www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/21/bagram/index.html 

Obama wins the right to detain people with no habeas review

BY GLENN GREENWALD

Reuters/Jonathon Burch

A detainee holding cell is pictured at the detention centre at the U.S. Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul.

(updated below - Update II)

Few issues highlight Barack Obama's extreme hypocrisy the way that Bagram does. As everyone knows, one of George Bush’s most extreme policies was abducting people from all over the world -- far away from any battlefield -- and then detaining them at Guantanamo with no legal rights of any kind, not even the most minimal right to a habeas review in a federal court.  Back in the day, this was called "Bush's legal black hole."  In 2006, Congress codified that policy by enacting the Military Commissions Act, but in 2008, the Supreme Court, in Boumediene v. Bush, ruled that provision unconstitutional, holding that the Constitution grants habeas corpus rights even to foreign nationals held at Guantanamo.  Since then, detainees havewon 35 out of 48 habeas hearings brought pursuant to Boumediene, on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to justify their detention.

Press release

Subject: Justice for Mounir el Motassadeq
From: International Committee "Justice for Mounir"
Date and time: September 8th, 2009, 8.00 GMT

The Committee for Mounir is pleased to announce today the launching of an international campaign on behalf of Mounir el Motassadeq, a Moroccan student who has been sentenced by a Hamburg court in 2007 to 15 years in prison. He is the only person world-wide currently imprisoned for allegedly assisting others in the preparation of the mass murder of September 11, 2001.

The Committee notes that El Motassadeq was convicted and sentenced on the base of extremely flimsy evidence, demands the reopening of his case, and is convinced that an impartial court would determine his innocence and that of his friends, Mohamed Atta, Marwan Al Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, with regard to the events of September 11, 2001.