For six years, they were classified as enemies of the United States so dangerous that they were not only deprived of all liberties but blocked from accessing our legal system.
Soon, they could be your next-door neighbor:
Washington - A federal judge on Tuesday, in a rebuke to the Bush administration, ordered the release in the United States of 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina read his ruling from the bench at a hearing to consider the appeals by the members of the Uighur ethnic group who are seeking freedom and asking to come to the United States.
The judge said there was no evidence the detainees, who have been held at Guantanamo for nearly seven years, were "enemy combatants" or a security risk, and that the U.S. Constitution prohibits indefinite detention without cause.
How did these people end up at Gitmo in the first place? Their efforts to flee Chinese repression brought them to Afghanistan, where they were turned over by bounty hunters, like so many other detainees. The whole backstory here is rather disgusting:
The Uighur Muslims, who come from an area of far western China they call East Turkestan, claim oppression at the hands of the Chinese government, including forced abortions and relocations of educated people to remote areas.
The Chinese government has described the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization. American officials agreed in 2002, when they were pressing for Chinese support for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is surely the tip of the iceberg, Hopefully the new president will bring the handful of real terrorists at Guantanamo to justice while figuring out what to do with the rest. It will be a while, though, before the last chapter of this tragedy is in the books.
(The picture at top shows four other Uighur Muslims released from Gitmo to Albania in 2006).
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
E-mail Will by clicking here.
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