Supreme Court to rule on fate of wrongly-held prisoners
The latest legal battle over Guanatamo Bay centers around the fate of 13 men from China’s Muslim Uighur region who continue to be held there as “enemy combatants” even though the Pentagon admitted five years ago that they were not a threat to the country. On Tuesday, the U.S Supreme Court announced that it will rule on whether or not the executive branch has the power to hold a prisoner even after the person was cleared in court. On his first day in office, Barack Obama promised to close the controversial prison within a year. But since then, efforts to release prisoners have stalled – in part because judges have not been explicitly granted full power to release wrongly-held prisoners. “I never thought we would be arguing in court whether the government can lawfully imprison someone who was found to be innocent,” said Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer representing the Uighurs. “And I never thought I would be arguing against the Obama administration.”