AFGHANISTAN: Seven years after CIA abduction, prisoner still held without charge

Seven years after being abducted from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, by the CIA and shipped to the U.S. air base in Bagram, Afghanistan, Haji Pacha Wazir was hoping he would finally be free.

The Afghan government had cleared him for release, and a recent court ruling allowed him to petition his case in a U.S. federal court.

But Wazir's petition was dismissed based on "lack of jurisdiction," despite the fact that Wazir, an Afghan national, has been in the sole custody of the U.S. government since his arrest, according to the nonprofit organization representing him.

Now, the International Justice Network, which also represents a number of other detainees, has announced that it will appeal Wazir's case.

"Unlike our Yemeni and Tunisian clients whose cases were not dismissed, Mr. Wazir is being denied fundamental legal and human rights based on his Afghan citizenship," the group's executive director, Tina Monshipour Foster, said in a statement released Thursday. "We will ask the Court of Appeals to remedy the obvious injustice of denying Afghan nationals the same rights afforded other foreign nationals at Bagram." More