Detainees seek to attend hearing
on Sep 11, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Lawyers for a group of Chinese Muslims now being held at Guantanamo Bay asked a federal judge on Wednesday to order the Pentagon to take four of the detainees to Washington, D.C., for the hearing on their plea to be released. It is the first time that any of the more than 250 detainees at Guantanamo has explicitly asked permission to attend a federal court hearing on the release issue, although one of the Uighurs — the Chinese Muslims — has asked to be given his freedom in the U.S., at least temporarily.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina is scheduled to hold a hearing Oct. 7 in his Washington courtroom as the habeas cases of 17 Uighurs move ahead. In the motion filed Wednesday, lawyers asked that four of the 17 be allowed to attend in person, and that the other 13 be allowed to listen in from Guantanamo via a telephone hook-up.  The four would be brought to a military base in Washington, D.C., two days before the hearing, and then be brought to court for the hearing, which their lawyers asked be open to the public.
The Justice Department, which has repeatedly objected to any suggestion that any detainee be brought to the U.S. mainland for any purpose, is expected to oppose the plea to allow even detainees whom the Pentagon no longer considers enemies to enter the U.S. Of the 17 Uighurs, the Pentagon has indicated it no longer will treat five of them as “enemy combatants.” But it objects to any of them entering the U.S., even temporarily, while it seeks to place them in other countries; they will not be sent back to their home country of China, out of fear of persecution there. The Uighur community claims it has long suffered under the Chinese regime.
Judge Urbina has not yet indicated whether he will allow any detainee to be brought to a hearing in his court. Another judge who is moving along rapidly with detainee cases, District Judge Richard J. Leon, has indicated that detainees can only participate in hearings in his court via a telephone hook-up from Guantanamo.
In addition to asking for arrangements for the Oct. 7 hearing, the Uighurs’ lawyers asked for extensive opportunities to meet with the detainees to prepare them for the proceeding.
“The experience of a judicial hearing,” the motion said, “is likely to be an astonishing one for men who have been confined at Guantanamo Bay for more than six years without exposure to any judicial process and without previous exposure to the American justice system. It is therefore essential that [their] counsel have a meaningful opportunity to meet with and prepare [them] for the hearing.”
Meanwhile, Senior District Judge Thomas F. Hogan, who is coordinating most of the detainee habeas cases, on Thursday issued a new order to control how classified information is handled in the cases, and to control arrangements for detainees’ lawyers to meet with them at Guantanamo. It replaces a series of “protective orders” first put in place four years ago. The new order can be downloaded at this link.
