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.
Obama’s Gitmo?
“We’re talking about the exact same situation as Guantanamo,” said Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, which is representing the four detainees in conjunction with law clinics from Stanford and Yale law schools. “People are removed from whatever country or jurisdiction they happen to be in and taken to a place for the purpose of evading any legal requirements or obligations.”