Federal Judiciary

Detainees’ lawyers appeal to Obama

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

Lawyers for 20 detainees at Guantanamo Bay who have been ordered released complained directly to President Obama on Thursday that the men are still being held without any reliable prospect of freedom, and that at least two of them continue to be mistreated. In the letter, the lawyers urged the President to “immediately restore liberty to these men.”

A federal judge ordered 17 of the prisoners released last October, and a different judge ordered the release of the other three in November or January.  The Pentagon has said that it has not found a place for the 17 who are members of a persecuted Chinese Muslim minority — the Uighurs — who cannot safely be sent home to China.  It has not explained why the other three remain at Guantanamo.

Their lawyers asked the President to order that the 20 be moved to “communal living facilities” at Guantanamo, that they not be mistreated, and that an investigation be made into the claims of mistreatment.

Earlier, lawyers for the 17 Uighurs asked the new Attorney General, Eric Holder, to help secure the men’s release into the U.S., but that overture has not yet produced a result.

In another development on the new Administration’s detention policy, the Pentagon announced that it was suspending the process of reviewing — once a year — the status of each individual held at Guantanamo, to determine whether to release or transfer the individudal, or continue his confineement.

This process was set up in June 2004.  It is being suspended, the Pentagon, in order to avoid duplicating the review of each detainee’s status that President Obama ordered last month.  Attorney General Eric Holder is heading a group doing those new review.  The Pentagon said that, once this new layer of review is completed, it would decide whether to resume the annual reviews by three-member military panels.

The annual review process is separate from the Pentagon’s initial process for deciding whether to hold a detainee: the system of Combatant Status Review Tribunals.  Those tribunals decided whether to designate a prisoner as an “enemy combatant” — the legal status that determines that an individual should be held at Guantanamo as an initial matter.

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Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on February 26, 2009 (boomark / email).