[Peace-discuss] AP: "Obama Backs Bush On Bagram Detainees"

[C. G. Estabrook]

"'We all expected better'... 'They've now embraced the Bush policy that you can 
create prisons outside the law'..."


	Obama Backs Bush On Bagram Detainees
	NEDRA PICKLER and MATT APUZZO
	February 20, 2009 07:48 PM EST | AP

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.

"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.

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 a 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.

The government also said if the Bagram detainees got access to the courts, it 
would allow all foreigners captured by the United States in conflicts worldwide 
to do the same.

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.