First off, they might be some of my distant kinsmen.
Second off, the Bush bastards haven't proven that they did anything wrong and the Uighurs have been damned rotting in jail for some six years now, due to the bastard Bush administration.
Third off, you Bush bastards! Give me back my damned Constitution and my Bill of Rights, you thieving, lying bastards. All of you! Your damned mothers were all whores!
On Tuesday, October 7:
October 8, 2008
Judge Orders 17 Detainees at Guantánamo Freed
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to release 17 detainees at Guantánamo Bay by the end of the week, the first such ruling in nearly seven years of legal disputes over the administration’s detention policies.
The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court, ordered that the 17 men be brought to his courtroom on Friday from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where they have been held since 2002. He indicated that he would release the men, members of the restive Uighur Muslim minority in western China, into the care of supporters in the United States, initially in the Washington area.
"I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for detention," Judge Urbina said....
http://www.nytimes.com/...
That was then.
The Bush White House panicked and the Justice Department, surrogate of the Bush administration, rushed a down-to-the wire effort to stop the release of the men from the ethnic Uighur minority by seeking an emergency delay of the ruling. If the court had refused to act, the Bush administration had threatened to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese-born Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a day after a landmark decision required them to be shipped to the U.S.
The move Wednesday night by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sets the stage for a protracted court battle over the fate of the men, who've been held for nearly seven years despite being cleared for release by the U.S. military. Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina had ordered the Bush administration to transfer the men to the U.S. by Friday.
.... In a three-paragraph order, the circuit court agreed to hear the Justice Department's arguments that they be permitted to appeal, but noted the purpose of their order was to give themselves "sufficient opportunity" to make a decision and "should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion."
This case is another one of several rights' cases involving the issue of Habeas Corpus overseen by the Center for Constitutional Rights:
"Seventeen men were told yesterday that they were going to be released after nearly seven years of wrongful detention," said Emi MacLean, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the representation of detainees including the Uighurs. "Now, they have to be told that their detention will continue to be indefinite."
Additional judicial scrutiny may force the Bush administration to to disclose its evidence and publicly reveal how detainees were treated throughout their imprisonment.
The Washington Post cautiously editorializes:
17 Detainees: A federal judge overreached in an effort to free Chinese Uighurs from an unjustified legal limbo.
Thursday, October 9, 2008; A20
AFEDERAL APPEALS court intervened yesterday to block one judge's precipitous decision to order the release of 17 Chinese Uighurs held for years at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Issuing the emergency stay was the right thing to do, but not because the Uighurs don't deserve their freedom.
There is no question that these men should have been freed long ago. As the U.S. government has acknowledged, the Uighurs were not enemy combatants intent on doing harm to the United States or its interests. The focus of their enmity was their home country of China, which has a long and despicable history of oppressing Uighurs -- though that does not justify the terrorism some militants have embraced. As early as 2003, U.S. military personnel concluded that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo were attractive candidates for release, yet they have languished at the camp because they could not be returned to China for fear of retribution. Albania accepted five Uighurs in 2006, but no other country has followed suit, in part because of Chinese threats of retaliation. We urged President Bush to grant asylum to some of these men; had he done so, he could have avoided this judicial intervention....
Everyone involved in the matter agrees that the United States has no rational justification for continuing to hold the Uighurs. Where there is stark disagreement is over whether a federal judge has the legal authority to order their release into the United States. Judge Urbina may ultimately be proved right, but his decision is legally untested and has the potential to affect future administrations, with unforeseen consequences. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was correct to put Judge Urbina's decision on hold, as the Justice Department had asked.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
The Uighurs cannot possibly return to China. For some reason, the Bush administration considers them far too dangerous to release into the United States.
My God! When Bushies are already tracking and watching millions of Americans and have oodles and oodles of detention space stateside to hold people in -- like multitudes of pigs in multitudes of pens, when they have executive orders to declare marital law and millions of dollars in lucrative contracts with Blackwater for U.S. people control, when the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team has been deployed stateside to be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army component of Northern Command (NorthCom), these soldiers could be called upon for a variety of tasks, including quelling "civil unrest," and are, in the meantime, engaged in training with shields and batons, beanbag bullets, and Tasers. Geeze! With all this backup what's 17 more individuals? Even if they are Uighurs?