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| Court to Guantanamo Uighurs: Accept resettlement or stay in prison |
| 2010-05-30 |
| A federal appeals court in Washington delivered a terse message on Friday to five Chinese ethnic Uighurs long held at the terror prison camp at Guantanamo Bay: Accept the US offer to resettle in a third country or stay at Guantánamo. Last fall, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the Uighurs' case to examine whether a federal judge has the power to order the government to bring Guantánamo detainees to the US as a temporary remedy for their illegal detention at the terror prison camp. Rather than hear the case, the high court vacated an earlier ruling and sent the issue back to the federal appeals court to consider in light of “new developments.' Those new developments involved the fact that all of the Uighurs had been offered resettlement opportunities outside Guantánamo. In reinstating its 2009 opinion, the appeals court panel said it was within the exclusive power of the political branches to decide which foreign nationals may or may not enter the US. “At the time of our decision we heard only from the executive branch. Since then, the legislative branch has spoken,' the court said. “In seven separate enactments – five of which remain in force today – Congress has prohibited the expenditure of any funds to bring any Guantanamo detainee to the United States.' Lawyers for the Uighurs had argued that such statutes violate the Constitution by effectively suspending the ability of prisoners to challenge the legality of their detention under the principle of habeas corpus. The court replied that “the statutes suspend nothing' because the Uighurs “never had a constitutional right to be brought to this country and released.' This almost makes sense. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |