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Professor Barbara Olsahnsky is quoted in Common Dreams News Center in a story about four Bagram detainees who filed suit to obtain habeas privileges similar to those found at Guantanamo:
While millions know that the administration of George W. Bush has left Barack Obama with the job of closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, relatively few are aware that the new president will also face a similar but far larger dilemma 7,000 miles away.
That dilemma is what to do with what has become known as "the other GITMO" -- the U.S.-controlled military prison at Bagram Air Base near Kabul in Afghanistan -- and the estimated 600-700 detainees now held there.
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Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that foreign nationals held as terrorism suspects by the U.S. military at Guantanamo have a constitutional right to challenge their captivity in U.S. courts in Washington. Last week, a federal judge began exploring whether this landmark decision also applies to Bagram.
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But lawyers for four Bagram prisoners who have been held in detention since at least 2003 contend that recent Supreme Court Guantanamo decisions also apply to Afghanistan. They are also arguing that another Supreme Court decision -- Munaf v. Geren -- extended habeas rights to a U.S. military facility in Baghdad.
Barbara Olshansky of the Stanford Law School represents three of the four men who brought the court action. She said "there is no more complete analogy or mirror to Guantanamo than this (case)."