Posted on 12/14/2005 9:15:15 AM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - A federal judge is considering ordering the release of two Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay, which would be an unprecedented step in the legal battles surrounding the Bush administration's treatment of detainees. U.S. District Judge James Robertson raised the possibility, eight months after the U.S. military found the two men were not enemy combatants.
A Justice Department lawyer told the judge at a hearing this week that the Bush administration is still trying to find a country that will take the ethnic Uighurs, who say they fear torture or death if they are returned to China. The Uighurs are Turkic-speaking Muslims in western China, who have a language and culture distinct from the majority Chinese.
"We are going nuts here. Why are we still here? What kind of law exists in America to allow this to happen?" court papers in the case quote one of the detainees as saying.
Abu Bakker Qassim and A'Del Abdu al-Hakim receive treatment that is similar to that of other detainees who are deemed terrorist suspects, according to court papers filed by their lawyers, who are challenging the four-year confinement of the two men.
Robertson referred to the option of ordering the release of the two men at a hearing Monday, a step that would undoubtedly prompt an appeal by the government. The judge also raised the possibility of bringing the two to his courtroom for a hearing, which also would be an unprecedented step in the legal battles over detainees.
"It's inconceivable that the government doesn't have the diplomatic wherewithal to solve this problem if it wanted to solve it," Susan Baker Manning, an attorney for the two men, said Tuesday.
Baker Manning speculated that the U.S. government is refusing to grant the two asylum in the United States either because of concern over relations with the government of China or for domestic political reasons.
The Bush administration opposes a request that the two detainees meet with a representative of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights as a move toward resettlement in another country. The request lacks "any conceivable legal basis" because access to a military base is within the powers granted to both Congress and the president, the Justice Department said in court papers.
The two were captured in Pakistan as they fled a Taliban military training camp near Tora Bora, Afghanistan in 2001. They say they are deeply opposed to the government of China and have no animosity toward the United States.
Hakim has said representatives of the Chinese government tried to interrogate him at Guantanamo Bay, telling him that he was lucky the Pakistanis had turned him over to the Americans rather than the Chinese.
Last year, Robertson said the Bush administration's system of military commission trials for terror suspects from Guantanamo Bay is unlawful, and that the defendants' status as enemy combatants must first be determined by a competent tribunal. That issue is now before the Supreme Court.
Musrums?
Like a tribal joker from rural China would ever ask a question like this on his own.
This is the major news here.
Why on this Earth would we be allowing Chinese communists to go to Gitmo and interrorgate prisoners there?
Hand him over to the Chinese. They know how to handle Islamic radicals.
The title is misleading but what else is new with the MSM.
You funny!
LOL!!
I say put 'em back in Pakistan cause you know the press/lawyers are working up to gumption to ask to let them stay in the US.
Why don't we return them to where they were found in Pakistan?
Someone more familiar with the legal system needs to check this but I believe the military reports to the President and not the Judicial branch. The judges can rule all they want but actually directing the military to comply is at the discretion of the President.
We shouldn't. But I have no problem with releasing them to the Chinese government. Chinese Western Muslims have been a problem for China for many, many years.
This story is confusing.
We're considering asylum for two Islamic radicals caught opposing U.S. troops in Afghanistan, because they need protection from China?
That's like giving the Bali bombers asylum because Indonesia hgave them a death penalty.
I say turn them over to the Chinese, who will promptly blindfold them and shoot 'em in the head.
A little free trade. We should give them back to the ChiCom's. If we trade with them they can't be all bad...
If we are still holding them, presumably we have so reason to do so, since it's not cheap to keep prisoners in that style.
The issue is not whether we should release them to China--which would hardly make much sense--but whether a civilian judge should be interfering in military matters. There are many earlier SCOTUS precedents saying that judges should keep out of military concerns unless there are really exceptional reasons to argue otherwise. In this case, a judge has no business meddling that I can see.
They were training with the Taliban. They were at Tora Bora. They are Islamists.
So would it be moral to provide asylum to - say - Aussie-hating, "American-loving" Islamists simply because they allegedly posed no specific threat to the U.S., even though they definitely do to Australia?
Of course not. We'd return such people right to Australia.
Yes, China can and will execute them as Islamist terrorists, which is what they are. That's not our problem.
Huh? It "hardly makes sense" to return Islamist radicals and terrorists to their country of origin, simply because we know their treatment will be harsh?
Sorry, that's what makes no sense. I can't see that China's approach would be any different than that of Saudi, Jordan, or the UAE.
Problem in that they were against the communists taking over their country, and casuing famine and jailing, murdering and torturing. The communists did this to every sector they took over.
The Uighurs just wanted to continue in their trading ways.
The Chinese government has been honding the Bush administration to hand them over for years and the administration has steadfastly refused. That should tell you something.
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