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The Bush administration has done its level best over the last eight years to shackle the processes of justice, especially when it comes to the treatment of detainees in The War Against Terror (that’s TWAT to you). But Justice has a habit of breaking free every once in a while and causing conniptions in the White House).

Justice engineered a jail-break yesterday:

In what the AP calls “a landmark decision,” a federal judge has ordered the release of a small group of Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay into the United States. The detainees, who the Bush administration no longer considers enemy combatants, had been held for almost seven years. NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams reports that the Bush administration doesn’t want the detainees coming to the U.S. because “that sets a legal precedent.” … Before the ruling, the Bush administration argued that the judge, Ricardo M. Urbina, did not “have the authority to release the men into the United States and that they should not be sent back to China where they likely would be tortured.”

Judge Urbina’s response to that wasn’t just “Oh yeah? Watch me!”

A federal judge today ordered that 17 Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison be released into the United States by Friday, agreeing with the detainees’ attorneys that the Constitution bars holding the men indefinitely without cause.

It was the first time that a U.S. court has ordered the release of a Guantanamo detainee, and the first time that a foreign national held there has been ordered brought to the United States.
[...]
At a hearing packed with Uighurs who live in the Washington area, Urbina rejected government arguments that he had no authority to order the men’s release. He said he had such authority because the men were being held indefinitely and it was the only remedy available.

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The government’s position for many years had been: “They are not enemy combatants, no threat to the U.S. We want to release them. But we won’t, because we can’t.”

Can’t, because if we send them back to China, they will be tortured,. And no other country will take them. And we certainly can’t bring them to the U.S. and release them. Because that would Set A Legal Precedent. And Setting A Legal Precedent is — in the unique legal wisdom of the Bush White House — apparently far worse than holding people in harsh detention for years after they have essentially been cleared of the flimsy charges against them. Setting A Legal Precedent trumps the constitutional prohibition against holding someone indefinitely without cause or trial.

Leave aside the merits of that argument (if I can use that word without doing too much violence to the English language). What is truly the most mind-boggling aspect of the Bush administration’s treatment of these Uighurs is the conditions under which we continued to hold them after we deemed them to be release-worthy:

In Camp 6, the Uighurs are alone in metal cells throughout the day, are prohibited for the most part from conversing with others, and take all their meals through a metal slot in the door, lawyer P. Sabin Willett said in his affidavit, which was based on what he was told during his visit Jan. 15-18. They have little or no access to sunlight or fresh air, have had nothing new to read in their native language for the past several years, and are sometimes told to undertake solitary recreation at night, he said.

What possible justification can anyone in the Bush administration offer for holding these people in these conditions? This is bloody insane. And, of course, they do this in our name. So if you don’t speak up against it, you’re guilty by toleration.

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The government is naturally going to appeal Urbina’s decision. Meanwhile, we will continue to hold the Uighurs under unconscionable conditions. Because, in the time of Bush, that’s who we are, that’s what we do.

This is a mirror we’re holding up to ourselves. When you look at the mirror, look carefully. That’s who you are now.

Didn’t recognize yourself, did you?

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I wonder if the Uighurs have even been informed of Urbina’s ruling. This is what played out back in June, when one of the Uighurs won a key case:

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit determined that Huzaifa Parhat, who has been detained in Guantanamo Bay for more than six years, is not an enemy combatant. The U.S. military was directed “to release Parhat, to transfer him or to hold a new proceeding in light of the appeals court’s ruling”.

Tuesday night, Derek Stoffel, host of CBC Radio‘s “As It Happens” asked Parhat’s lawyer, Sabin Willett: “What’s your client’s reaction to this ruling?”

The unbelievable response:
Boy what a great question that is because my client doesn’t know about this ruling because I’m not allowed to tell him. [...] He’s sitting in solitary confinement today. He has no idea what’s happened as far as I know.

American Justice. Boy, oh boy!