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Obama to Support Bagram Expansion

By possum

In news of the weekend comes the story of a late Friday Justice Department announcement about Bagram Air Base and the detainees at the site.

In a two-sentence filing late Friday, the Justice Department said that the new administration had reviewed its position in a case brought by prisoners at the United States Air Force base at Bagram, just north of the Afghan capital. The Obama team determined that the Bush policy was correct: such prisoners cannot sue for their release.

The Bush administration had argued that federal courts have no jurisdiction to hear such a case because the prisoners are noncitizens being held in the course of military operations outside the United States.

Now it would appear the Obama administration will continue that argument and leave the detainees without legal representation.  The same argument was rejected by SCOTUS when Guantanamo Bay was the site.  The court saw the unique location and history of Guantanamo in a different light.

In addition to administration approval of ongoing use of Bagram as a detention center

The air base is about to undergo a $60m (?42m) expansion that will double its size, meaning it can house five times as many prisoners as remain at Guantanamo.

Apart from staff at the International Red Cross, human rights groups and journalists have been barred from Bagram, where former prisoners say they were tortured by being shackled to the ceiling of isolation cells and deprived of sleep.

Binyam Mohamed, expected to be released today, is one detainee who passed through the Bagram detention center.  The Justice Department argues Bagram is a special circumstance due to its location in a theater of war.

The administration is weighing the likely increase in prisoners from an expanded fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, against the international perception that it is embedding extra-judicial detention into its policies for years to come.

By supporting the ongoing detentions at Bagram President Obama

agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed "Obama's Guantanamo".

The sound of war drums in the distance is growing more and more loud and near by the day as these bits of news continue to see the light of day.

Peace.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 23, 2009 (boomark / email).