Seventeen Guantanamo detainees remain trapped in a precedent-setting legal battle over war powers — imprisoned by mistake and ordered released, but not yet free to go. The Bush administration appealed this week’s ruling that it cannot hold the men any longer, and while the lawyers work out the details, the men will languish in prison a little longer. The men, Uighur Muslims from a restive region in the far west of China, were captured — or possibly sold — in Afghanistan in 2001. A judge cleared them for release in 2004, but the U.S., with its eye for irony, kept them in prison because of fears that China might torture them. (China gave assurances yesterday that it has no such intentions.) (ProPublica/AP)
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=173989