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No Charges but US May Never Release Guantánamo Chinese
Seventeen Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantánamo Bay will be informed on Monday that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.
No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations.
The men's lawyer, Sabin Willett, is flying to Guantánamo Bay this weekend to break the news to the men, who are members of the Uighur ethnic group seeking autonomy from China. In a blunt and angry letter to justice department lawyers, Willett spelled out what he thought of the way the men had been treated.
"After years of stalling and staying and appellate gamesmanship, you pleaded no contest - they are not enemy combatants," Willett has written. "You have never charged them with any crime."
Last month a federal judge ruled that the men should be freed. "They were on freedom's doorstep," said Willett. "The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran refugee services and the Uighur families and Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them." However, the justice department appealed against the ruling and Willett claims this will put the men into a potentially endless limbo.
Yesterday Willett said his clients were "saddened" by the latest events. The men, who are Muslims, were in Afghanistan in 2001 and were captured by Pakistani troops and handed over to the US. So far, more than 100 countries have been asked to take them as refugees but none have agreed. Willett blamed US authorities for incorrectly describing them as terrorists.
According to the US justice department, the men "are linked to an organisation that the state department has labelled to be a terrorist entity, and it is beside the point that the organisation is not 'a threat to us' because the law excluding members of such groups does not require such proof."
Willett is also angry the defence department will not agree to let him meet his clients unless they are chained to the floor. He called for this restriction to be lifted: "Just permit these men one shred of human dignity." He added: "Americans are not supposed to treat enemy prisoners of war this way under the service field manuals, or the Geneva conventions - if anyone paid attention to the field manuals or the Geneva conventions anymore."
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24 Comments so far
Show All"Justice department"... an oxymoron
The "Justice department" may not be just, but it isn't an oxymoron. Google "oxymoron and you'll find definitions and examples of the word.
A hypocritical farce. How's that :)
:::::::::::sigh:::::::::::
whats this world coming to?
more accurately...
what is america coming to?
When you offer bounties for "terrrorists", you end up with a lot of bar-room sweeps and general riff-raff.
.Not to mention those who were business rivals or settling old feuds....
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
Perhaps a presidental parden - if we ever replace our sadistic dictator with a human being.
a pardon implies that these men have done something wrong.
yet they have never been charged with a crime and even an american judge says they should be released.
Welcome to the brave new world of Bush Amerika--home of the fascist police-state and land of opportunists.
the united states has been a "fascist police-state and land of opportunists" since well before Bush became prez. the only difference now is Bush does it openly and shamelessly. i would say teddy roosevelt was one of the early proponents of american empire and the use of military force to promote american interests. ironically, in 1906, he won the nobel peace prize- the first american to win a nobel in any category.
.Any American citizen connected in any way to this absolute travesty of justice, including our President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense et al should be themselves stripped of their citizenship and jailed. This demonstrates an absolute arrogance and a complete ignorance of what our founders intended and makes me so very angry.
It is easy to say what I might do if I were assigned to Guantanemo one might think, but I cannot believe for one moment that I would not accept court martial, prison and dishonorable discharge rather than participate in such as this.
.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
more of their arrogance, which magoo will further encourage. move now, americans, or move never.
Why would they need a "Presidential Pardon". They are innocent victims of the arrogance of these United States of America. USA is the world's largest terrorist state and rogue nation. All of those involved in this unwarranted imprisonment should be taken before the International Court for trial. I pray that our new president will have a modicum of mercy and release these innocent people to those who would help them to begin to heal from the years of unwarranted imprisonment.
Obama has said repeatedly that he'd close Guantanamo. For example: http://www.barackobama.com/2008/03/19/remarks_of_senator_barack_obam_55.php.
If this man becomes president, what he does about Guantanamo will make an excellent litmus test. Will he stick to his promise or will he pull a Bill Clinton and find some way to weasel out of it, perhaps moving all these poor souls to some other gulag?
It sounds like those reading this article are as upset as I am about the crimes my government has committed against these folks. Whoever becomes the next president, we should all send letters demanding that the prisoners be freed and restitution made, including the right to stay in the US if there's no other country they can go to.
