US Court Weighs Rights of Detainees in Afghanistan

[tekisui]

Source: The National (UAE)

WASHINGTON // The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit in the American capital will hear oral arguments today in the case of three men seeking to challenge their detention at the US-run prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, proceedings that could have far-reaching implications for the detention policies of the Obama administration.

A three-judge panel will ultimately decide whether the detainees, two Yemenis and a Tunisian who have been in custody for more than six years without trial, can pursue their cases in US civilian courts. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration, has argued that US courts have no jurisdiction over non-US citizens being held in a foreign war zone.

The International Justice Network, a human rights organisation in New York that represents the three detainees, contends that the men should be afforded the same right to trial that the US Supreme Court granted to detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2008. In that landmark case, Boumediene v Bush, the justices narrowly ruled that detainees at the prison in Cuba have the right to challenge their detention – a right known as habeas corpus – which is guaranteed to US citizens by the US Constitution.

Hope Metcalf, a lawyer for the IJN who has worked on the case of the three Bagram detainees, said: "The Supreme Court has already told us that the executive must not be allowed to turn the constitution on and off at will.

"This case addresses whether or not the Obama administration can continue Bush-era policies of detaining people indefinitely and incommunicado.”

more: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100107/FOREIGN/701069814/1002/NEWS

[Solly Mack]

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