The following article by William Glaberson reports the release of 17 Guantanamo bay detainees. Federal District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina admirably defends himself against goverment arguments by stating that the American Constitution prohibits imprisonment without charges. This is a step in the right direction, but as detainees are released, many of them have been traumatized by the abusive treatment of their captors. After reading Glaberson’s article, I found myself thinking about the hardships these 17 men endured. How many more innocent people are locked behind bars without charges, and how does this experience impact their lives? These are questions that we must reflect upon since they lead to issues that need to be further examined and discussed.
William Glaberson’s article is posted below. It was originally published at “The New York Times.”
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to immediately release 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held for seven years at Guantánamo Bay, and to allow them to stay in the United States, because they are no longer considered enemy combatants.
The ruling, handed down by Federal District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, marked the first time that any United States court rejected government arguments and ordered the release of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, an American naval base in Cuba, since the detention center there opened in 2002.
Judge Urbina said that the detention of the 17 prisoners — members of the Uighur ethnic group, a restive Muslim minority in western China — was unlawful, noting that the Constitution prohibits indefinite imprisonment without charges.
“I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for the detention,” he said.
The judge ordered the 17 detainees, all of whom are men, brought to his courtroom next Friday, but the government suggested that it would immediately appeal the ruling, and that perhaps immigration officials might detain the men on their arrival in the United States.
The judge reacted angrily, saying he did not want the detainees molested by anyone in the government, in what he called an urgent matter.
“There was a pressing need to have these people, who have been incarcerated for seven years — to have those conditions changed,” Judge Urbina said.
He rejected a request from the Justice Department for a stay of his orders, suggesting that he was impatient with the government. “All of this means more delay,” he said, “and delay is the name of the game up until this point.”
The Uighurs, who were detained in Afghanistan in 2002, say they have never been enemies of the United States. They were cleared of suspicion in 2004, but they have remained in detention because of controversy over where they could go. They say they would be persecuted or killed if they were returned to China, but efforts to find a home for them have been complicated by fears in many countries of diplomatic reprisals from China.
In 2006, Albania gave refuge to five Uighurs from Guantánamo despite protests from the Chinese government. The Bush administration, which has refused to admit the other 17 to the United States, said it had failed to find any other country willing to take them.
On Tuesday, the Chinese government demanded that all Uighurs held at Guantánamo Bay be repatriated to China.
In June, federal appeals judges issued a decision that ridiculed as inadequate the Pentagon’s secret evidence for holding one of the Uighurs, Huzaifa Parhat, a former fruit peddler who said he had gone to Afghanistan to escape China.The government argued that the 17 detainees should be held at Guantánamo Bay until a country could be found for them. In filings, Justice Department lawyers argued that while Judge Urbina could hear the Uighurs’ case, he could not order their release because the judiciary “simply has no authority” to do so.
The Justice Department contended that the government’s executive branch, not the judicial branch, had the authority to conclude military detentions, as it had in previous wars. It noted that in World War II, “no court ever questioned that it was solely for the political branches — not the courts” — to decide how Italian prisoners of war were handled.
P. Sabin Willett, one of the Uighurs’ lawyers, said such claims appeared to be laying the groundwork for government appeals.
When the Supreme Court ruled in June that detainees at Guantánamo Bay had the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the justices said that after more than six years of legal wrangling, the prisoners should have their cases heard quickly, because “the costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody.”
Until now, none of the scores of cases brought by detainees have been resolved by any judge.
Since the Supreme Court issued its ruling, lawyers for most of the 255 detainees in Guantánamo Bay have pressed ahead with habeas corpus petitions, yet most of those cases have been delayed by battles over issues like whether some court sessions will be held in secret, whether detainees can attend them, and what level of proof will justify detention.
Some of the arguments made by the Justice Department appear to challenge the Supreme Court’s conclusion that the federal courts have a role in deciding the fate of the detainees. Officials and lawyers inside and outside of the government say the new legal confrontation suggests that the Bush administration will probably continue its defense of the detention camp until the end of President Bush’s term and that it is not likely to close the camp, as administration officials have said they would like to do.
“The legal issues that are being raised by the administration are going to take longer than the remaining time of the administration” to resolve, said Vijay Padmanabhan, an assistant professor at Cardozo Law School who was until July a State Department lawyer with responsibility for detainee issues.
“It is part of a broader strategy,” Mr. Padmanabhan added, “which is not to make difficult decisions about Guantánamo and leave it to the next president.”
Detainees’ advocates say that the administration is using the legal battle to delay judicial review of its evidence, while government lawyers argue that the cases are moving rapidly considering that they are unprecedented.
A Justice Department spokesman, Erik Ablin, said the government was working toward quick hearings for detainees, but was determined to take every precaution to avoid having dangerous people released. He added that “it is certainly the government’s goal to detain enemy combatants who are deemed a threat to the United States.”
Habeas corpus suits, which have their root in centuries-old English law, are generally streamlined proceedings for prisoners to force officials to explain why the prisoners are being held. The Guantánamo cases permitted by the Supreme Court’s ruling, Boumediene v. Bush, are to allow courts to review the government’s reasons for holding the men as enemy combatants.
The military’s enemy-combatant hearings, which the administration says permit indefinite detention, are separate from the Pentagon’s effort to prosecute some detainees in military commission trials.
I really don’t need to say why this is wrong-we’re all intelligent people and can each list at least 25 reasons why this is wrong. All I’ll say is that if this said “Judaism is from the devil” or if Judaism was replaced with “Hinduism” or “Buddhism”, that sign wouldn’t have a life of more than a few hours, at most. Let’s all contact them one way or another and show them our opposition to this act of hate.
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Bigotry, Islamopobia, Prejudice, Racism | Shawna | 
July 15, 2009 1:08 pm | 
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