No one can treat their *Fellow Human Beings* in this way, and think they will escape the *higher* justice, --(aka: karma).
And no one can treat their fellow human beings in this way, and pretend for one second that they are anything remotely resembling 'Christian'
-or be sane adherents of any other proper religion or sound philosophy come to that.
--> A thousand insults heaped upon a million and more injuries: the pernicious fools whose reign is now ending in America are, -I'm sure- destined for the most terrible hells imaginable.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap" says one religion's tome. So for those 'Bleeders of the Free World' (sic) there's one mammoth harvest coming up.
-I assume that'll come with copious helpings of purgatorial 'freedom fries' ...
Hopefully, when and if George goes, these unfortunate people will be released.
Gitmo has been mentioned in my latest post "DUMBFUCK" which is an eulogy for Bush.
Don't miss it! Where?
www.dangerouscreation.com
Paul Siemering
The story of these Uighurs has been a tragic farce from the beginning.
It also exposes the real insanity of the "enemy combatant" pronouncements.
this thing has been with us for seven years, and it needs to be stopped.
Also it only appears in its stork madness in a case like this where they have been freed and stay in prison, but hese unfortunate men are but a small fraction of illegal detentions. The U.S. is ho;ing anywhere between 30 and 60 thousand prisoners in its vast international gulag. Obama will need to do a lot more than close Gitmo= he's gotta shut down the whole gulag. if there is no other country that will take them, then they will have to stay here, and since we brought them here chained bound and gagged, the Injustice Department has no moral ground for forbidding them to stay, if that's what they want.
I must add for the benefit of other posters that this is not about christianity or any other faith. It's about behaving like human beings.
Finally this is a very special case because they are technically citizens of China- reluctant ones, separatists and china under bush's post 9/11 rules has pronounced them terrorists, and won't take them back. most of our prisoners will be welcomed back in their homelands, in the event that humanity should finally return to our country
This story is typical. It is old. It happens all the time. Our government has always maintained a bunch of "excludables" prisons where one way or another they torture innocent human beings for years and years. "Excludable" human rights refugees have no rights whatsoever in the United States, and our government bureaucracy works through Democratic and Republican regimes to keep it that way.
In the 1980s they had a windowless two room pen in a basement in New York City. They kept 100 prisoners in there. The guards would quit from the constant screaming of prisoners. The place had a bare bulb light on 24 hours, so there was no sense of day or night in the place. Into this pit, men often didn't have a soul who would speak their own language. Nor were there any lawyers or visitors. However, some men were free labor to wash the warden's car. There was a similar "excludables" room at a coast guard station in Boston.
Unofficial INS policy was that if they lost a political refugee's file in the judicial system for several years, he could be tortured into signing a waiver and could be sent back to his home country to his death.
All the more reason to remove pro war neo/con/HAWK controlled people from power. As one other poster use to say VOTE AMERICA FIRST AND ONLY. If the person dosen't put America first on all levels to all questions don't vote for them. Clean up GOV this election.
Do you mean to tell me that these seventeen men have not been caught bombing civilians
like John McCain was and they have been in a POW camp longer than John McCain?
Such war heros should be running for president and not this Goldwater clone.
Holding tens of thousands of innocent people in deplorable conditions reminds me of the Nazi's but most Americans ignore these injustices.
According to Robert McNamara America killed 3.4 million in SE Asia and the most reliable sources says that America has killed over a million in the Middle East. Most Americans ignore these massive injustice as well.
For more about the real America go to the book -
www.amoralamerica.info
free download
Just as in the crusades, you Anglo "christians" kill more, rape more, pillage and destroy more than all "heathen" religeons combined.
Your arrogant, sorry asses are going to have to answer for a shmitload of rotting bodies when your Christ does pop in for a local chit-chat.
INCLUDING "our boys" who allowed themselves to be scammed into the slaughter going on now all over the world at the behest of corporatism.
It is simply AWE inspiring, the arrogance you swine have about your god blessing your murderous asses while you murder your way across His planet.