The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed the first legal challenge to the new Military Commissions Act passed by Congress last week. The legal group has filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of 25 detainees held at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan. The petition demands that the men be released or be charged with a crime. Some of the detainees have been held for years without ever receiving a hearing. Under the new bill — prisoners have no right to challenge their detention. On Monday, Bill Goodman, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, warned about the dangers of the new law.

• Bill Goodman: “No one can be held indefinitely, and if they are, they have a right to go in front of a magistrate or a judge and demand that the judge make a determination as to whether they’re charged with a crime and whether there’s any real evidence to hold them. And if there is not, the magistrate, the judge, can order the king, the police, the FBI, or anyone, or George W. Bush, the President of the United States, to let him go. That’s what habeas corpus is. Without it, we are virtually slaves to a police state.”

Bill Goodman spoke last night in New York at a rally sponsored by the group World Can’t Wait. On Thursday, World Can’t Wait is organizing emergency protests in over 170 towns and cities to condemn the government’s sanctioning of torture.