{"id":20905,"date":"2013-08-05T07:15:05","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T15:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=20905"},"modified":"2013-08-05T07:15:05","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T15:15:05","slug":"obama-indefinitely-detains-not-just-at-gitmo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/05\/obama-indefinitely-detains-not-just-at-gitmo\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Indefinitely Detains, Not Just at Gitmo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-20283\" alt=\"000_was444195.si\" src=\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/000_was444195.si_-e1375715673168.jpg\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2013\/08\/04\/gitmo-chief-detainees-shouldve-been-pows\/\">news today<\/a>\u00a0is that\u00a0Guantanamo Bay\u2019s head jailor William Lietzau, &#8220;in charge of the indefinite detention of a lot of people long-since cleared for release,&#8221; writes Jason Ditz, has condemned the lack of due process, saying we should &#8220;have called them prisoners of war from the beginning,&#8221; charged them, and given them trials.<\/p>\n<p>The debate about Gitmo hasn&#8217;t changed since the early years of the Bush administration. Despite it&#8217;s public pronouncements, the Obama administration seems to have settled on keeping the detention center open and upholding indefinite detention as a staple of the war on terror. But Gitmo isn&#8217;t the only issue here.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S.-controlled prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan is nicknamed, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/in-afghanistan-a-second-guantanamo\/2013\/08\/04\/e33e8658-f53e-11e2-81fa-8e83b3864c36_story.html\"><em>The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0\u201cThe Second Guantanamo.\u201d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The United States holds 67 non-Afghan prisoners there, including some described as hardened al-Qaeda operatives seized from around the world in the months after the Sept.\u00a011, 2001, attacks. More than a decade later, they\u2019re still kept in the shadowy facility at Bagram air base outside Kabul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In a 2011 interview, an attorney for Human Rights First Daphne Eviatar <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/8301-18563_162-57323856\/bagram-the-other-guantanamo\/\">told CBS<\/a>\u00a0of Bagram: \u201cIt\u2019s worse than Guantanamo, because there are fewer rights.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Last year, the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2012\/03\/09\/us-agrees-to-give-kabul-control-of-prisons\/\">U.S. gave in to demands<\/a>\u00a0from Afghan President Hamid Karzai to give full control of the approximately 3,000 inmates in Bagram detention center to the Afghan government as part of the transition to withdraw most U.S. troops from the country in 2014. The Obama administration ended up quibbling over a small portion of the detainees, insisting on continued U.S. control.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the detainess kept there by the U.S. have not been charged or tried, and many have been severely abused.\u00a0In 2012, an Afghan investigative commission<a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2012\/01\/07\/afghan-commission-accuses-us-of-detainee-abuse\/\">\u00a0accused the American military of abusing detainees in the Bagram prison<\/a>\u00a0facilities, prompting Karzai\u2019s push on the issue.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cContrary to the Obama administration\u2019s stated goals of increasing Afghan sovereignty and strengthening the rule of law in Afghanistan,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ijnetwork.org\/bagram-detainees-and-torture-victims-human-rights-projects-48\/266-afghanistan-secretly-adopts-an-indefinite-detention-regime-at-the-behest-of-the-us-government\">said Tina M. Foster<\/a>, Executive Director of the International Justice Network, \u201cthis aspect of the transition will leave a dangerous legacy of unchecked and limitless power in the hands of whoever takes control of the country long after coalition forces have withdrawn.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe power to detain perceived enemies of the state indefinitely and without trial will not only lead to more arbitrary arrests and human rights abuses,\u201d Foster added, \u201cbut will continue to fuel the insurgency for years to come \u2013 it is a great victory for the Taliban and a great loss for the Afghan people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In 2008, the Supreme Court <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Boumediene_v._Bush\">ruled<\/a> that denying the right of habeas corpus to Gitmo detainees was unconstitutional. In response, the U.S. government provided not actual trials but\u00a0habeas corpus review. Despite many detainees being cleared for release in this process, Obama still insists on caging them. Now, scores of inmates are starving themselves in protest of their mistreatment, only to be force-fed by guards, which is a form of torture.<\/p>\n<p>This sorry existence probably pales in comparison to that endured by detainees in U.S. custody in Bagram. Somehow, we hardly hear anything about the Obama administration&#8217;s policies in The Second\u00a0Guantanamo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The\u00a0news today\u00a0is that\u00a0Guantanamo Bay\u2019s head jailor William Lietzau, &#8220;in charge of the indefinite detention of a lot of people long-since cleared for release,&#8221; writes Jason Ditz, has condemned the lack of due process, saying we should &#8220;have called them prisoners of war from the beginning,&#8221; charged them, and given them trials. The debate about Gitmo [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-20905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20905"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20906,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20905\/revisions\/20906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20905"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=20905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}