Innocent – but Still Held by the U.S. Government for Years

By Kenneth J. Theisen

Imagine 13 men being held by a government for many years, even though that government admits that the men are innocent. We would expect U.S. officials to demand their release and condemn the government that held them of violating the men’s human rights.

But what if the government responsible for this crime was the U.S. government? Well you do not have to imagine because this is a real case and the abused men are held by your government.

On October 20th, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear the case of 13 men who remain imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay despite being cleared for release since 2004 and will address the issue of whether a court can order them released into the United States when there is no other remedy. The men, Uighurs from China, are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and private co-counsel.

This will be the first time the Court hears a Guantánamo case since it decided the landmark case brought by CCR and co-counsel, Boumediene v. Bush, in June 2008, and the first time the Obama administration will argue a Guantánamo case before the high court. But why is the Obama administration defending the crimes of the Bush regime by holding these men? Why doesn’t it just release these victims of the U.S. war of terror?

Sabin Willet, one of the attorneys for the Uighurs, stated, “We are gratified that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. We hope this will result in a ruling that confirms that the writ of habeas corpus guarantees to the innocent not just a judge’s learned essay but something meaningful – his release.”

In October 2008, D.C. District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered the U.S. government to release 17 wrongly-imprisoned Guantánamo detainees into the United States. The men had been imprisoned without charge for over seven years. Four of the men have since been resettled in Bermuda. The U.S. government has acknowledged it neither had the authority to detain them nor could it release them to China because of a risk of torture. However, on February 18, 2009, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision and held that the indefinite detention of the men could continue. The men have since asked the Supreme Court to review the case and find, as the District Court did, that their “release into the continental United States is the only possible effective remedy.”

In the wake of Boumediene, 30 of the 38 Guantanamo habeas cases heard by the lower courts have resulted in a finding that the detainee was unlawfully held, but, since the Court of Appeals decision in the Uighur cases, the trial courts have felt that they lacked the power to do anything more than order the government to make diplomatic efforts to release the men. As a result, 18 of the 30 detainees found to be wrongly detained by the courts in the last year remain in detention. This is the sort of justice prisoners of the U.S. war of terror have received at the hands of your government.

CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren expressed his righteous anger at this justice, “They got the wrong men, and have kept them imprisoned for nearly eight years because there was nowhere safe to send them. If we expect the rest of the world to help us end this mess, we have to start by taking some responsibility for cleaning it up ourselves.”

But in the U.S. war of terror tens of thousands of prisoners have been taken by the U.S. and its allies. Many have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. These thirteen are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the innocents that have been held. (In this article I will not address the right of people to resist the war of terror, after their nations were invaded, by taking up arms as many Iraqi, Afghan and others have done.) Thousands of them have been released from hellhole prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere after being tortured or otherwise abused. The government later admitted that they were innocent, but the vast majority have not been compensated in any form. The prisoners have included hundreds of women and children. More than a hundred detainees have died as a result of their abuse. As we know, no high-level U.S. officials have been held accountable for the crimes of the U.S. government.

We need to expose the continued crimes of our government and the fact that thousands of detainees are still held by our government. Justice will only have been rendered when those who are innocent are released and properly compensated (if that is even possible) and those who have really committed crimes in the U.S. war of terror are prosecuted and imprisoned. This includes those at the very top of the Bush regime and any current U.S. officials who are responsible for war crimes or crimes against humanity.

For more on Kiyemba v. Obama, see article on the Center for Constitutional Rights website.

Innocent – but Still Held by the U.S. Government for Years

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