US judges refuse to end Guantánamo limbo

Two Chinese Muslims held at Guantánamo Bay prison camp learned on Apr. 17 that their legal limbo would continue when the US Supreme Court declined to intervene to help them. Abu Bakker Qassim and A'Del Abdu al-Hakim are Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Muslims who have a language and culture distinct from the rest of China, and who have suffered persecution by the Chinese authorities. They were arrested in Pakistan in 2001 and shipped to the prison camp along with hundreds of other suspected terrorists. A year ago, the US military decided that they were not enemy combatants, after hearing that Qassim and al-Hakim were captured as they fled a Taliban military training camp where they were learning techniques they planned to use against the Chinese government. The men's plight has posed a dilemma for the courts and an embarrassment for the Bush administration. A federal judge has already ruled that the detention of the two men in Guantánamo Bay was unlawful but that there was nothing federal courts could do. Lawyers for the two contend they should be released, but the men cannot be returned to China because of the possibility that they will be tortured or killed. The Bush administration has refused to grant them asylum in the US, but has been unable to find a country willing to accept the two men, along with other Uighurs. German officials are being pressed to take them, according to a report over the weekend in a newspaper there. It would have taken an unusual intervention of the Supreme Court to deal with the case now. Lawyers for Qassim and al-Hakim filed a special appeal, asking judges to step in even while the case is pending before an appeals court. Arguments at the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit are next month. The judges declined, without comment, to hear the case.