Skip to main content

Obama Echoes Bush Policy on Detainee Access to Courts -- News from Antiwar.com

Obama Echoes Bush Policy on Detainee Access to Courts -- News from Antiwar.com: "Following one of former President Bush’s key policies, the Obama Administration is contesting the federal ruling from earlier this month which granted some of the detainees held by the United States in Afghanistan certain legal rights, in particular habeas corpus.

The administration intends to argue that giving US-held detainees the right to challenge the legitimacy of their open-ended detentions would “inhibit the future capture of Pakistani citizens for detention by US forces in Afghanistan.”

The Bush Administration argued that foreign prisoners held by the US military had absolutely no legal rights, and could be held indefinitely without charges or access to courts. While the Obama Administration has said it intends to abandon the unpopular detention center at Guantanamo Bay at some point, the appeal makes it clear that President Obama intends to continue the detentions, just in a less public environment."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Broken Spring?       : Information Clearing House

Broken Spring?       : Information Clearing House This is a sequel to my June 2011 article, ‘After the spring’, on the upheavals in the Arab world. It is an article that has been painful to write, because it brings bad tidings and offers a pessimistic analysis of the upheavals, at least in the short term, in a number of Arab countries. The outcomes and potential outcomes of these uprisings have also acquired new, very significant dimensions. These include a complex entanglement with the accelerated preparations for a possible attack on Iran, and a poisonous, sectarian aspect that could have the consequence of ripping Syria and the Middle East apart.

Scoop: Ethiopia: Gov't Prepares Assault On Civil Society

Scoop: Ethiopia: Gov't Prepares Assault On Civil Society (New York, July 1, 2008) - Ethiopia's government should immediately abandon plans to impose strict government controls and draconian criminal penalties on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said today. The two groups called on donor governments, whose behind-the-scenes efforts to see the bill reformed appear to have failed, to speak out publicly against the de facto criminalization of most of the human rights, rule of law and peace-building work currently being carried out in Ethiopia.