Court: No habeas rights for prisoners in Afghanistan

[Valin]

LA Times:

Obama wins what Bush sought: the right to hold suspects without judicial oversight at the Bagram air base.
David G. Savage and Christi Parsons
5/21/10

Reporting from Washington —
The Obama administration has won the legal right to hold its terrorism suspects indefinitely and without oversight by judges — not at Guantanamo or in Illinois, but rather at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. appeals court in Washington ruled for the administration Friday and said the Constitution and its right to habeas corpus does not extend to foreign prisoners held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan because it is a war zone. The judges dismissed claims from three prisoners who were taken to Bagram from Pakistan and Thailand and have been held for as long as seven years.
"It is undisputed that Bagram, indeed the entire nation of Afghanistan, remains a theater of war," said Chief Judge David Sentelle, a conservative who was appointed by President Reagan. Joining him were two Democratic appointees, Judges David Tatel and Harry Edwards.

The decision could bring an ironic end to years of legal wrangling over prisoners held by the U.S. military. The ruling, unless overturned by the Supreme Court, appears to the give the Obama administration what the George W. Bush administration had long sought: a place where foreign prisoners can be held by the military out of reach of lawyers and courts.
For months, the Obama administration has debated plans to use Bagram as an alternative to Guantanamo for a small number of prisoners caught outside Afghanistan. Currently, only a dozen or fewer of the Bagram prisoners are foreign fighters, Defense Department officials have said. But that number soon could grow.

The court decision came a day after the House Armed Services Committee voted to block the administration from retrofitting a state prison at Thomson, Ill., to hold high-value prisoners from Guantanamo.

(Snip)

Civil liberties advocates denounced Friday's ruling.

It "ratifies the dangerous principle that the U.S. government has unchecked power to capture people anywhere in the world, unilaterally declare them enemy combatants and subject them to indefinite military detention with no judicial review," said Melissa Goodman, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
"Just because the plane landed at Bagram instead of Guantanamo should not mean they can be held indefinitely without any court review," said Andrea Prasow, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch.

Kirk Lippold, the former commander of the U.S. warship Cole and a fellow with Military Families United, praised the ruling as a "clear vindication" of the military's authority "to fight the war on terror by preventing terrorists from having access to the American court system."

The White House and Justice Department had no comment on the ruling.

(Snip)

[Pepper]

Ha ha

 

Obama is like Slick Willy: It all depends upon what the meaning of Bagram is. We know one thing, it isn't Guantanamo.

 

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like it did John Kennedy. Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

-- Joe Biden

 

Wonder what his supporters will think.

[Valin]

Ha ha

 

Obama is like Slick Willy: It all depends upon what the meaning of Bagram is. We know one thing, it isn't Guantanamo.

 

"Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like it did John Kennedy. Watch, we're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

-- Joe Biden

 

Wonder what his supporters will think.

 

 

[Pepper]

FROM

Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

 

"Can you smell the hypocrisy? How could anyone miss its pungent, suffocating odor? Apparently, what Obama called "a legal black hole at Guantanamo" is a heinous injustice, but "a legal black hole at Bagram" is the Embodiment of Hope."

 

 

Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

 

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court. Back in the day, this was called "Bush's legal black hole."

 

 

Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the Bush/Obama position, holding that even detainees abducted outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram have no right to contest the legitimacy of their detention in a U.S. federal court, because Boumediene does not apply to prisons located within war zones (such as Afghanistan).

 

Can you smell the hypocrisy? How could anyone miss its pungent, suffocating odor? Apparently, what Obama called "a legal black hole at Guantanamo" is a heinous injustice, but "a legal black hole at Bagram" is the Embodiment of Hope. And evidently, Obama would only feel "terror" if his child were abducted and taken to Guantanamo and imprisoned "without even getting one chance to ask why and prove their innocence." But if the very same child were instead taken to Bagram and treated exactly the same way, that would be called Justice -- or, to use his jargon, Pragmatism. And what kind of person hails a Supreme Court decision as "protecting our core values" -- as Obama said of Boumediene -- only to then turn around and make a complete mockery of that ruling by insisting that the Cherished, Sacred Rights it recognized are purely a function of where the President orders a detainee-carrying military plane to land?

[Valin]

FROM

Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

 

"Can you smell the hypocrisy? How could anyone miss its pungent, suffocating odor? Apparently, what Obama called "a legal black hole at Guantanamo" is a heinous injustice, but "a legal black hole at Bagram" is the Embodiment of Hope."

 

 

Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

 

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court. Back in the day, this was called "Bush's legal black hole."

 

 

Today, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals adopted the Bush/Obama position, holding that even detainees abducted outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram have no right to contest the legitimacy of their detention in a U.S. federal court, because Boumediene does not apply to prisons located within war zones (such as Afghanistan).

 

Can you smell the hypocrisy? How could anyone miss its pungent, suffocating odor? Apparently, what Obama called "a legal black hole at Guantanamo" is a heinous injustice, but "a legal black hole at Bagram" is the Embodiment of Hope. And evidently, Obama would only feel "terror" if his child were abducted and taken to Guantanamo and imprisoned "without even getting one chance to ask why and prove their innocence." But if the very same child were instead taken to Bagram and treated exactly the same way, that would be called Justice -- or, to use his jargon, Pragmatism. And what kind of person hails a Supreme Court decision as "protecting our core values" -- as Obama said of Boumediene -- only to then turn around and make a complete mockery of that ruling by insisting that the Cherished, Sacred Rights it recognized are purely a function of where the President orders a detainee-carrying military plane to land?

 

 

I bet Dick Cheney is behind the whole thing.