Constitutional Law

Judgment Keeps Harmless Detainees in Limbo

Seventeen Guantanamo detainees remain at the crux of an international dilemma. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued its judgement and opinions today overturning a lower court order to release the detainees in the United States.

The detainees have been determined not to be terrorists by U.S. officials, but the government has met challenges in determining where they should be released. All 17 detainees, who remain at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, are ethnic Uighurs – a Turkic Muslim minority primarily residing in the far-western Chinese province of Xinjiang.

The Chinese government’s requests for their return have gone unheeded.

They have not been returned to China, where they are viewed as terrorists, for fear that Chinese authorities may torture and execute them. Diplomatic efforts to release the detainees to a third-party country have stalled due to potential hosts’ fears of reprisals from Beijing.

In a 2-to-1 vote, the Circuit Court concluded that only Congress or the executive branch may determine whether the aliens can enter the U.S., this being a political decision improperly decided by the judiciary. The third judge wrote separately to concur in the judgment that the release order was premature. However, she refused to join the majority position failing to recognize the judiciary’s right to order release by writ of habeas corpus.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).