Now that Iraq, with Syria, is once again a theater of war – though undeclared as such by Congress USUS military officers are sounding alarms over the absence of clear rules surrounding detentions policy, particularly for long-term detentions and interrogations.
Such a detention could be preferable to facing a scandal or a public trial over their misdemeanours, and the secrecy that surrounded detention at the Bastille allowed personal and family reputations to be quietly protected.
The British police say they are investigating allegations surrounding the detention of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee, Binyam Mohamed.
But what many Australian journalists have been experiencing is a steady decline in press freedom surrounding immigration detention reporting.
The director of legal advocacy with the Human Rights Law Centre, Daniel Webb, said the secrecy surrounding offshore detention was "excessive, self-serving and undemocratic".
He added: "The embassy, in a very combative manner, insisted on giving us more details on the circumstances surrounding her detention.
But Labor frontbencher Kim Carr said the opposition was determined to improve accountability and transparency and had always opposed the "excessive secrecy" surrounding immigration detention.
The case of Sayed Abdellatif, abundantly detailed in Guardian Australia reports by Ben Doherty and Sarah Malik, reveals not only the appalling circumstances surrounding the detention of this refugee and his family, but the equally appalling inability of the law to remedy what is clearly an injustice.
In another case stemming from the terrorist attacks, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., today untangled some of the procedural morass surrounding the detention of Yasser Esam Hamdi, the Louisiana-born prisoner from Afghanistan being held in a naval brig.
BBC News explores the issues and politics surrounding the detention of suspects at the US facility in Cuba.
