Justice Delayed ... Then Denied

Yesterday, I wrote about those 17 unfortunate Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) being detained in Gitmo for over seven years even if they have been deemed as not being enemy combatants and not security risks. The good news was a Federal Court judge ordered their immediate release. The bad news is that the Bush administration went to appeal the decision ... and won a stay in the matter:

US court blocks release of Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo

A US appeals court has temporarily blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp as President George W. Bush's administration scrambles to appeal it.

Under a lower court order, the men were to be brought to Washington as soon as Friday, but a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia halted the process "pending further order of the court."

"The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the merits of the motion for stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion," read an order issued Wednesday.

You know the Bush administration is doing everything it can to avoid releasing those people, if only to cover-up their incompetence. That is why they offer any explanation they can think of (remember their justifications for Iraq?), and offer them almost simultaneously, to justify their stance against releasing them:

The 17 were officially declared no longer "enemy combatants" by the government in June, and the US government approved their release back in 2004.

But officials had maintained they could continue to hold the men at Guantanamo Bay if no other country accepted them.

The Uighurs were not returned to China due to credible fears they would be tortured upon return.

The White House condemned Tuesday's ruling, saying it paved the way for extremists to demand the same freedom, and added it would continue to work to find another country to take in the men.

"The district court's ruling, if allowed to stand, could be used as precedent for other detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, including sworn enemies of the United States suspected of planning the attacks of 9/11, who may also seek release into our country," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The Justice Department sought an emergency stay of the decision, arguing the ruling presented "serious national security and separation of powers concerns and raises unprecedented legal issues."

So, according to their twisted logic, releasing those 17 innocent Uighurs would open the way to releasing evul ter'rists?

Such a conflation is not only absurd, but downright mendacious and cruel.

Two things must be kept in mind, here. The first pertains to the Uighurs specifically (emphasis added):

Take the example of those 22 ethnic Uyghurs from China's Xinjiang region - Muslims one and all. They were transferred to U.S. custody by Pakistani bounty hunters after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, thereafter branded by the U.S. military as enemy combatants and consequently shipped to Gitmo. All the while, they maintained that they were en route to Iran and Turkey in order to seek refugee status in these Muslim countries - because Uyghurs are harshly persecuted in China. It was not until early 2005 that they were finally given a chance to defend themselves, whereby a (secret) military tribunal determined that they posed no threat to the U.S.A.

The problem came when U.S. officials sought to transfer them to another country - after all, they could not be sent back to China where they would be most certainly persecuted. Western countries were approached to grant these innocent men asylum, but all so approached refused - including Canada. Albania accepted to welcome five of the twenty-two back in 2006 - and those five are currently living in squalid conditions. The remaining 17 still languish to this day in Gitmo. There is no information available on whether the U.S. approached Turkey or (gasp!) Iran as well, two of the countries the detainees were seeking to reach initially, or whether the thought of doing so even crossed the obtuse minds of the officials involved in this apparently extraordinarily challenging repatriation process. Then again, perhaps these two countries have indeed been approached, but could not provide "satisfactory" assurances that "the prisoners will be prevented from attacking the United States or its allies".

(Oh-Hum)

The second pertains to the estimated number of innocent (Muslim) men similarly heald at Gitmo, despite having been cleared of any changes and deemed as not being security threats - like the remaining 17 Uighurs:

As of (...) August, 2007, some 80 Guatanamo Bay detainees have been cleared of all charges with regards to terrorism, as well as having been definitely established as constituting no threat whatsoever to the security of the U.S.A.

Yet they remain Gitmo detainees.

Furthermore, Army officials expect about 70 more of the remaining other 360 detainees to be likewise cleared.

Yet, most of them will also remain Gitmo detainees.

Why? Because no one wants them.

All of the above in turn strongly support the point that I made last year concerning these poor, unfortunate innocent souls being denied justice over and over again at Gitmo:

Heaven forbid that innocent Muslims be repatriated to welcoming Muslim countries - after all, virtually every single one of these countries is complicit in one way or another with radical Muslim terrorists, right? And forget about welcoming such people in the U.S.A. proper - if only as a small gesture of reparation for the horrific and brutal injustice perpetrated upon them - because, apparently, more Muslims are not wanted.

Another example of such utter injustice provides further evidence to support my suspicions that the whole "challenging" aspect of repatriating innocent Muslim Gitmo detainees lies primarily with intellectual sloth-driven fear, mistrust and/or outright bigotry: (...) Britain's new Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked for the transfer of five (innocent/cleared) Muslim British residents held at Gitmo, whereas his predecessor, Tony Blair, would not accept the detainees because they were not citizens proper.

(...) So, in short: Muslims come to be wrongly detained at Gitmo. Said Muslims are thereafter cleared of any charges and established as being of no threat to the U.S.A. Same said Muslims will not be granted asylum by Western countries (and U.S. allies), while Muslim countries are not likewise approached - apparently. End result: same said innocent Muslims remain incarcerated nevertheless.

At which point I now reiterate the following in conclusion:

That. Is. Justice. For. You.

All in the sacro-sanct name of Security.

Doesn't it make you feel so proud and patriotic?

God bless America and God bless Canada, f***ing indeed.

But the ugly truth is that all of us are guilty for our silence and absence of outrage. All of us have been irremediably stained for such a sociopathic lack of basic human decency, empathy, compassion and contrition.

Period.

How's that working out for you?

Losing ourselves down the road to perdition beyond redemption indeed ...


(Cross-posted at NION and TWWL)