|
Afghanistan: Rights group criticises US for 'unlawful detentions'
You just knew this was coming ...(AKI) - As the United States revealed plans for a 60 million dollar expansion of its prison at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan's northeast, it faced renewed criticism from rights group Amnesty International about what it called "unlawful detentions". The US is reported to have imprisoned at least 600 suspected enemy combatants at Bagram. Plans to increase the size of the prison were revealed as Robert Gates, US defence secretary, was preparing to announce changes with respect to its use of Bagram and other facilities, including Guantanamo Bay, on Friday. Gates and US attorney-general Eric Holder have been carrying out a review to determine the fate of detainees held at the US facilities. US president Barack Obama has been widely praised for moving to shut down the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, within days of taking office last month. But with his move to send 17,000 more US troops to Afghanistan to strengthen US operations and counter a resurgent Taliban, the Bagram prison may become even more important in 2009. Amnesty International is urging President Obama and his administration to discontinue what it calls the "unlawful detention policies" of the Bush administration and ensure that detainees held at Bagram have access to US courts so they may challenge their detentions. See? Pretty soon every terrorist in the world will have access to US courts. Amnesty released a briefing paper on Thursday entitled, USA: Out of sight, out of mind, out of court? The right of Bagram detainees to judicial review, which the organisation sent to the new US administration. "Judicial review is a basic safeguard against executive abuse and a protection against arbitrary and secret detention, torture and other ill-treatment and unlawful transfers from one country or government to another," Amnesty's briefing paper said. "In the absence of judicial oversight, detainees in Bagram, as at Guantanamo, have been subjected to just such abuses. Even children have not been spared." Posted by: Fred 2009-02-21 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=263100 |