Supreme Court Drops Uighur Detainee Case

Today the Supreme Court said it no longer needs to decide a case involving Uighur Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. Although the federal government does not claim these detainees are terrorists or any other kind of "enemy combatants," it had refused to release them, saying they would face persecution in their native China and had nowhere else to go. In 2008 a federal judge in Washington ordered the Uighurs' release within the United States, a ruling that was later overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which said only the executive branch has the authority to admit people into the country. Today the Supreme Court vacated that decision, noting that foreign countries finally have agreed to accept all the remaining Uighur detainees, making the immigration issue moot.

More on the Uighur detainees here.