“We know that the CIA was holding "ghost prisoners" -- prisoners held in secret, hidden from the Red Cross -- at a secret facility called the "Salt Pit" in Afghanistan. She notes that the administration has never renounced the CIA's illegal secret detention and interrogation program that President Bush revealed in September 2006. She adds concern that Special Operations forces may not be following Department of Defense directives on the registration of prisoners.
According to Shamsi, “It is clear that another lesson from the torture scandal seems to have been ignored: different rules for different agencies and different prisoners are an invitation to abuse.”
The situation at Bagram has been largely overshadowed by the continuing controversy surrounding Guantanamo. Just last week, a U.S. appeals court ruled that four former Guantanamo prisoners, all British citizens, have no right to sue top Pentagon officials and military officers for torture, abuse and violations of their religious rights. The four who brought the lawsuit were released from Guantanamo in 2004 after being held for more than two years. The suit sought $10 million in damages and named then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 10 military commanders.
The men claimed they were subjected to various forms of torture, harassed as they practiced their religion and forced to shave their religious beards. In one instance, a guard threw a Koran in a toilet bucket, according to the lawsuit.
The appeals court cited a lack of jurisdiction over the lawsuit, ruled the defendants enjoyed qualified immunity for acts taken within the scope of their government jobs and held the religious right law did not apply to the detainees.
Eric Lewis, the attorney who argued the case for the detainees, vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when a court finds that torture is all in a days' work for the secretary of defense and senior generals," Lewis said.
Another attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, expressed disappointment that the appeals court failed to hold "Rumsfeld and the chain of command accountable for torture at Guantanamo."
Guantanamo and Bagram have been virtually ignored by candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination. One exception is former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who acknowledged that Guantanamo has become a damaging symbol for the United States and is "not in our best interests."
President Bush has said he would like to close Guantanamo, but has taken no action to do so. In June 2007, Bush's former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "If it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo -- not tomorrow, this afternoon," explaining that "we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open." And Defense Secretary Robert Gates has reportedly pushed to close the facility because he felt the detention facility had "become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate."
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