Detainee Abuse Heard in Court!

Oh. In Pakistan.

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Seven men detained by Pakistan's spy agency, the ISI, appeared in court Monday in a landmark case that places one of the nation's most powerful institutions under the scrutiny of its highest court.

The men -- who appeared to be in pain and poor health -- hobbled into the courthouse, surrounded by dozens of armed police officers and family members. Several of the detainees covered their faces. At least two carried urine drainage bags in their hands.

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A lawyer representing Basit and the six others detainees argues that they were arrested without due process and injured while in Inter-Services Intelligence custody since 2010.

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ISI attorney Raja Muhammad Irshad offered an explanation for the detainees' condition. "You can imagine, when somebody is in custody or jail, you can't have the facilities you have at home," he told CNN after Monday's hearing.

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Pakistan's Supreme Court ordered the government to give each detainee a medical exam and report the results in four days. The court also ordered the spy agency to produce all documents related to the detention of the men by the first week of March.

Monday's hearing came after the court gave the spy agency a deadline to bring the detainees to court.

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The ISI has also been ordered to explain the deaths of four other detainees.

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The men were initially arrested in 2007 and 2008 and accused of being suspects in militant attacks targeting army bases. They were acquitted and freed in 2010, then detained again by ISI.

The ISI's attorney has said all 11 detainees -- the seven who remain in custody and four who died -- were detained legally under the Army Act, a law that says the army can detain men on suspicions of terrorism or if they are deemed to be a danger to the state.

The Supreme Court case breaks new ground in that the ISI has long been thought untouchable. Legal proceedings in the nation's highest civilian court could expose the inner workings of the secretive agency like never before. Few people have ever challenged the ISI, Pakistan's most feared and shadowy institution. The spy agency has been accused of backing and toppling politicians, using militant groups as proxies and backing extrajudicial killings.

  

So, it looks like we could simply exchange the letters CIA for ISI in this story and still be accurate with one exception: the CIA would never have to explain itself in an American court. There will be no day in court for American detainees. 

It is virtually impossible to imagine the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the CIA to disclose documents about its treatment of detainees or, even more unrealistically, to permit the victims of CIA abuse to have their grievances heard in court. Anyone who doubts that can simply review the past decade of full-scale immunity bestowed by the Justice Department and subservient American federal courts on all executive agencies in the War on Terror. We should think about that the next time some American pundit, politician, or media figure righteously holds forth on how undemocratic and oppressive is Pakistan as opposed to the U.S.

Oh, no. Let's don't.

Speaking of American justice and Pakistan, Eric Lewis has an Op-Ed in today’s New York Times – under the headline: “Britain Shouldn’t Aid A Lawless America” — detailing the plight of two Pakistani rice merchants who were detained by British forces in Iraq 2004 when they were on a business trip to Iran, then turned over to the U.S. and shipped to Bagram, where they have been held for the last seven years without charges of any kind. Since then, the two nations have played a shell game as the men’s relatives try to secure their release, with the British government insisting to British courts that they can do nothing because they’re in American custody, while the American government argues to its courts (thus far successfully) that the men have no legal rights because they are being held “in a war zone” (which they were taken to by the U.S.). For an appreciation of the lowly depths to which American justice has sunk, that Op-Ed is worth reading.