In Courts, Afghanistan Air Base May Become Next Guantanamo

Military officials would not say whether people arrested in other countries are housed at Bagram. But they said they regularly review each detainee's status, release those who are no longer thought to be combatants and turn others over to Afghan authorities.

Haji Wazir, whose federal lawsuit was filed in 2006, has been held as an enemy combatant since 2002, according to lawyers and human rights activists. But he "is not a commander, not a member of the Taliban or al-Qaeda," said Lal Gul, chairman of the Afghan Human Rights Organization. "He is a businessman."

Gul also complained about the arrest of Ahmad, whose bosses say they are frustrated that he has not had his day in court.

"We have been told nothing about him," said Robert Hurst, president of CTV News, who spent several days with Ahmad in 2006 while visiting Afghanistan. "When we ask, we are told we don't have the right to even ask that question. . . . Our reporters felt very secure around him. He is an excellent young journalist."

Legal experts say they are not sure how the courts will treat the lawsuits. The Supreme Court's majority opinion in the Guantanamo cases, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, focused only on detainees held at the naval base in Cuba. In it, Kennedy took pains to examine the particular circumstances surrounding the detentions, according to David Cole, a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Among the factors that tilted the ruling in favor of the detainees: The government had complete control over Guantanamo, the detainees had been held for years without trial, and the prison was not near a battlefield.

Lawyers may be successful in applying similar tests to those being held elsewhere, Cole said.

"Bagram will be the next battleground," he said. "Kennedy's decision in Boumediene leaves open the question as to what other places the writ of habeas corpus extends."

Other legal scholars said they think the courts will be reluctant to grant Bagram detainees such hearings, because the prison is in an area that the U.S. military considers a war zone.

Kennedy alluded to that issue when he wrote that "if the detention facility were located in an active theater of war, arguments that issuing the writ would be 'impracticable or anomalous' would have more weight."

"It seems unlikely that the conditions there are comparable to the conditions" at Guantanamo Bay, said Jonathan Siegel, a law professor at George Washington University.

But Siegel added that Kennedy and other justices "expressed impatience with the notion that the United States can hold people indefinitely without charge."