Eyebrows being raised on US Bagram base as new

WASHINGTON: President Obama's promise to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in some six months has drawn intense criticism from the right. Now human rights groups are taking aim at another U.S.-operated detention center: Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan. Some activists and legal analysts have begun to ask whether Bagram is "the new Guantanamo." The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday asked the Obama administration to release some documents about the more than 600 prisoners at Bagram. Melissa Goodman, the lead ACLU attorney on the case, describes the request as "basic information about who they're detaining, how long they've been there, where they were actually captured, and what their nationalities are." That list is almost identical to the information human rights groups demanded from the Bush administration about detainees at Guantanamo seven years ago. In addition, the ACLU's Bagram lawsuit seeks details about the administration's rules for transfers, prisoner treatment and other records. The Supreme Court has recently decided three Guantanamo cases..>>>