The prisoners of Bagram

While the war in Afghanistan and how to solve it is all over the media and everybody is offering different points of view to avoid another Vietnam quagmire, very few, from the American government on, talk or even think about the infamous Bagram military prison in the middle of the Afghan country. Shortly after his inauguration US President Barack Obama spoke out against prisoner abuse ordering the CIA to give up its secret prisons and also ordered the closing of the Guantanamo detention center. He said that there should be no torture, no more secret kidnappings, no renditions. Those were his promises. He did not mention Bagram in his speeches.
And yet that military prison which holds more than 600 people without charge, in the words of Stuart Couch, a military prosecutor who was given access to both facilities, makes Guantanamo look like a “nice hotel.” Attorney Tina Foster has worked with Bagram cases since 2005. In April this year, after she filed habeas corpus petitions for three Bagram inmates -two Yemenis ans a Tunisian- a judge ruled in her favor arguing that her three clients had not been captured in battle in Afghanistan. In fact they were taken to Bagram from a third country and therefore they had rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. Last week, the US Justice Department challenged the decision and argued that as a military prison in a combat zone Bagram constituted a special case. So what is going to happen with those prisoners? Are they going to vanish forever? Tina Foster gave an interview to the German magazine Spiegel during which she said: “There is absolutely no difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration’s position with respect to Bagram detainees’ rights.”
That is not what was expected when the Bush administration left Washington and the Obama one took place…