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Professor Barbara Olshansky is quoted In ABC Radio Australia in an article about a US judge's ruling that detainees held held at an American military base in Bagram, Afghanistan can challenge their detention in a US court:
Now a federal judge in the US has ruled that some of these foreign prisoners, who have never been charged, can challenge their detention in an American court.
Professor Barbara Olshansky represents three of the foreign detainees at Bagram; two men from Yemen and one from Tunisia.
They were captured by US forces in Thailand, Pakistan and Dubai, and it was their case that prompted this ruling from the US judge.
Professor Olshansky has welcomed the ruling.
"For us that means the door is open to helping everybody who is in there," she said.
"It doesn't mean everyone gets released. It means everyone gets a fair shot at determining whether their detention is valid."
...
Professor Olshansky says the ruling is both a blow and a blessing for the Obama administration.
"What this does is, in a way, I think is make it easier for them to work with us to find a solution to it," she said.
"It is a way for us to sit down and deal with it."
She says she wants to see the Bagram Airbase prison closed down, just as the Obama administration has promised to close down Guantanamo Bay.
"I think if we are fighting - whatever we're calling it - this campaign against terrorism, and we're on somebody else's sovereign territory, we have no right to detain people there," she said.