Uighurs’ challenge to detention dismissed
on Aug 19, 2006 at 8:38 am
NOTE: On April 17, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Chinese nationals attempting to challenge the federal government’s authority to continue holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, even though they were found not to be terrorist suspects. That was an attempt to appeal before the D.C. Circuit Court could rule on the case. The controversy over their legal status has continued to play out in lower courts.
The D.C. Circuit Court has dismissed an appeal seeking to test another aspect of the handling of detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — an attempt by Chinese Uighurs to obtain a final ruling that they were both wrongly held at Guantanamo and then wrongly shipped to a foreign land to scuttle their challenge. The order, found here, was filed on Aug. 14 but is not published and has only now become publicly available. Earlier posts on the status of the Uighurs can be found here and here. A New York Times story on Tuesday describing the Uighurs’ situation now can be found here
The two individuals in the case, part of a small group of Uighurs captured in Afghanistan and detained at the Cuba prison camp, were among five who were transferred to Albania on May 5, three days before a scheduled Circuit Court hearing on the appeal. The Uighurs are members of a Muslim community in China that has long been persecuted, according to their lawyers.
After the prisoners’ transfer to Albania, where the five are seeking asylum, the Justice Department sought to end the case by having the Circuit Court declare it to be moot. The Circuit Court, a month after all briefs were filed, agreed to the dismissal.
In thier appeal, the Uighurs contended not only that their detention was unlawful after the military concluded they were not “enemy combatants,” but also that the government had a policy of transferring captives from Guantanamo “to avoid judicial scrutiny.”
The Circuit Court found that neither claim survived their move to Albania. It ruled that there was no longer an active legal controversy over their detention, and that they could not take advantage to any of the exceptions to normal mootness doctrine.
The Uighurs still have the option of asking the Circuit Court to rehear the case en banc, or to ask the Supreme Court to revive their case to test Guantanamo detention policy.
