Outrageous! Men Held at Guantánamo Months After Deemed Innocent

[NVMojo]

It doesn't stop with this administration, does it??

August 17, 2005

After determining two members of a Chinese ethnic minority were never “enemy combatants,” Washington refuses to set them free, possibly as a favor to China as it wages a campaign against the men’s people back home.

Aug 17 - In late March, the US government declared that two detainees held at the Guantánamo detention center -- A'del Abdu Al-Hakim and Abu Bakker Qassim -- are not enemy combatants and hence are under no suspicion of any activities related to terrorism. But no one told the men, US courts, their family or their lawyers, and months later they are still in detention, held in harsh conditions without telephone access and sometimes chained to the floor, according to their lawyers.

Lawyers working pro bono with the Center for Constitutional Rights only found out about the March 26 decision clearing the two men of suspicion on July 30, and quickly began working to secure their release. In a hearing before US District Court Judge James Robertson on August 1, attorneys asked that the men be released from the detention facilities immediately and relocated to more humane living conditions.

The lawyers are not, however, asking that the men be returned to China, where they are from. Al-Hakim and Qassim are ethnic Uighurs, a mostly-Muslim group of about 12 million living in the sparsely populated northwest part of China. For the past few decades they have suffered intense persecution from the Chinese government, which bans teaching their language and clamps down on expressions of Uighur political power and culture, including the lively dances and music for which they are famous.

more...

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?items=2236&printmode=true

[redqueen]

1. Think CNN will cover this story?

I don't think I'll hold my breath.

:grr:

[Igel]

4. Actually, NPR covered it a couple of weeks ago.

Not a short 20-second story, either.

Presumably we should return them to where they were picked up; but Afghanistan doesn't want them.

Then we should return them to their home country. But they don't want that: they know they'd be dumped in a Chinese jail. The Han aren't hons when it comes to minority rights; never have been.

They're not on US soil, and nobody (apart maybe from them, I don't know) wants them released in their backyard in the US. And if they wound up doing something bad, I wouldn't want to have the political fallout hit near me.

They're in limbo. Find them cushy digs in Guantanamo and hope the situation improves.

[redqueen]

5. Thanks... good to know.

What a sorry state of affairs.

[craychek]

2. We live in an increasing facist country now...

[NVMojo]

3. yep, just waiting for it to spill over locally ...on the soil of the USA