Innocent Men in Legal Limbo Still at Gitmo
Jonathan Karl and Lara Setrakian
ABC News
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The government says many of the roughly 490 men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay are dangerous terrorists.
But ABC News has exclusive details about five men imprisoned at Guantanamo who even the Pentagon admits don't pose a national security threat. The United Nations said today the base should be shut down.
The organization said that conditions there were so bad they "amount to torture" and that the prisoners there should be tried or let go. Adel al Hakim and the four other detainees, all of whom are ethnic Uighurs — Muslims from the China's northwestern Xinjiang Province — have been imprisoned at Guantanamo for more than four years.
"What's clear here is that the military had its own military secret tribunal. There were no lawyers there, I wasn't there," said Sabin Willett, a Boston-based attorney who represents two of the detainees. "They determined at this tribunal that these men were not al Qaeda, they were not Taliban. They were not criminals, they were not enemies. They were a mistake."
But there is one big problem with setting them free: The men have no place to go. They cannot go back to China because of the high chance they would face persecution or worse.
feb 17, 2006
Jonathan Karl and Lara Setrakian
ABC News
_______
The government says many of the roughly 490 men currently detained at Guantanamo Bay are dangerous terrorists.
But ABC News has exclusive details about five men imprisoned at Guantanamo who even the Pentagon admits don't pose a national security threat. The United Nations said today the base should be shut down.
The organization said that conditions there were so bad they "amount to torture" and that the prisoners there should be tried or let go. Adel al Hakim and the four other detainees, all of whom are ethnic Uighurs — Muslims from the China's northwestern Xinjiang Province — have been imprisoned at Guantanamo for more than four years.
"What's clear here is that the military had its own military secret tribunal. There were no lawyers there, I wasn't there," said Sabin Willett, a Boston-based attorney who represents two of the detainees. "They determined at this tribunal that these men were not al Qaeda, they were not Taliban. They were not criminals, they were not enemies. They were a mistake."
But there is one big problem with setting them free: The men have no place to go. They cannot go back to China because of the high chance they would face persecution or worse.
feb 17, 2006
