And justice for.....

Monday, May 24, 2010

I missed this last week, but the Obama justice department won a victory in their battle to prevent detainees from accessing the US courts and getting some semblance of due process. From the article:

But a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously that the three had no right to habeas corpus hearings, in which judges would review evidence against them and could order their release. The court reasoned that Bagram was on the sovereign territory of another government and emphasized the “pragmatic obstacles” of giving hearings to detainees “in an active theater of war.”


Greenwald had this to say:

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." In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo. Since then, detainees have won 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.


I am disappointed. Obama has done some really good things, but I really thought these policies would be curtailed or discontinued. I didn't expect this.

3 comments:

Mr Furious 11:03 PM  

So is the idea here that Bagram is "in theater" and therefore not subject to the same law as Gitmo?

In other words, Obama is creating and running his own Camp X-Ray, it's just not in Cuba?

My list of disappointments is growing longer and faster than I thought it would.

Noah 1:29 PM  

This is singularly terrible. If nothing else...I at least wanted the rule of law to stand now. Guess not.

Monk-in-Training 8:53 PM  

This is an extremely distressing issue, that I can not understand why Pres. Obama continues. I would even say disgraceful.

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