US air base in Bagram, Afghanistan. (c) Digital Globe 2009. Screenshot taken from Google Earth

Detainees held in the U.S. military detention center at Bagram Air Base are in the middle of a conundrum over their legal rights. Human rights campaigners argue that the prisoners should be provided with the same rights as those being held in the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The United States military, however, argues that they deserve different treatment since they are held in a  current war zone. In Bagram, detainees are informed about the reason for their arrest, and are offered the ability to defend themselves without outside legal counsel at six-month military review sessions.

To protest their lack of legal representation, the detainees themselves have begun protesting, refusing privileges such as recreation time and family visits in order to obtain access to lawyers or independent reviews. The prisoners further refuse to leave their cells to shower or exercise.  The prison wide protest started on July 1 and only became public recently through the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The U.S. detention facility in Bagram is even more closed off to the public than Guantanmo Bay. The Washington Post has more background information on the expanding detention facility.

Jacki Mowery contributed to this post

By Lillian Tan, Corporate Action Network Intern

Their operations are vast and war zone contractors are likely here to stay, as Suzanne Simons writes in her CNN International article. Her article is a comprehensive piece that places emphasis on one of the more salient issues regarding private military and security companies (PMSCs) or contractors: lack of regulation, oversight, and accountability. The PMSC industry has grown rapidly since the war on terror and continues to play an integral role in the conflict in Afghanistan under the Obama administration, but the US government, as reported by the CWC in its Interim Report, lacks resources to manage the industry that it has come to depend on like a crutch.

Since 2001, Congress has appropriated about $830 billion to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over that period, America’s reliance on contractors has grown to unprecedented proportions to support logistics, security, and reconstruction efforts related to those operations. More than 240,000 contractor employees—about 80 percent of them foreign nationals—now work in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting the Department of Defense. Additional contractor employees support the Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

-Executive Summary, June 2009 Interim Report from the Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC)

The result from the combination of a growing military industry and weak government regulation and oversight is a culture of impunity and lack of accountability for the many human rights abuses committed by PMSCs. Yes, five Blackwater guards will be tried in February 2010 for opening fire and killing civilians in Nisour Square and yes, a private civil lawsuit was filed against Blackwater contractor Andrew J. Moonen for killing one of the Iraqi Vice President’s bodyguards in Baghdad’s green zone. However, let us also keep in mind not only how long it took for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to act in the first case, but also the fact that numerous cases of detainee abuse committed by PMSC personnel have gone unprosecuted. In February 2008, Amnesty found out through Senator Durbin’s inquiry to the DOJ that 24 cases of detainee abuse were transferred to the Eastern District of Virginia; 22 of the 24 were dismissed and 2 are pending. Our efforts to find out why these cases were dismissed or unresolved were fruitless.

:: :: Ask the Justice Dept why it is not Prosecuting Torture. :: ::

The industry cannot be expected to regulate itself and a government that is increasingly outsourcing its operations needs to ensure that it has the mechanisms to regulate PMSCs’ activities and hold the companies accountable for their actions (and not reward them with more contracts). Doug Brooks of the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA) stated that PMSCs are here to stay and that it’s about time we made it work but after the recent completion of a twelfth version of IPOA’s Code of Conduct, the trade association still has not made it work. Essentially, the Code is ineffectual. For starters, there are no guidelines detailing what compliance with its standards entails; companies do not have to show that they are operationalizing the Code to IPOA or any third-party monitor; and there are no requirements for public reporting on company efforts to adhere to the Code.

This is why the U.S. government will have to move beyond the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) to create a new body of legislation that will hold all U.S. government contractors working overseas accountable – irrespective of which government agency employs them – if they commit human rights violations.

For more information on PMSCs, visit www.aiusa.org/pmscs and read CorpWatch’s investigative report on intelligence contracting Outsourcing Intelligence in Iraq.

By Cheney that is.

Last Friday, the Obama administration turned to the “dark-side” yet again, and appealed a district court ruling that would give detainees in Afghanistan a chance to challenge their detention before a judge.

The Justice Department also went on to ask the judge to halt proceedings on three other habeas corpus cases.

This wasn’t the first time we’d seen this from the Obama administration. Back in February, the Justice Department announced it would no longer use the term “enemy combatant”, which sounds great!, until you hear the part about them saying that despite this change, they still have the authority to detain suspects indefinitely, without charge or trial.

Sounds like Cheney to me.

