just a ruse to throw off the right wingers. He could declare martial law and i believe there would be those who will say that it is to get the republicans to trust him.
How do say Seig Heil in hip-hop?
Sorry - slipped out - but I'll leave it.
Just wait until Xe comes to round up the dissenters for the KBR camps!!!!!!!
Or Baghram - remember under Presidential Security Directive 51, any US citizen - native born or not - can have his citizenship revoked and declared an 'enemy combatant' by the president. Also, remember that under the Military Commissions Act, anyone taking part in any activity that might lead to injury can be declared a 'terrorist'(remember that arrested parties at the GOP convention were turned over to ICE and/or Homeland Security - not local law enforcement.
And if i recall, they can be deported to another location which is not necessarily a government. That was the really chilling part-that it may or may not be under the auspices of any government. A non-place for non-persons.
I think we should all send copies of "Taxi To the Dark Side" to the White House ASAP!!!
Amen that!
I was disappointed that Obama didn't answer Helen Thomas' question. Everyone knows that Israel is the only Mid-East country to have Nukes!
Well....I think this speaks for itself.
Not to say "i told you so", but...