Obama sides with Bush on Bagram detainees

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration says it will maintain its predecessor's stance on denying U.S. constitutional rights to terror detainees held in Afghanistan.
The U.S. Justice Department, in a court filing made Friday in Washington, says it will adhere to the policies of the Bush administration when it comes to granting rights to terrorism suspects being held without charges at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, CNN reported.
Five Bagram detainees are suing the United States, seeking the same rights to challenge their detentions as the U.S. Supreme Court last year granted to such "illegal combatants" being held at the U.S. military
prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Human rights advocates were hoping that the Obama administration would move to apply the Supreme Court ruling to the Afghan prisoners. But in its Friday filing, the administration said, "Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position," CNN reported.
Jack Balkin, a Yale Law School professor, said it was too early to tell what the Obama administration would end up doing with the detainees at Bagram. He said some observers believed that the Obama team would end up making a major change in policy but simply needed more time to come up with it, while others believed that the administration had decided "to err on the side of doing things more like the Bush administration did, as opposed to really rethinking and reorienting everything" about the detention policies it inherited because it had too many other problems to deal with.
"It may take some time before we see exactly what is going on " whether this is just a transitory policy or whether this is really their policy: 'No to Guantnamo, but we can just create Guantnamo in some other place,' " Balkin said.
After becoming president last month, Obama issued orders requiring strict adherence to antitorture rules and shuttering the Guantnamo prison within a year. He also ordered a review of whether conditions there meet the standards of humane treatment required by the Geneva Conventions, and a review of what could be done with each of the 245 detainees who remain at the prison.
On Friday, government officials said that a Pentagon official had completed the Guantnamo report, concluding that the site complies with the Geneva Conventions' requirements for humane treatment " including procedures for force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike by strapping them down and inserting a nasal tube, a practice prisoners' lawyers have denounced. The report does recommend that some prisoners be given greater human contact, however.