Interview with Tina Foster

The Talking Dog has another excellent interview, this time with Tina Foster who represented Guantánamo prisoners pro bono at Clifford Chance and later at CCR.

Foster is now the director of the International Justice Network. She has filed a habeas petition for a Yemeni held at the Bagram Air Base, citing his rights established by Rasul. The government has moved to dismiss, arguing that the Military Commissions Act strips the courts of any jurisdiction. However, since nobody at Bagram has ever been designated an "enemy combatant" through a Guantánamo-style Combatant Status Review Tribunal process, Foster can maintain that the MCA does not apply.

But now...

almost as if by magic, the military announced, two days before a court deadline on this issue, that it has established new CSRT-like proceedings (none of which involve the detainee even present, of course), but that this somehow satisfies the prerequisites for depriving the court of jurisdiction.

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