Ignoring Bush concession, Bozell declares: "[T]here's no one" held at Guantánamo "who should be released"

During the May 8 edition of Fox News' Hannity, Media Research Center president and syndicated columnist L. Brent Bozell falsely claimed of the detainees held at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility: "[T]hey're in there for a reason. There's no one there who should be released." In fact, the Bush administration reclassified a group of detainees belonging to the Uighur ethnic group from western China as "no longer enemy combatants."

After the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the Uighurs' release into the United States, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned that decision in a February 18 opinion. The panel majority's opinion summarized the Uighurs' situation:

In the Parhat case, the [appeals] court ruled that the government had not presented sufficient evidence that the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement was associated with al Qaida or the Taliban, or had engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. Parhat, 532 F.3d at 850. Parhat therefore could not be held as an enemy combatant. The government saw no material differences in its evidence against the other Uighurs, and therefore decided that none of the petitioners should be detained as enemy combatants.

Releasing petitioners to their country of origin poses a problem. Petitioners fear that if they are returned to China they will face arrest, torture or execution. United States policy is not to transfer individuals to countries where they will be subject to mistreatment. Petitioners have not sought to comply with the immigration laws governing an alien's entry into the United States. Diplomatic efforts to locate an appropriate third country in which to resettle them are continuing. In the meantime, petitioners are held under the least restrictive conditions possible in the Guantanamo military base.

The appeals court panel majority held that the federal courts lacked the authority to order the government to release the Uighurs into the United States:

The government has represented that it is continuing diplomatic attempts to find an appropriate country willing to admit petitioners, and we have no reason to doubt that it is doing so. Nor do we have the power to require anything more.

Bozell's claim that "[t]here's no one there who should be released" echoes a claim made by conservative media figures. As Media Matters for America has documented, during President Bush's end-of-term "legacy tour," media figures repeatedly failed to ask about the Uighurs when Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney described the Guantánamo Bay detainees generally as "illegal combatants" or "unlawful combatants," respectively.

From the May 8 edition of Fox News' Hannity:

HANNITY: We're going to release the guys from Gitmo, and they may be coming to a town near us.

And the Republicans now are fighting back, and they've come out with this very hard-hitting ad, which, by the way, I think is very effective. I'll tell you up front. But let's roll this ad as a reminder of why we shouldn't do it.

[begin video clip]

ON-SCREEN TEXT: That day changed America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The FAA has banned all take-offs at all airports across America.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [Inaudible] now saying another aircraft unbelievably has crashed into the Pentagon.

ON-SCREEN TEXT: Ramzi Binalshibh, key facilitator of the 9/11 attacks. Primary communicator between hijackers and al Qaeda. Captured; held: Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Abu Zubaydah, oversaw training camp used by 9/11 hijackers. Received $50,000 to fund the 9/11 attacks. Captured; held: Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Al-Qaeda's top operative, mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Captured; held: Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

How does closing Guantanamo Bay make us safer?

[end video clip]

HANNITY: Brent, I think that's one of the most powerful things Republicans have done in a long time.

BOZELL: In years -- in absolute years. And I think this has the possibility of changing the entire debate, because what it shows is that it is the height of irresponsibility for the Obama administration to have a plan A, which is close down -- close it down, but plan B -- it has no plan B of what to put -- where to put these killers, these mass murderers.

And for them to say -- for the Obama administration to say that they have a plan where they're going to release some and not release others. You don't release them because you want to close it down. If they were releasable, they should have been released by now. If you want to close it down, they're in there for a reason. There's no one there who should be released.