Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 3, 2008

A unanimous three-judge federal panel, led by a conservative Reagan appointee, has overturned the Bush administration?s designation of Guantanamo detainee Huzaifa Parhat as an ?enemy combatant.?

Mr. Parhat is one of 17 members of the Uighur [WHEE-gur] Muslim population in western China held at Gitmo, some of whom were tortured by U.S. personnel in order to compel cooperation with Chinese interrogators. Parhat has been imprisoned there for six years without specific charges.

In its ruling the D.C. Court of Appeals panel pointed out that the only evidence against Parhat consists of unsupported assertions repeated in three classified documents. In defending its detention of Parhat, the court pointed out, the administration ?comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true.?

Incidentally, Parhat and other supposed Uighur terrorists direct their hostility at the Beijing Regime, which has inflicted forced abortions and other totalitarian policies on the Muslim minority.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.