Terrorists Getting New Rights

The taliban, al qaeda and jihadis the world over must be laughing their asses off just about now. President hussein obama is granting new rights to terrorist prisoners being held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. Someone needs to tell these crazies in this administration that American constitutional rights do not apply to foreigners waging war against us and captured on foreign battlefields, no less. It applies to American citizens accused of crimes on American soil. Why do we send soldiers to fight abroad and then hinder their efforts? All the gains that were made in the war on islamic terrorism by the Bush administration are now being undermined by these leftist nuts in the White House. They are going back to treating islamic terrorism as a law enforcement issue rather than treating it as a war being waged against us, which it is. The perverse policies of granting rights to terrorists while investigating our own CIA officers makes it clear that this administration represents a clear and present danger to America. Isn't there grounds for impeachment here? This feels like some orwellian nightmare.

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is preparing new rules that would give hundreds of prisoners being held by the U.S. military in Afghanistan the right to challenge their detentions, according to published reports.

The guidelines would for the first time allow about 600 prisoners held at an American-run prison at the Bagram Air Base to call witnesses and submit evidence in their defense, The Washington Post and New York Times reported in stories Saturday on the Web.

The guidelines came to light as the Obama administration is reviewing Bush-era detention policies and determining where to make changes.

The proposed rules were given to Congress in mid-July for a 60 day review and were expected to be made public this week.

Under the rules, prisoners would have military-assigned representatives charged with gathering evidence and calling witnesses on their behalf. That process is similar to the one used for detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Unlike those prisoners, the Bagram detainees have had no means to challenge their detentions — some of which have stretched for years — or to hear allegations against them.

Prisoners at Bagram have been refusing privileges like recreation time and family visits arranged by the International Committee of the Red Cross to protest their lack of legal rights since July, according to U.S. military and humanitarian officials.

Human rights campaigners have argued that the prisoners should be given the same rights as those at Guantanamo, but the U.S. military argues that Bagram detainees should be treated differently because they are being held in an active theater of war.

Their status is the subject of lawsuits in the United States. A federal judge ruled in April that several Bagram detainees have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts, and the Obama administration has asked a federal appeals court to overturn the decision.

Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at City University of New York and attorney for one of those Bagram detainees, said the move is just "window dressing."

"The whole thing was meant to pull the wool over the eyes of the judicial system," he told The Associated Press late Saturday, responding to the news reports. "These changes don't come anywhere near an adequate substitute for a real review."

Kassem said the changes appear to amount to a review by a military representative assigned to a detainee. The representative would not be bound by confidentality, thus making this system similar to one already rejected by the Supreme Court in 2008.

"These improvements are really just smoke and mirrors," Kassem said.

Kassem represents Amin al Bakri, a Yemeni national who was taken to Bagram after being detained in Thailand in 2002.

Efforts to get responses from administration and military officials were unsuccessful late Saturday.

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Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek and Lara Jakes contributed to this story.