Bringing Guantanamo Home

The lawlessness abroad was never very far from home.

By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Saturday, Oct. 11, 2008, at 7:32 AM ET

What happens at Gitmo stays at Gitmo. That was always the hope. When the Bush administration fenced off a dusty little patch of lawlessness in Cuba, the idea was that breaking the law abroad would somehow preclude us from breaking it at home. But last week revealed, yet again, that the worst of Guantanamo was always destined to spill over into the United States. Gitmo's lawlessness is now our own.

The prison camp was created to construct a "legal black hole," a place where U.S. and international human rights law would go to die. The case of 17 Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs)—Chinese Muslims from western China's Xinjiang region—is one of the blackest chapters of the story. The Uighurs fled Chinese persecution (including forced abortion and banishment) and settled in Afghanistan, then moved on to Pakistan in 2001 to escape bombing raids. There they were turned over by local villagers to American authorities for bounty. They were transferred to Guantanamo more than six years ago but cleared for release in 2004. The U.S. government credibly fears they will be tortured if returned to China, and since no other country will take them, they have remained for all this time at Gitmo. Indeed, reports have it that some still remain in solitary confinement there.