The Moderate Voice applauds weblogs that do original reporting. The reason: weblogs are an incredible opportunity to original reporting as WELL as commentary. And there some do just that.
One blogthat does it on a regular basis is the always-unique The Talking Dog which has run a series of detailed interviews involving issues related to detainees jailed due to charges involving terrorism. TTD’s questions are quite specific (you can tell he does his homework) and to the point. As usual, we’ll give you the intro and one excerpt and encourage you to read the entire piece.
Tina Foster is executive director of the New York-based International Justice Network, a human rights group. Ms. Foster was previously a staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), handling coordination of pro-bono attorneys handling Guantanamo detainee cases. Prior to that, she was an associate at the New York office of the Clifford Chance law firm, where she worked on Guantanamo detainee cases pro bono. On May 16, 2007, I had the privilege of interviewing her. What follows are my interview notes, corrected as appropriate by Ms. Foster.
An excerpt:
The Talking Dog: Let me interject, and ask, whether or not the government has asserted that the Eisentrager case effectively controls the issue (barring court jurisdiction), how would you overcome such an argument?
Tina Foster: The Eisentrager case dealt with prisoners who were already tried and convicted of crimes under military proceedings, albeit possibly irregular ones. Now, the United States government argues that no law applies to prisoners, at all… it can simply make all laws go away, because we are now in a super-special, unique “war on terror” that is different from all wars that have ever been.
Well, the government cannot have it both ways, arguing on the one hand that we are not in a traditional war, so that they don’t have to be bound by the laws of war, but then we are in a “war on terrorâ€, and so normal criminal laws don’t apply either. But this is precisely what the government has been doing.
Getting back to Bagram, that facility is not a detention facility for those held who have been proven to be dangerous terrorists, or captured on the battlefield… indeed, one can ask why people would be sent to Bagram from places like Bosnia and Africa– why do it? Those people were obviously not captured “on the battlefield”, but brought to a facility near a war zone! Why? Because, like GTMO, Bagram is used as a facility outside of any law. We say that the Afghans control it, but this is nonsense– the Afghans have no say or control there at all. Like GTMO, we have a lease agreement that gives us total control of the place. Well, if we control the place, then shouldn’t our law apply there?
Of course, the Military Commissions Act purported to overrule the Supreme Court in Hamdan (which found that detainees from the Afghan conflict were still entitled to Geneva Convention protections) by denying the rights of anyone to assert Geneva Convention rights in court proceedings. Certainly, the government’s legal position is that no law applies, and indeed, the government can do what it wants, up to and including killing people there, torturing people to death (as has been documented on more than one occasion), without any remedy at all. Indeed, with no lawful means of redress whatsoever. And so the question is asked in the rest of the world– and especially in the Arab and Muslim world– if the United States takes away lawful means of redress… just what do we have left?
Specifically in our case, in the government’s motion to dismiss, it has asserted all sorts of new facts that aren’t in our petition. This will open the door to a possible factual dispute, which may require discovery, i.e., keeping the cases going. My Bagram cases– unlike the GTMO cases– are not stayed.
As to the big picture, people in the Middle East are certainly aware that the CIA kidnaps people, but this had been a dirty little secret and key word “little”. It is no longer– some estimates are that as many as 15,000 people have found their way into American custody in foreign locations intended to be beyond any law. And now, our government actually argues in court that this is all perfectly legal!
Before the “War on Terror”, none of us were under the impression that this “never happened”– but it was quiet– and relatively rare. Now it is huge, and the government tries to defend it, as lawful, and just. Indeed, we have evolved (if you can call it that) to the point where we talk about torture and indefinite detention without charge or trial as if they are necessary and essential elements of our security.
Read it all.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.