In a landmark ruling on 7 October 2008, Judge Ricardo Urbina of the US District Court for the District of Columbia (DC) ordered the government to release into the USA the 17 Uighur detainees still held in the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The government had earlier conceded that the 17 men are not “enemy combatants”, the label it had attached to them for almost seven years to justify their indefinite detention without charge or trial.
