Detainees: U.S. has forfeited claims of threats
on Oct 14, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Lawyers for 17 detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay argued in a new court filing Tuesday afternoon that the government gave up its chance to show that the men would be dangerous if brought into the U.S., and cannot now try to use new and unsupported claims to keep them from coming. Replying to a Justice Department plea to the D.C. Circuit Court to hold off any transfer and release of the detainees, while an appeal on the issue goes ahead, the prisoners’ lawyer accused the government of destroying any hope that another nation would accept them.
On Oct. 8, the day the government asked the Circuit Court to step in, “the Government itself destroyed whatever hope remained [for resettling the detainees] by its senseless libel — quite false, but now available to every foreign nation — that [the 17 individuals] are terrorists….That they never were makes no difference to diplomacy. The United States has said it and cannot unsay it. The Government’s position would consign [them] to Guantanamo forever.”
U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina on Oct. 7, issuing a final ruling in the 17 Chinese Muslims’ habeas challenge to continued detention, decided that they must now be released and allowed to live at least temporarily in the U.S. The judge found, after the government’s decisions not to press its claim that they were “enemy combatants,” that the government no longer had any legal basis for continuing their confinement at Guantanamo. The judge ordered the Pentagon to bring the 17 men to his courtroom three days later, and to join in making plans for their release, including conditions on their activities here.
The Justice Department has filed seven separate appeals on the release issue, and the Circuit Court has temporarily blocked Judge Urbina’s action. The Department is now seeking a further delay, while the appeals go forward. The detainees’ lawyers, in their new filing, contended that the government was seeking to shift the habeas cases up to the Circuit Court, rather than leaving them to play out in District Court.
A further stay, the brief argued, would not only be a significant new burden on detainees “who stood within hours of freedom,” but also would impose a burden on Judge Urbina as he carries out judicial duties assigned to him and other District judges by the Supreme Court’s June 12 decision in Boumediene v. Bush, giving detainees a constitutional right to pursue habeas claims.
The filing noted that Judge Urbina, before ordering the detainees’ release, had given the government a chance to make an argument that doing so would pose a threat to national security. The brief said the government passed up the opportunity. An appeal in a habeas case, the brief added, is not the place for the government to seek to add new and unsubstantiated factual arguments against release.
As the 17 individuals’ cases have developed, the brief said, the government has either not even answered the habeas claims, or has provided only skimpy records from Pentagon detention proceedings. It does not serve Judge Urbina well, the filing added, for the government to be rewarded with a stay after it had withheld from him “facts they ague on appeal are necessary to decide habeas cases.”
The lawyers noted that the government had previously sent to other countries six companions of the still-imprisoned Chinese Muslims. Five were sent to Albania, and one to Sweden. “The Government does not and could not contend that their presence there has ever resulted in the slightest threat to the people of Tirana or Stockholm.”
While the government has said that it is continuing efforts to re-settle the Chinese Muslims abroad, “it can hardly suggest that it was seeking to settle dangerous persons among civilian populations of U.S. allies.”
The 17 detainees are members of a Muslim minority group, the Uighurs, who fled western China to get away from oppression. They fear they would face abuse and torture if returned there. The U.S. government has agreed not to attempt their transfer to China, but has said it has been unable to get any other country to allow their entry.
Under the Circuit Court’s temporary stay order, the Justice Department is to file a reply brief on Thursday.
