Dear Friend and Reader,
I was doing my usual scouring the news morning routine, and found this one on The New York Times Online cover: A judge has ordered the release of 17 detainees from GuantГЎnamo Bay. For those following the news since right after 9/11, you know that GuantГЎnamo is a huge civil rights issue. It is an “offshore” prison where the U.S. government has attempted to violate its most basic Constitutional rules.
For a bit of background, this pst June, Planet Waves’ resident civil rights lawyer, in his blog Psychsound, wrote a great article about Habeas Corpus, which is basically the rights of the accused to know why they are bing held. At that time, the “U.S. Supreme Court held that even enemy combatants and detainees can challenge their detention under the Habeas Corpus rules which protect everyone else in U.S. territory.” Read his full article here.
The judge who ruled this week followed that precedent. Here’s a bit from today’s Times article. To read it in full, click here.
— Rachel Asher
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Bush administration to release 17 detainees at Guantánamo Bay by the end of the week, the first such ruling in nearly seven years of legal disputes over the administration’s detention policies.
The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court, ordered that the 17 men be brought to his courtroom on Friday from the prison at GuantГЎnamo Bay, Cuba, where they have been held since 2002. He indicated that he would release the men, members of the restive Uighur Muslim minority in western China, into the care of supporters in the United States, initially in the Washington area.
“I think the moment has arrived for the court to shine the light of constitutionality on the reasons for detention,” Judge Urbina said.
Saying the men had never fought the United States and were not a security threat, he tersely rejected Bush administration claims that he lacked the power to order the men set free in the United States and government requests that he stay his order to permit an immediate appeal.