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Obama Administration Adopts Bush Policy on Rendition of Detainees to Bagram |
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IJNetwork Press Release (html)
Obama Administration Corrected Motion for Appeal (pdf)
Statement of Tina Monshipour Foster, Executive Director of IJNetwork, in response to the Obama Administation's
decision to appeal last week's ruling by a federal court judge that
several detainees held in the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan have
the right to challenge the legality of their detention in U.S. courts:
The Justice Department's announcement today that it intends to ignore
the court's ruling and continue
the Bush administration's policy of denying any semblance of due
process to civilians held in U.S. custody for more than 6 years
represents a particularly dark day in
American history. Last January, we watched in awe as President Obama
was sworn in with a solemn promise to close
the prison at Guantanamo Bay and to recommit our nation to the rule of
law and the international obligations that the prior administration had
willfully disregarded.
Today, we must express our serious dismay, as President Obama
disregards the law, tosses aside people's human rights, and wields an
illegitimate power to seize citizens of other nations from anywhere in
the world, render them to foreign countries against their will,
interrogate them indefinitely without charge, and deny them access to
lawyers or any court of law. Though he has made many promises
regarding the need for our country to rejoin the world community of
nations, by filing this appeal, President Obama has taken on the
defense of one of the Bush administration's unlawful policies founded
on nothing more than the idea that might makes right. In what now must
be considered his own policy on detention and rendition, President
Obama follows directly in the footsteps of his predecessor in claiming
the right to assert unconstitutional and unchecked powers.
The time has long since passed for issuing platitudes about ending
torture, rendition, and indefinite detention . President Obama today
becomes complicit in the unjust and illegal detention of our clients --
who deserve better.
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