Afghan Prison Break

The Wall Street Journal ^ | June 16, 2008 | Unattributed

[gpapa]

The Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that the writ of habeas corpus should apply to non-American terrorist detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Taliban delivered its own commentary on the ruling the very next day, when it busted into a prison in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and freed 1,150 prisoners, of whom 400 are Taliban members and the other 750 easy potential conscripts. Call it habeas corpus, Taliban-style.

The connection between these events is not merely their timing. The point of keeping enemy combatants at a remote location like Guantanamo is that it offers some assurance that they will not return to the battlefield to kill more Americans – something many have done when given the chance. Yet last week's Boumediene decision makes it all but certain that Gitmo will soon be shutting (or should we say opening) its doors.

The High Court's 5-4 decision will also likely bear on the "rights" that captured enemy combatants will now try to claim when detained by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and other theaters in the war on terror. As a result, the U.S. military is likely to transfer an increasing number of captured terrorists to local prison authorities, if only to avoid the endless judicial landmines it can expect trying to win convictions in U.S. court.