Federal Judiciary

Four Uighurs leave Guantanamo

By Akin Gump Supreme Court Practice Group

Four members of a Chinese Muslim (Uighur) sect who have been held prisoner for about seven years at Guantanamo Bay were released Thursday, and were transferred to live in Bermuda.  They were among 17 Uighurs who have pending in the Supreme Court a challenge to their continued detention (Kiyemba, et al., v. Obama, et al., 08-1234).

A Justice Department announcement on release of the four is here; a separate release by the Boston law firm representing some of the Uighurs — Bingham McCutchen — is here.

The fate of the other 13 whose case apparently remains in the Supreme Court is uncertain at this point.  There have been news stories, however, saying that the small Pacific island nation of Palau had reached an agreement with U.S. officials to accept some of the Uighurs.  (See this account in the New York Times and this account  in the Los Angeles Times.)

The Supreme Court is currently scheduled to consider the Uighurs’ case at a private Conference on June 25.  If all are transferred before then, however, the case is likely to be dismissed without a ruling on whether the courts have any authority to order release of Guantanamo prisoners into mainland U.S. to live, even temporarily.  The D.C. Circuit Court ruled that there is no judicial power to do that.

Twice before — once during the Bush Administration, once during the Obama Administration — the government has headed off Supreme Court review of a detainee case by moving the individual out of detention into civilian custody, for criminal prosecution in the regular federal court system on terrorism-related charges.  (The cases were those of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen, and Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Yemeni national who was living in the U.S. as a pemanent resident alien. Padilla has since been convicted after a trial and Al-Marri has pleaded guilty.)

Full post as published by SCOTUSBLOG on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).