Update Feb. 19th: China opposes any country taking the Uighurs, they are Chinese terrorists and they want them back.
We’ve been following the case of the 17 Uighurs, Chinese Muslims who are among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Last fall one court ordered them released into the United States and another one blocked their release. This is the issue, as described by the Washington Post last October:
The men, a small band of Chinese Muslims who have been held for nearly seven years, are no longer considered enemy combatants by the U.S. government, but they are caught in a well-documented diplomatic bind. Unlike other captives, they cannot be sent to their home country because Beijing considers them terrorists, and they might be tortured. The government released five of the detainees, known as Uighurs (pronounced “WEE-gurz”), to Albania in 2006, but no other country wants to risk offending China by accepting the others.
Andy McCarthy reports the latest at National Review’s Corner:
The majority opinion of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing Judge Ricardo Urbina’s lawless order that 17 Uighur detainees be released in the United States, is emphatic. A sampling:
Justice Frankfurter summarized the law as it continues to this day: “Ever since national States have come into being, the right of the people to enjoy the hospitality of a State of which they are not citizens has been a matter of political determination by each State” – a matter “wholly outside the concern and competence of the Judiciary.”
The case will now go to the Supreme Court, where it is uncertain whether a majority will agree with the previous court that federal judges do have the power to order detainees released into the U.S.