Supreme Court dismisses Uighurs’ case
Reporting from Washington — The Supreme Court backed away Monday from a confrontation with the Obama administration and Congress over the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who are judged to be wrongly held as “enemy combatants.”
The justices dismissed a case brought on behalf of 17 Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, who were held as prisoners at Guantanamo even after a judge ruled they deserved to go free. Congress and the Justice Department balked at a judge’s plan to release them into the United States.
In the fall, the high court said it would hear the Uighurs’ case to decide whether a judge had the power to release a foreign prisoner over the objections of the government.
Two years ago, the justices, in a 5-4 decision, said that the right to challenge detention through a writ of habeas corpus extended to Guantanamo prisoners, and that judges could hear appeals from those who said they were wrongly held.
That decision did not, however, squarely say the judge also had the power to order such a prisoner to go free.
In recent weeks, the Obama administration told the justices that it had found new homes outside the United States for all of the Uighurs.
“By now, each of the detainees at issue in this case has received at least one offer of resettlement in another country,” the court said in a brief order.
Most have left Guantanamo. However, five of them have rejected two such offers and remain at the U.S. military prison, the justices said.
Since none of the Uighurs can claim they are being held against their will at Guantanamo, the court said it would not decide their legal claim in the case of Kiyemba vs. Obama.
Instead, it sent the case back to a lower court to oversee the dispute.
The action spares the Obama administration a showdown with the court over whether it could continue to hold Guantanamo prisoners who had won their legal claims before a federal judge.
The move gives the administration more time to resolve how to handle the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo.
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