Court Orders 17 Gitmo Detainees Released
By Steve Hynd Wednesday Oct 08, 2008 12:35pm
After nearly seven years in captivity, seventeen men held at Guantanamo Bay even though the Bush administration admitted they were innocent long ago, were ordered released into the U.S. by a federal court on Tuesday.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has led the way in pressing for legal rights for detainees, reports:
The 17 men currently imprisoned at Guantanamo left China amid increasing political oppression and found their way to Afghanistan, where they lived in small Uighur communities. In late 2001, they were forced to flee the aerial bombardment of the surrounding areas. Eventually, they made their way to Pakistan in the belief that they would be safer there. After crossing into Pakistan, the Uighurs were welcomed and fed by Pakistani villagers who then turned them over for generous bounties offered by the United States.
Last week, after years of litigation, the U.S. government finally conceded that none of these men would be treated as “enemy combatants.” All were cleared for release long ago. However, because of the stigma of their detention at Guantánamo and for fear of offending China, no other country had agreed to offer these men safe haven. Despite this failure to find a third country to take them, the government argued that the court could not release them into the U.S. and, therefore, that the men would have to stay at Guantanamo indefinitely.
It's simply amazing how many detainees at Gitmo - and in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq - were rounded up on the basis of finger-pointing for bounties. It's also simply amazing how little media attention the practice gets, even when it leads to massacres like the recent one of over fifty children in Afghanistan.
Fewer than half of the detainees held at Guantanamo have ever been accused of hostile acts. There rest are almost entirely due to the bounty payment system.
As far as I can figure, the administration believed that releasing these men into the U.S. would establish a prcedent for other detainees found innocent - one the administration didn't like as it would put those released to close the the American public's view and so point up its own illgal acts of rendition, torture and imprisonment without just cause or fair trial.
“In the history of our Republic, the military never imprisoned any man so harshly, and for so long, let alone men who are not the enemy. We have broken faith with the rule of law, and been untrue to the generosity of spirit that is our national character,” said Sabin Willett, Partner at Bingham McCutchen who argued the case for the detainees today.
Update: The federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the 17 mens' release until at least October 16th, to give the Bush administration time to consider an appeal.
The court said the temporary, administrative stay "should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits" of the government's request.
...In seeking a stay, the Justice Department told the appeals court that diplomatic negotiations continued in an effort to find an appropriate country to send the detainees.
"We are pleased that the court of appeals granted our request for a temporary stay, and we look forward to presenting our case," department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.
Scumbags! These 17 people are innocent and they admit it. Why on earth appeal their release unless they're trying to avoid unpleasant spilling of the beans about conditions at Gitmo until after the elections?
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The Bush Administration and all involved should be tried by the International court or handed over to the folks who have committed these crimes for them.
Robert Fisk
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/arti...
Secrets of Iraq's Death Chamber
Prisoners are being summarily executed in the government's high-security detention centre in Baghdad
By Robert Fisk
07/10/08 "The Independent" -- -Like all wars, the dark, untold stories of the Iraqi conflict drain from its shattered landscape like the filthy waters of the Tigris. And still the revelations come.
The Independent has learnt that secret executions are being carried out in the prisons run by Nouri al-Maliki's "democratic" government.
The hangings are carried out regularly – from a wooden gallows in a small, cramped cell – in Saddam Hussein's old intelligence headquarters at Kazimiyah. There is no public record of these killings in what is now called Baghdad's "high-security detention facility" but most of the victims – there have been hundreds since America introduced "democracy" to Iraq – are said to be insurgents, given the same summary justice they mete out to their own captives.
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They are just brown people. I mean it's not like they feel pain or have
families. They are animals, I mean the way they live. And since they
haven't accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior they are damned in
the next life as well. So why should we as clean cut patriotic Americans
not exploit, torture and murders these obviously inferior types?
This country was founded on the murder and exploitation of brown people.
If it was good enough for the founding fathers it was good enough for me!
