Editor’s Note: Mighty interesting Uranian weather we’re having, isn’t it? Below is an article I found at Talking Points memo from James Vicini of Reuters. –Fe Bongolan
WASHINGTON – Five of six Algerians held nearly seven years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba must be released, a federal judge ruled Thursday in a setback for the Bush administration.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled from the bench after holding the first hearings under a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June that gave Guantanamo prisoners the legal right to challenge their continued confinement.
President-elect Barack Obama has promised to close the prison camp after he takes office in January. Meanwhile, U.S. judges in Washington are moving ahead with case-by-case reviews of about 200 detainee legal challenges.
Reading his ruling as the detainees listened in Guantanamo via a telephone hookup, Leon said the U.S. government failed to prove the five men who had been living in Bosnia had planned to travel to Afghanistan to fight against U.S. forces.
He ordered the U.S. government to take all necessary and diplomatic steps to facilitate their release “forthwith.”
There are about 255 detainees at Guantanamo, which was set up in January 2002 to hold terrorism suspects captured after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants. Most have been held for years without being charged and many have complained of abuse.