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Morning Edition's Dina Temple-Raston interviews Visiting Professor Barbara Olshansky, who directs the International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) and who presented arguments in a hearing before Judge John D. Bates in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on whether detainees in at Bagram Prison have the right to challenge their indefinite detention by the U.S. Government in an Article III Court based on the Supreme Court's ruling in Boumediene, which extended the writ of habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees.
The IHRC is acting as co-counsel with the International Justice Network to represent plaintiffs Fadi Al Maqaleh, Haji Wazir and Redha Al Najar.
Morning Edition reports:
The Supreme Court ruled in June that detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had the constitutional right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. On Wednesday, a federal judge will begin exploring whether detainees at a military prison in Afghanistan have that same right.
The prison at the center of the case is Bagram Air Base, and the question is whether the Supreme Court ruling that gave Guantanamo prisoners habeas corpus rights extends to other terrorism suspects. Legal experts say the case's outcome will likely hinge on whether the judge sees Bagram as a prison like Guantanamo or as a battlefield detention facility in a war zone.
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"Bagram is probably more like Guantanamo than Guantanamo was," says Barbara Oshansky, one of the defense attorneys in the case. She is representing four Bagram detainees who have been held for six years without charge and are challenging their detention there. "This is the last vestige, we hope, of a policy that tries to lock people away without charge or trial forever."