Since 2002 -- for 6 years now -- the U.S. has been detaining 17 human beings in Guantanamo of Chinese Uighur descent who everyone, including even the U.S. Government, acknowledges are not "enemy combatants" and never took up arms against the U.S.  The Pentagon long ago cleared the detainees for release but has nonetheless continued to detain them because no country in the world is willing to accept them due to a fear of alienating the Chinese Government (which persecutes the Uighurs).  

Last week, a federal district court judge -- in a stinging and eloquent ruling delivered orally (.pdf -- beginning on p. 28) -- finally ordered the Bush administration to release these detainees and allow them access to the U.S.  The Bush administration has appealed the ruling and, for the moment, the Court of Appeals has stayed the lower court's order pending appellate review.

Today on Salon Radio, I speak with the ACLU's Jonathan Hafetz about this ruling and the plight of the Uighurs.  We also discuss Hafetz's client, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, the Qatar citizen who, in 2001, was in the U.S. legally, on a student visa, living in Peoria, Illinois with his wife and five children, when he was arrested, charged with crimes that he vehemently denied, and then -- a month before his trial was to begin -- was declared by George Bush to be an "enemy combatant," had his trial cancelled, and was ordered into military custody, where he has remained -- in a South Carolina brig -- for years with no trial.  I wrote about the al-Marri case here, and the latest ruling, likely to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in the next term, here.  That case will determine -- literally -- whether the President has the right to declare U.S. citizens on U.S. soil to be "enemy combatants" and imprisoned with no trial.

Our discussion is roughly 30 minutes long and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below.  A transcript will be posted shortly.