Good news from Guantanamo

Last year, I blogged about the case of a group of Uighurs who continued to be detained in Guantanamo despite the fact that a US military tribunal had declared them not to be a threat and cleared them for release - twice. The US justified this detention on the grounds that the men could not be returned to China because they faced a significant danger of torture and persecution there - a rare acknowledgment of its responsibilities under the Convention Against Torture. A US court, reviewing the men's case, agreed that there was no justification for continued detention and that it violated US law - but found that it had no relief to offer and could not order the men freed. The entire case illustrates the injustice of Guantanamo in a nutshell: indefinite detention, regardless of guilt or innocence, with no possibility of independent review.

But now at least there's some good news in this case: Albania has agreed to take five of the men as refugees. While the timing is highly suspicious - the men's case was due back before the court tomorrow in a further challenge to their detention - its certainly better than keeping innocent men in jail. And OTOH, that's only five of them; the rest of the group are still detained. Shouldn't they be being released too...?