WASHINGTON - Civil rights groups in the United States had lauded Tuesday's
Federal Court decision to release 17 Chinese Muslim Uyghurs held without
charges for seven years at the infamous US military detention facility in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Now, it seems they spoke to soon.
The US Court of Appeals on Wednesday issued an emergency stay on the release
order at the request of the George W Bush administration. The White House
claimed the original ruling - the first of its kind - could set a dangerous
precedent. In turn, a three-judge panel said it would postpone release of the
detainees for at least another week to to allow lawyers from both sides to
present further arguments, according to media reports.
Before the reversal, the Federal Court's original ruling had been
welcomed as a rebuke by the federal judiciary against Bush's detention policies
for suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo.
Given by US District Judge Ricardo M Urbina, it called for the government to
end its detention of the Uyghurs, who were arrested in Afghanistan following
the US invasion in 2001. The ruling enabled them to address their status before
US courts in habeas corpus lawsuits, which gives defendants the right to
contest the reason for detention as well as treatment.
"I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of
constitutionality on the reasons for the detention," Urbina said at the time,
contending that the continued detention of the men was no longer lawful since
they lost their status as "enemy combatants".
A federal appeals court ruled in June that the US military had improperly
labeled Huzaifa Parhat, a Chinese Muslim held at Guantanamo Bay, an "enemy
combatant", and ordered that he be released, transferred, or granted a new
hearing.
Nonetheless, Parhat and his 16 fellow Uyghurs have remained behind bars since,
with the issue embroiled in a controversy over where the men should be sent.
The men said they fled from Western China to Afghanistan to escape government
repression, not to fight the US, and because of government pressure they could
face persecution and possibly torture if released to Chinese authorities.
Beijing has demanded that all the Uyghurs held at Guantanamo be repatriated to
China.
Most of the population in China's Xinjiang province, which borders Afghanistan
and central Asia, are Muslim Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, many of whom resent what
they say has been 60 years of repressive communist Chinese rule.
China has claimed Uyghur separatist groups' hand in a series of recent attacks
on police and other security forces, and has been engaged in a vicious
repression campaign against Uyghurs in Xinjiang for years citing the global
"war on terror", according to humans rights groups.
The alleged involvement of the Uyghurs with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement
separatist movement, which Washington claims is linked to al-Qaeda, initially
spurred their detention by the US in Afghanistan. The connection enabled the US
to brand the Uyghurs "enemy combatants", a status it used to detain prisoners
under the authority of the executive branch.
But in the summer case of Parhat, the government conceded that while the
Uyghurs were still designated enemy combatants, they were not considered
significant threats or "to have further intelligence value".
After the court ruled against the administration in that case, the government
decided not to retry Parhat and removed his status as an enemy combatant, and
the last of the Uyghurs were absolved of their "enemy combatant" status in
September.
But despite the Uyghurs not being considered threats or even enemy combatants,
the Justice Department still claims that the Department of Defense as part of
the executive branch - rather than the judiciary - has control over the
detainees.
Tuesday's ruling had given hope to rights groups that the Uyghur would be
released in the US for the hearing before Urbina on Friday. He had announced
his intention to release the detainees to Uyghur families living in the
Washington area, which if successful would have marked the first time that "war
on terror" prisoners detained at the US base were released onto US soil.
"This is a landmark decision that represents a stinging rejection of the Bush
administration's unconstitutional Guantanamo policies. The situation facing the
Uyghurs is a stark reminder of the legal and moral quagmire of
Guantanamo,"Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's
National Security Project, said in a statement.
"The judge was right to rule that this kind of detention is unlawful because
the Constitution prohibits indefinite imprisonment without any charges," he
said.
But some of the rights groups were already cautious of a White House maneuver
such as the blocking order, urging the government to act quickly to release the
Uyghur detainees.
"The government should not drag its feet, but should immediately release these
men from their unlawful confinement at Guantanamo," said the senior
counter-terrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, Jennifer Daskal.
In a release from Amnesty International, the organization said it was
"thrilled" by the ruling, but foresaw that past rulings from federal courts
have fallen on deaf ears within the Bush administration.
"This decision will mean little to the detainees if it is ignored, as other
court opinions have been in practice by the Bush administration," said Larry
Cox, the executive director of Amnesty International USA. "How many times does
the Bush administration need to be told that detainees are entitled to
essential rights?"
Despite pleas and insistence from the rights groups, the US Justice Department
pressed ahead with its plans to block the release order and has welcomed the
appeals court decision.
"We are pleased that the court of appeals granted our request for a temporary
stay, and we look forward to presenting our case," Justice Department spokesman
Brian Roehrkasse said after the appeals court issued its one-page order, the
Associated Press reported.
The Department of Justice had expressed concern in a statement released
Tuesday.
"[A]lthough the United States no longer treats these Uyghurs as 'enemy
combatants' of the United States and has been seeking to transfer them out of
Guantanamo Bay and to appropriate foreign countries willing to accept them, the
government does not believe that it is appropriate to have these foreign
nationals removed from government custody and released into the United States."
Two years ago, five Uyghurs were released from Guantanamo to seek asylum in
Albania. The released Uyghurs now live there in a refugee camp, unable to speak
the language and forbidden to work. Albania has since refused to consider
taking others, in fear of diplomatic repercussions from China.
The US has said it has "heightened" its efforts to find another country to
accept the Uyghurs, and the Bush administration, in the 19-page emergency
blocking request, maintained there would be only "minimal harms" if the
detainees were to stay at Guantanamo a while longer, according to reports.
But Emi MacLean, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights which is
representing many of the detainees, told the news agency that Wednesday's
decision was a major blow. After telling the Uyghurs they would be freed,
lawyers will now have to tell them "their detention is once again indefinite".
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