This is pretty astonishing and urgent as is getting no press coverage. Another related story is emerging:
ACLU: Bush admin tried to create 'Gitmo inside the US'
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/ACLU_Bush_admin...
Also getting little coverage.
The USA will pay a big price for this heinousness in the eyes of the world one day. The Bush era is truly a shameful one.
I'm just waiting for some political opponent of Kennedy or Kerry to finger Massachusetts in exchange for a bounty. The entire state (and much of New England) will be reduced to small chunks of radioactive embers.
Same goes for Babylon-by-the-Bay.
But when these guys run for office...
Can these people not sue? I mean 7 fuckin' years in Guantanamo?
This is a story deserving of a documentary.
I wonder what McSame would say to them...being a prisoner isn't so bad?
What a sad, sad joke the war on terror has been. Get all the wrong people, fumble the ball on the right ones.
Good! Now GITMO will have extra room for Dumbya and his crime partners.
Hopefully that will be the case... and I'd love to see them held there indefinitely. The Bu$h administration is comprised of cronies, crooks and liars, and greedy effing ba$tards who need to feel what they condemned others to experience. Enough already!
Cernig:
Pentagon source: strike killed 30 Afghan civilians
I can't even find words to comment.
I heard about this yesterday on right-wing radio as one of the horrors we are to expect with an Obama presidency!!
Can you imagine?
I'd just like to point out these 17 were held a whole year and a half longer than John McCain was.
And he's turned that into a bid for the presidency...
From my bush day to day calendar and note the date. Five years ago today.
"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers"
-President Bush, some months before the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal broke.
-October 8,2003
There have been articles on how Obama plans on going after "terrorists" in Pakistan if there is actionable intelligence.
This article shows the folly of that. The actionable intelligence we are getting is not very reliable, how is that going to change with a change in POTUS?
This is a condemnation of the shrub's tactics, but let's not pretend that Obama's version will be a whole lot better.
The actionable intelligence on the high flyers isn't any better. 90% of it comes from the ISI, which protects those under its wings and only fingers those it cannot control.
Regards, C
Exactly so. Which implies that new sources of intelligence must be painfully developed and tested for reliability before anything could be called actionable. And I don't mean bounties which don't seem to accomplish much more than faction financing.
Robert Fisk nails it again. This issue is not only shut down in the debates. The MSM and the so called progressive blogosphere does not even discuss how the candidates barely talk about it or just simply pledge allegiance to Israel. So disgusting
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commenta...
Robert Fisk's World: When it comes to Palestine and Israel, the US simply doesn't get it
Biden and Palin hid like rabbits from the centre of the Middle East earthquake
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Palestinians ceased to exist in the United States on Thursday night. Both Joe Biden and Sarah Palin managed to avoid the use of that poisonous word. "Palestine" and "Palestinians" – that most cancerous, slippery, dangerous concept – simply did not exist in the vice-presidential debate. The phrase "Israeli occupation" was mercifully left unused. Neither the words "Jewish colony" nor "Jewish settlement" – not even that cowardly old get-out clause of American journalism, "Jewish neighbourhood" – got a look-in. Nope.
Those bold contenders of the US vice-presidency, so keen to prove their mettle when it comes to "defence", hid like rabbits from the epicentre of the Middle East earthquake: the existence of a Palestinian people. Sure, there was talk of a "two-state" solution, but it would have mystified anyone who didn't understand the region.
Hell
Our mistake, my bad, sorry bout that, I am sure they will have no hard feelings. Who would have foreseen any sort of long term illegal, unwarranted, incarcerations? Walk it off, and carry on they will be OK I am sure.
The government is going to appeal this decision all the way to the Roberts/Scalia Supreme Court. They claim their are 'separation of powers issues,' and that the courts are unduly interfering with the Commander in Chiefs exclusive right to conduct war as he sees fit. Never mind that 1)these detainees have already been admitted by the administration NOT to be enemies of the US and 2)no war has been declared by Congress, as is constitutionally required.
The Republican-appointed justices are committing acts of treason every time they choose loyalty for Bush over the Constitution, IMO. Same goes for the current Attorney General and his two predecessors. Obama should arrest them all and declare them to be enemy combatants on Day One of his tenure - then let them try to argue their way out of jail against there own written opinions.
