THE CASE OF Huzaifa Parhat provides the clearest, most compelling evidence yet that the process used by the Bush administration to justify holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay is deeply and irreversibly flawed and must be discarded.
Mr. Parhat is an ethnic Uighur who fled China in 2001 because of the abuses against Uighurs in that country. He arrived in a camp in Afghanistan known as a refuge for Uighurs who opposed the Chinese government. The camp was destroyed by U.S. airstrikes in late 2001, and Mr. Parhat and fellow Uighurs fled to Pakistan for a short while before being turned over to the United States by Pakistani officials. He was sent to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002.
According to court records, Mr. Parhat is not a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban. There is no record of his involvement in hostilities against the United States or its allies. In 2003, a military officer who reviewed Mr. Parhat's detention recommended his release. Even the members of a 2004 Combatant Status Review Tribunal that classified Mr. Parhat as an enemy combatant concluded that he was “an attractive candidate for release.” Yet Mr. Parhat languishes in Guantanamo to this day — six years after his capture, writes The Washington Post in an editorial Monday
