Abu Bakker Qassim & A’del Abdu al-Hakim
A longish title for a Keywords post, but these names are important to remember. They are
the two Uighurs who remain in prison in Guantanamo four and a half years after their capture by bounty hunters in Afghanistan, over a year after they were declared not to be enemy combatants by a military tribunal, and nearly four months after a district court held that their imprisonment was illegal, but that he had “no relief to offer.”
Last week the Supreme Court rejected an emergency appeal on their behalf.
Read the full story at Obsidian Wings where Hilzoy has been covering it for a while now. Hilzoy adds:
So these men, who have been unjustly deprived of years of their lives, whose families thought they were dead for over three years, whose children have been growing up without them, get to stay in Guantanamo while their appeals proceed; and neither they, nor their lawyers, nor those of us who would dearly love for there to be some explanation of how this state of affairs can be allowed to continue in a nation that supposedly respects the right of habeas corpus and lives under the rule of law, get so much as a single word to help us understand why.
UPDATE: These two are just a drop in the bucket.
Nearly 30 percent of the Guantanamo detainees have been cleared to leave the prison but remain jailed because the U.S. government has been unable to arrange for their return to their home countries, the Pentagon said on Friday.
(Emphasis added.)
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
I heard an NPR report on these guys a few weeks ago. It was part of what basically amounted to a series saying that something like only 10% of the prisoners in Git-mo are actually known to have been enemy combatants. The rest were acquired from ransom or bounty channels. If you want some entertaining (in the “shake your head at the level of ignorance” kind of entertainment) watch CSPAN any time they have someone talking about Git-mo and giving prisoners any kind of hearing.
“they arent citizens, we dont have to give them anything!” are the basic talking points from your average callers.
That NPR peice also mentioned something to the effect that when these guys actually DO get trials they can’t see the evidence that is being brought against them, so they have no way to mount a counter defense. In fact, the judge and everyone else HAS to assume that the evidence in their files is all true, and their legal defense mainly consists of a military officer that sits next to them and says nothing.