Then any one who still believes in justice and democracy better hit the streets! Everywhere they are... This corrupt and treasonous government does not deserve to still be sitting, let alone stopping innocent people from being freed.
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where anybody (including America citizens) can be held indefinitely without charges if the President/Imperator labels you an "enemy combatant."
A place where the government can spy on you without probable cause.
A place where the President can ignore checks on his/her power with signing statements.
2 years more experience than McCain. Let's vote for one of them for president!
They conceded that none of the 17 was an enemy combatant?
Nice to have a made up term like “enemy combatant.” Since it’s meaningless, they can assign any meaning they want to it. What did they do, go cell to cell and pick which innocent detainee was and which innocent detainee wasn’t an “enemy combatant”?
The Chimp Admin's legal counsel will state that Gitmo is the private prison of the White House and thus the courts have no legal sway over the detainment of these prisoners. Instead, it'll be Dick Cheney's Fourth Branch of Gov't to decide their fate.
Blackwater is the Chimp's private army.
A criminal state within a state.
Cheers,
Marvin
“In the history of our Republic, the military never imprisoned any man so harshly, and for so long, let alone men who are not the enemy."
The republicans took away all our privacy and nearly all our rights. They took away the basic foundations that made up our country, for centuries. Only corporations, the ones that are making mega-profits, get tax cuts, and not only more rights, but total immunity even. Then, to thank us, the taxpayers, for filling their overflowing pockets, they ELIMINATE OUR JOBS, right here.
Think about it. Your kids recently born and unborn as of yet, have NO RIGHTS, NO JOBS, and NO FREEDOM FROM BEING "BORN", WITHOUT DEBT. Republicans gave us that situation. To believe that anyone would even "think" of wanting any more of the same, makes me think the end times are near.
Who is going to protect us, from them? The ones who are making EVERYTHING, so much WORSE OFF for all of us, everywhere? NO ONE BUT US!
Republicans are the enemy of the USA, and they have made huge strides in recent years. There is no simple band aid anymore, until they themselves are imprisoned for breaking the very laws they gave to us.
Immunity and balance CANNOT be "logically" used in the same sentance.
Since these 17 prisoners, innocent of any wrongdoing, cannot go home, it is time for Americans to take them in and keep them safe, teach them the real spirit of America. If I had the room, I'd offer to take a couple of them in, help them find jobs, comfort them if possible.
we should admit 'em to the us, and go get their whole damn families, too. And set 'em up in (relative) splendor, with training, and money and school for the kids. The whole nine yards.
Cuz if they're in danger, it is OUR fault...
The Bush administration will simply ignore this ruling like it does every other (including those handed down by the Supreme Court) and not a thing will be done about it. All kneel before His Unitary-ness.
that what they've learned inside Gitmo will now be used against China.
And we are holding in jail INNOCENT people... okay right wingers what are you going to say to that? These were innocents and if I am right about why China will not let them settle back in their country WE are the ones who made them violent.
You all said that your president and his administration was only holding the guilty ... you were and are wrong
so maybe you can pony up your house, your savings and actually let these men have a life, before we STEAL more of it from them.
CCR is great,especially Michael Radner who I first saw speak at the Bush War Crimes Commission in New York in 2005.We need more people like him,RayMcGovern,and Sabin Willett who argued the case today.
My question is; "Do they continue to torture innocent people at Gitmo?"
Unfortunately, the Bush administration has friends in higher places:
From CNN
The tragedy of what has been wrought in the name of 'justice' sullies the very word. Bring on the real trials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEnFc4Ay8Zg
One local right wing radio hosts asserts that the prisoners should all be 'immediatly killed', 'as a way to protect freedom'.
What does this say about the arrogant and tiresome boasts of America being the world's 'beacon of freedom'?
Isn't Christianity just lovely? War crime atrocities, terrorism, fascism, treason, Christianity really has quite an appeal, huh?
Amazing.
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