Despite 10 years of occupation and untold millions of dollars spent on rebuilding Afghanistan’s broken judicial and criminal justice system, the Afghan courts are “still too weak,” The Washington Post reported on Aug. 12, for the United States to relinquish its...
Concerns Grow over Bagram’s Prison within a Prison
The administration of President Barack Obama is considering using Afghanistan's U.S.-run Bagram Air Base prison to indefinitely detain terrorism suspects captured far from a battlefield and who have not been charged with a crime -- without any judicial oversight. A...
Rights Groups Condemn Ruling on Bagram Detainees
Human rights advocates are expressing shock at a federal court ruling that detainees held by the United States in Afghanistan do not have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. federal court – and dismay that their path to a successful appeal to the U.S....
US Urged to Probe Alleged ‘Second Prison’ at Bagram
Pressure is mounting on the U.S. government to investigate reports that inmates from the notorious prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan have been moved to a second separate facility -- known as the Tor Jail, which translates as "black jail" -- where they...
JSOC Interests Snag Plan to Free Afghan Detainees
An initiative to revise the procedures for reviewing the cases of detainees in order to free marginal insurgents and innocent Afghans has run afoul of the interests of officers of the powerful Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in defending their role in earlier...
Habeas Challenges for Bagram Prisoners
Four men who have been imprisoned for over a year – some for almost two years – are going to U.S. federal court to challenge their detention at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The men, who their lawyers say have never engaged in hostilities...
Remembering ‘Suicides’ in the Rotunda
In the absence of an intact corpse, families often gather for memorial services rather than funerals. The families of Salah Ahmed al-Salami, Mani Shaman al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal al-Zahrani – three Guantánamo prisoners whose earlier purported suicides were...
US Names Bagram Prisoners, Withholds Details
After years of stonewalling, the U.S. Defense Department has released the names of people imprisoned at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Made available in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the...
Afghan Prisoners Challenge Indefinite Detention
While the unsuccessful attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day captured the headlines and put major political roadblocks in the path of prisoner release from Guantanamo Bay, the courts – far more quietly – continued to play a major...