At the height of its operation, the terror detention camp at Guantánamo was viewed as a legal black hole, a place where Al Qaeda suspects could be held and questioned beyond the glare of judicial scrutiny. President Obama has made the closing of the detention facility a priority. But as Guantánamo is being drawn down, large-scale construction is under way at a US military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan.
After the Supreme Court's 2004 decision, the Bush administration stopped sending detainees to Guantánamo and instead routed them to Bagram, where they were held and interrogated without judicial scrutiny. But thanks to new litigation, the same fundamental question is being asked about Bagram: Are detainees in a U.S. military prison overseas entitled to any legal rights?
The current case being argued in the U.S. District Court involves four prisoners captured outside of Afghanistan, taken to Bagram and held there without due process for over six years. The Obama administration faced a February 20 deadline to alter the Bush administration's position on the case. But in a stunning move, Obama's Justice Department said that it would stick with Bush's point of view-- that the men had no right to challenge their detention in a U.S. court.
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