Judge orders 17 Chinese Muslims released from Guantanamo Bay

WASHINGTON — For the first time, a federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release prisoners held at the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ruling Tuesday that 17 Chinese Muslims must be brought to his courtroom by the end of the week so that they can be set free.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said that the government's authority to hold the men had "ceased" and that they were entitled to be released.

He said he would hold a hearing to decide on the conditions for releasing the men. Several religious and social groups, including 20 church leaders from Tallahassee, Fla., said they would help the men resettle in their community.

The 17 are Uighurs who fled persecution in the far western reaches of China. U.S. authorities, fearing what Chinese officials would do, have refused to send them back to China, and no other country has been willing to take them.

The judge's order came more than six years after the men were sent to Guantanamo and more than four years after the Pentagon cleared most of them to be released. The Supreme Court ruled four months ago that judges can order the release of prisoners wrongly held at Guantanamo.

Soon thereafter, a federal appeals court reviewed the case of one of the Uighurs, Huzaifa Parhat, and ruled that the government had no basis for believing he was an "enemy combatant." That decision set the stage for Urbina's ruling Tuesday.

Civil liberties advocates hailed the order.

"This is a historic day for the United States," said Emi MacLean, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights. "Finally, we are beginning the process of taking responsibility for our mistakes and fixing them."

But Bush administration lawyers have insisted that judges have no authority to interfere with the handling of foreign military prisoners. On Tuesday, they also argued that immigration laws prohibit the release into the United States of individuals alleged to have terrorist ties and asked for an emergency order to block the release.

Administration officials "are deeply concerned by and strongly disagreed with" the decision to release the men, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a statement.

Human rights lawyers have described the 17 Uighurs as among the most egregious examples of wrongful imprisonment at Guantanamo. Natives of an area they call East Turkistan, the Uighurs fled from oppression by the Chinese government, including its policy of forced abortions, and settled in Afghanistan in 2001.