from:TalkLeft

Bush Moves to Circumvent Court in Guantanamo Case
May 09, 2006

President Bush has done it again. Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear oral argument Qassim v. Bush, the Guantanamo case involving the Uighur detainees from Western China who have been held without charges for four years. (Background here.)

On Friday, the Administration filed a motion seeking to declare the case moot, because it had just agreed to release the men to Albania where they will be resettled as refugees.

Brennen Center Associate Counsel Jonathan Hafetz writes:

The government claimed its extensive efforts to find a safe home for the Uighurs, who could not be returned to China for fear of torture, had finally "come to fruition."

It is difficult to believe the timing of the release was coincidental. It is far more likely that the government transferred the Uighurs to avoid an adverse ruling and to insulate its conduct from judicial scrutiny. A loss in Qassim would invalidate a key aspect of the government's detention regime at Guantánamo and reinforce the vitality of habeas corpus, which guarantees both the right to test the lawfulness of a prisoner's detention and an effective remedy where that detention is illegal. Further, the government feared that the court might order the Uighur's release in the United States where they could seek asylum, which, as Georgetown law professor David Luban observes, it's the least we owe them after four-plus years' wrongful imprisonment at Guantánamo.

Should the Government win the motion, Mr. Hafetz writes:

If the government succeeds in mooting the Qassim case, the district's court decision grudgingly upholding the Uighurs' continued detention would stand, and the administration would remain free to indefinitely detain the next group of non-enemy combatants. (There at least four more still in legal limbo). In short, the system of detention-without-remedy at Guantánamo would remain intact.