17 Chinese men, Muslims of the Uigher nationality, were arrested by U.S. forces 6/1/2 years ago after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. These men were never charged with any crime. But, initially sold by bounty hunters to U.S. troops, they remained in the fell of the U.S. military detention system, and spent most of that six ½ years in the special hell of Guantanamo. Recently Ricardo Urbina, a federal judge in Washington D.C., ordered the men released, ruling that since "the Constitution prohibits indefinite detentions without cause, their continued detention is unlawful."
The following is a letter written by Sabin Willet, lawyer for the Uighers, to the Justice Department. 
Sabin Willett’s letter to the Justice Department
Our Uighur clients have now been at Guantanamo for about six and a half years. After years of stalling and staying and appellate gamesmanship, you pleaded no contest – they are not enemy combatants. You have never charged them with any crime. In October a federal judge said they must be freed. They were on freedom’s doorstep. The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran Refugee services and the Uighur families and the Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them. You blocked their release by getting an emergency stay from the Court of Appeals. Then by extending the stay. Since then we have done everything we can to try to win that release again and we have failed. And you have positioned this shrewdly. You know it will take many months to get a decision. If we win you will ask for en banc review. And if we win that you will appeal for Supreme Court review. So you know and I know what is happening here. This won’t be over in one month, or in six. It will be years.
And you know another thing. No other country is ever going to take them. Not ever. Not after some genius decided, in your overnight stay papers, for the first time ever, anywhere, to call these people "terrorists." That the charge is false, that you have now backed away from it in your brief, that doesn’t matter. It will never happen now.
It was never going to happen anyway. [The] State [Department] has been trying to settle this for four years. China has blocked it everywhere. You know it will never happen. If you win your appeal these men will spend the rest of their lives as prisoners at Guantánamo.
So now I am on my way to Gitmo to tell them all of that on Monday.
And I asked for one simple thing of you. I said let me sit down with them together, as men, without them being chained to the floor. And the Defense Department said no.
So I said, let me meet them alone, as we always do. Let me meet them in the hut where we always meet. Station MPs outside that hut, as you always do. Just permit these men one shred of human dignity. Do not chain them to the floor.
And you said no.
Yesterday the court refused to intervene. But it doesn’t end there. Because this isn’t about courts or who wins a motion. This is really about just who in the hell you people are. What you see when you look in the mirror. Or who your clients are and what they see in the mirror. What kind of Americans treat innocent victims with this kind of reflexive, degrading cruelty? Americans don’t treat criminals this way in a federal prison. Americans are not supposed to treat enemy prisoners of war this way under the service field manuals, or the Geneva Conventions, if anyone paid attention to the field manuals or the Geneva Conventions any more. And these people aren’t criminals, and they aren’t the enemy and you say the department of defense will not comply even with its own service field manuals, or with any basic human decency, and carry on like a bunch of small-minded, panicked little people. As an American, I don’t understand that.
And that is what I am asking for you. I am asking you to request of the base commander that he look in the mirror. Tell him I will meet these men alone, one at a time, and I will sit in that hut, and he can station a whole platoon outside to make sure it is only one at a time, and I would like him to show these Uighurs the basic human respect of not having to be chained to the floor. That is my personal request of your client. As one American to another.
And if the base commander will not do that, not even that, then I would like him to meet me and look me in the eye and explain just what in the hell kind of American he is. Because I do not understand it. Whoever the narrow-chested bureaucrat may be who makes these legal decisions sitting in some political office in Washington, however small and un-American that execrable person may be, I am still willing to bet that the base commander is better than that.
I will be there Sunday night.
Now THIS is a lawyer!
How can the Obama administration hope to
\”Change\” our nation\’s reputation in the world without reaffirming the concept of the rule of law? Everything done by American citizens (sworn to obey both the laws of the United States and the conditions of treaties to which America is a signatory) should be inflicted on every one of the ones who countenanced, authorized or participated in the acts
of degradation and torture suffered by
those whose lives they illegally ended.
There is no way that these incredibly sociopathic and stupefyingly arrogant
creatures should be allowed to escape
their well-deserved fate, let alone to profit from it. The US government must confiscate all rewards and compensation these individuals received during their
entire period of \”public service\”, and
place it in a Treasury account used only
to defray their victims\’ compensation.
Not one bit of wealth received by these
people during their criminal activities should be held by anyone other than the Government. Their families deserve to be treated no differently than were the families of their victims.
Their fates would serve as a permanent reminder to all public employees who would attempt to impose illegal control over others that if they act illegally they will lose everything they garner, and so will their loved ones.
I am disgusted by the way Congress has
jiggered my Constitution and produced a
tangled body of \”law\” to benefit those
who own most of everything material and financial, but have not had the decency to legislate punishment deterrents for
illegal and immoral behavior that truly endangers everyone with a US passport.
Speaking of which, the passports of all
of these individuals should be collected
and destroyed by the Special Prosecutor in charge of collecting the evidence on
these crimes\’ perpetrators.
I would like very much to hear all the arguments against THIS recommendation. However, do not waste time reframing it,
as that will just show an unwillingness to address one viable course of action
that deserves equal consideration to the
others.