Court OKs indefinite detention in Afghanistan

NY Times:

A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that three men who have been detained by the United States military for years without trial in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their imprisonment in American courts. The ruling was a broad victory for the Obama administration in its efforts to hold terrorism suspects overseas for indefinite periods without judicial oversight.

In a 26-page panel opinion reversing a lower court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled that three detainees at the military prison at Bagram air base have no right to hearings in which judges would review the evidence against them and could order their release.

The three detainees, two Yemenis and a Tunisian who say they were captured outside Afghanistan, contend that they are not terrorists and are being imprisoned by mistake. But the court said they were not entitled to habeas corpus hearings, citing the fact that Bagram is on the sovereign territory of another government and emphasizing the “pragmatic obstacles” of giving hearings to detainees “in an active theater of war.”

The ruling dealt a severe blow to wider efforts by lawyers to extend a landmark 2008 Supreme Court ruling granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lower-court judge had previously ruled that these Bagram detainees were entitled to the same rights, although the courts have found that others captured in Afghanistan and held there were not.

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This is a blow to those who want to practice lawfare against our war effort. For that reason it is a very important decision and not just a win for the administration, but for our overall war effort. If the decision survives contact with the Supreme Court it will mark a place where enemy combatants can be held without judicial interference. I think that will ultimately be a good thing. There will be fewer distractions to our effort to interrogate and gather intelligence on enemy activities.