A federal appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked a judge’s decision to immediately free 17 Chinese Muslims at Guantanamo Bay into the US.
In a one-page order, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued the emergency stay at the request of the administration of US President George W. Bush.
The three-judge panel said it would postpone release of the detainees for at least another week to give the government more time to make arguments in the case.
The appeals court set a deadline of next Thursday for additional filings but it is up to the judges to decide how quickly to act afterward.
“The decision is quite a blow,” said Emi MacLean, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing many of the detainees. “We basically have to go to the men after telling them they would be released, and say that their detention is once again indefinite.”
“It’s hard to believe there is any sense of justice in a situation like that,” she said. “We will continue to argue strongly that the judge’s order is meritorious and continues to stand.”
The three-judge appeals panel that halted the detainees’ release included Judges Karen Henderson and Raymond Randolph, both appointees of the former president George H. W. Bush, and Judge Judith Rogers, who was appointed by former president Bill Clinton.
The appeals court’s move comes after US District Judge Ricardo Urbina on Tuesday made a dramatic decision ordering the government to free the detainees by today. Urbina said it would be wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the detainees, known as Uighurs, since they are no longer considered enemy combatants.
“We are pleased that the Court of Appeals granted our request for a temporary stay, and we look forward to presenting our case,” Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said in response to the appeals court decision.
The Bush administration had asked the appeals court to block Urbina’s order no later than Wednesday. The detainees were scheduled to arrive in Washington early today and appear in Urbina’s courtroom for release to local Uighur families who have agreed to help them settle into the US.
The government says the detainees at the US naval base in Cuba had admitted receiving weapons training in Afghanistan and were a national security risk.
Earlier on Wednesday, lawyers for 17 Chinese Muslim detainees urged the appeals court in filings not to interfere with Urbina’s decision, which is the first court-ordered release of Guantanamo detainees. The detainees said they have been cleared of wrongdoing and have waited long enough for their freedom after being held at Guantanamo for nearly seven years.
“The government would prolong by months, and perhaps years, an imprisonment whose legal justification it has conceded away,” the detainees’ lawyers wrote in filings.
Meanwhile, US officials said it was continuing “heightened” efforts to find another country to accept the Uighurs, since the detainees might be tortured if they are turned over to China.
“There are extensive efforts. We oppose the idea of their release here,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto said.
Albania accepted five Uighur detainees in 2006 but has since balked on taking others, partly for fear of diplomatic repercussions from China.
The Justice Department criticized Urbina’s decision as undercutting immigration laws that dictate how foreigners should be brought into the country.
It also cited security concerns over weapons training the Uighurs received at camps in Afghanistan.
Such a potential security risk outweighs the inconvenience the detainees might suffer in waiting a while longer at Guantanamo, government lawyers contended.
Uighurs are from Xinjiang — an isolated region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations — and say they have been repressed by the Chinese government.
The Uighur detainees were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001.
China has long said that insurgents are leading an Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang.
The Beijing government has repeatedly urged the US to turn the Uighurs over to Chinese authorities.
The Uighurs case is among dozens of Guantanamo cases currently being reviewed by federal judges after the Supreme Court ruled in June that foreign detainees at Guantanamo have the right to appeal to US civilian courts to challenge their imprisonment.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion