Guantanamo Bay Watch: 17 Chinese Told Go Straight to Limbo

A US Federal Appeals Court has ruled that 17 Uighur Chinese men cannot be released into the United States from their detention at Guantanamo Bay, even though there is no cause to keep them at the facility:

We do know there is insufficient evidence to classify them as enemy combatants — enemies that is of the United States. But that hardly qualifies petitioners [the Uighurs] for admission. Nor does their detention at Guantanamo for many years entitle them to enter the United States.

Ironically, if the 17 had actually done something to threaten America, there might be the prospect of transferring them to the US for criminal proceedings. Because they are in effect innocent, however, there is nowhere to go. They face abuse and torture if they are returned to China, and at this point there is no arrangement with a third country to take them.

But that is now a political problem for President Obama, not a legal problem. The Federal Appeals Court washed its hands of the issue: ""The government has represented that it is continuing diplomatic attempts to find an appropriate country willing to admit petitioners, and we have no reason to doubt it is doing so. Nor do we have the power to require anything more."