And get this, the detainees represented in this most recent case weren’t captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. They were Yemenis and Tunisians the U.S. government decided might be a threat for whatever unknown reason, and locked them away for six years without any charges.

The judge, John Bates, said:

It is one thing to detain those captured on the surrounding battlefield at a place like Bagram, which respondents correctly maintain is in a theater of war. It is quite another thing to apprehend people in foreign countries — far from any Afghan battlefield — and then bring them to a theater of war, where the Constitution arguable may not reach. Such rendition resurrects the same specter of limitless Executive power the Supreme Court sought to guard against in Boumediene — the concern that the Executive could move detainees physically beyond the reach of the Constitution and detain them indefinitely

That’s coming from a judge who Glenn Greenwald notes:

is an appointee of George W. Bush, a former Whitewater prosecutor, and a very pro-executive-power judge.

And that Boumediene Supreme Court ruling he references? Listen to what Obama had to say about that before he was president:

Today’s Supreme Court decision ensures that we can protect our nation and bring terrorists to justice, while also protecting our core values. The Court’s decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration’s attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo – yet another failed policy supported by John McCain. This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. Our courts have employed habeas corpus with rigor and fairness for more than two centuries, and we must continue to do so as we defend the freedom that violent extremists seek to destroy.

Right. So, what happened to Barack Obama? Why does that phrase “absolute power corrupts absolutely” keep ringing in our heads? The only way we’re going to banish the forces of the “dark-side”, as Cheney likes to call them, is by holding everyone responsible for unleashing said forces accountable.

Accountability means no one is above the law. President. Republican. Democrat. It doesn’t matter.

Spain is doing just that, moving ahead with indictments for six former Bush staff.

Greenwald argues Spain not only has the right to do this, but actually has an obligation under the Convention Against Torture and Geneva Conventions. And more importantly, the primary responsibility under these international laws to prosecute lie with the country whose officials authorized the crimes.

Why does it feel like Obama will fight to hold onto that “limitless Executive power” every step of the way? Could there be any clearer a reason why this nation must move forward with an independent commission of inquiry? (you can tell Congress to do just that here)

Judge John Bates took a stand for human rights and common sense when he ruled yesterday that foreign prisoners held in the U.S. prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan who had been brought there from outside Afghanistan may challenge their continued detention in the U.S. courts.

The petition before the U.S. District Court had been brought by four inmates at Bagram seeking to extend the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision, that recognized habeas corpus rights for detainees at Guantanamo, to detention facilities in Afghanistan.

The four inmates include Amin al-Balri, a Yemeni national, who was detained in Thailand; Redha Al-Najar, a Tunisian, who was detained in Pakistan; Fadi al Maqaleh, a Yemeni national, who was detained in an undisclosed location outside Afghan borders; and Haji Wazir, an Afghan national, who was apprehended in Dubai.

Judge Bates noted that three of the four petitioners had no connection with Afghanistan prior to their transfer to Bagram. He added that although practical obstacles existed in resolving a detainee’s right to habeas corpus in a war zone, these obstacles were of the U.S. government’s choosing since it had opted to render them to this location:

“It is one thing to detain those captured on the surrounding battlefield at a place like Bagram, which respondents correctly maintain is in a theater of war. It is quite another thing to apprehend people in foreign countries – far from any Afghan battlefield – and then bring them to a theater of war, where the Constitution arguably may not reach.”

Applying the functional, multi-factor, detainee-by-detainee test mandated by the Supreme Court in its Boumediene decision, Judge Bates upheld the habeas rights of all but Haji Wazir. Disappointingly, the judge held that as an Afghan national, even one apprehended outside the country, Wazir could legitimately be held as an enemy combatant.

However, the process used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan for determining whether an individual can be classified as an enemy combatant was also criticized, with Judge Bates labeling it “inadequate” for the task at hand and even less thorough than the discredited Combatant Status Review Tribunals established in Guantanamo.

Although Judge Bates did not seek to expand the scope of his ruling beyond the petition before him, it can nevertheless be seen as a body blow to the global war doctrine previously espoused by the Bush administration.

If the judgment stands, individuals detained outside a military theater – for example, the fictional terrorist financier in the Philippines posited by Senator Lindsay Graham during Solicitor-General Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearing – should henceforth be destined for the criminal justice system rather than a prisoner of war camp.

Furthermore, an unsubstantiated accusation will no longer be enough to condemn such a detainee to endless years in limbo. Thursday was not just a good day for the Constitution of the United States, it was a red letter day for the Magna Carta as well!