U.S. to Give Afghan Detainees More Rights

President Obama is readying plans that will allow hundreds of prisoners in Afghanistan to begin challenging their detention, possibly as soon as this week, according to reports.

The new system will assign a military official to each of about 600 prisoners, most of whom are being held at Bagram Air Base. The official could then gather exculpatory evidence and call witnesses before a board that has the power to decide whether the detainees should be held by U.S. or Afghan officials or be released, according to reports by The New York Times and The Washington Post. Some prisoners have been held without charge for as long as six years at Bagram, and the jail itself has become a major source of resentment against Americans. The new detainee policies would represent the first substantial shift in approach in Afghanistan since President Obama took office.

But human rights groups say they are not sure the new measures go far enough, especially since the officials who will represent prisoners will not be lawyers.

The official could then gather exculpatory evidence and call witnesses ...

Who will the witnesses be? My money will be on his relatives and friends - and all will say he never held a weapon in his life and was loyal to the government. Heck, his whole tribe will back him.

Since when did an allied foreign force (not being an occupying power) have the right to determine the conditions under which a people may be incarcerated within a sovereign state?

The US is acting as an occupying power, not a visiting force to a sovereign country.

The visiting forces agreement ought to have spoken to this issue and ought to have required that detainees be handed over to Afghan authorities to be dealt with under Afghan law.

There is a practical need to detain Afghans during an engagement, especially Afghan males of combat age, but once the situation has been stabilized the Afghans ought to be released or, if they are suspected to be insurgents, handed over to the sovereign Afghan authority. In neither case is any judicial or quasi-judicial proceeding needed on the part of the visiting force. Determination of whether or not a suspected insurgent is an actual insurgent is an exercise of sovereignty. Holding judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings by a visiting force is a usurpation of sovereignty that is proper only if the visiting force is an occupying power.

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