This is just plain wrong

Today's WaPo reports on a story that I briefly mentioned previously about Uighur's being held in dention at Gitmo despite being cleared of being "enemy combatants. When I had first heard the story on NPR (I think), the Boston lawyer who was representing two Uighurs only mentioned the two. Now, the WaPo reports that there are 15 in this Kafkaesque predicament:

In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials.

More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive.">Chinese Detainees Are Men Without a Country: "In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials.

More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive.

Fifteen men, who did nothing wrong, who were not terrorists (I emphasis were, since they would have every reason to have had a change of heart after being held for over two years in conditions that would be considered criminal if applied to a dog in this country) who have been cleared of charges were a) not told that they had been cleared and b) are still being held against their will.

There is no excuse for this abuse of power. The administration's empty concern that they would be tortured if returned to China is no excuse. If the administration is so concerned about that, and if the administration is one governed by the rule of law, they should have been granted poilitical asylum, not detained under the same conditions as those whom the administration still consider "terrorists".