Professor Amann Writes on Uighur Detainees for NY Times On-line
Professor Diane Marie Amann contributed a commentary on the Obama administration's plans for Uighur prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay in "Room for Debate," a feature of the New York Times website. Professor Amann asserts that the United States should grant asylum to the Uighurs, Chinese Muslims who were imprisoned by the Bush administration for seven years without charges. The 17 men were cleared for release in 2004, but cannot be sent back to China, where they might be tortured, and no other nation has agreed to take them.
"No other country has welcomed them," Professor Amann writes. "It is time for the United States to do just that - to grant the Uighurs asylum within U.S. borders. We should learn that this result is a foreseeable consequence of denying such persons their rights under the law."
Diane Marie Amann is a Professor at the UC Davis School of Law and Director of the California International Law Center at King Hall. Issues related to post-9/11 detention, interrogation, and prosecution are a focus of her scholarship, with articles published in Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.