Given that President Obama just signed a law sent to him by Congress that prohibits the release of any detainees into the United States, the answer to that question has just become a lot more urgent.

“We’re going to work with our allies, with our friends, to try to place these people,” said Holder, noting that in recent weeks nine Guantanamo prisoners were placed in other countries. “Those efforts will continue.”

Sen, Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) followed up by asking what should be done about those the United States government cannot place overseas.

Holder skirted that one. “I’m not sure that we won’t be able to … by sharing information about who these people are, we can come up with a way that will assure them they will not pose a danger to our allies or a danger to us,” he said, adding “I think we’ll be successful in assuring them.”

If the Supreme Court decides not to take up the petition of the 13 remaining Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay at issue in the case of Kiyemba v. Obama, which I wrote about previously, then the courts won’t have any authority to release them either. And that’s sure to increasingly frustrate judges like Richard Leon, who earlier this week was clearly disgusted with the government’s argument (see Christy Hardin Smith’s great post on that at Firedoglake) that it could continue to detain Abdulrahim Abdul Razak Al Ginco (who goes by “Janko”) — a man who’d been brutally tortured by al-Qaeda and imprisoned by the Taliban, only to be re-incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. The government’s argument for Janko’s continued detention “defies common sense,” wrote Judge Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, with evident exasperation.

Judge Leon’s is only the latest in a string of habeas cases — 26 out of 31 so far, according to American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Jonathan Hafetz — to find that the government’s grounds for indefinite detention of what the Bush administration called “enemy combatants” simply don’t hold up.

In May, Judge Gladys Kessler refused to condone the ongoing imprisonment of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, captured as a teenager, based on what she called “guilt by association.”

Like the Uighurs, these are men (some seized as teenagers) who’ve now been cleared for release, yet after seven years, still remain imprisoned at the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. As the law currently stands, neither the federal courts nor the president himself — given the bill he just signed into law — can remedy the situation, unless some other country offers to take them.

The Supreme Court was expected to decide yesterday whether to hear their case, but so far no word.

Maybe today or next week.

Update: Andy Worthington has more detail on Judge Leon’s decision and the disturbing case of Abdul Rahim Janko at Huffington Post.

Al Ginco — who goes by “Janko” — is a Syrian citizen who was arrested by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in January 2002, deemed an “enemy combatant” and sent to Guantanamo Bay. He’s been held there without charge ever since.

Although much of the evidence in his case is classified, according to Leon, the government’s evidence essentially boiled down to the fact that Janko had traveled to Afghanistan, stayed at a guesthouse that was also used by Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters for about five days in 2000, and attended a terrorist training camp for approximately two weeks. (Janko says he was forced to stay at the guest house and attend the camp.)

After he asked to leave the training camp, however, Janko claims — and the government “effectively concedes”, says Leon — that he was brutally tortured by al-Qaeda until he “confessed” that he was a U.S. spy, and imprisoned for more than 18 months at a notoriously brutal prison in Kandahar. He escaped, along with the rest of the prisoners, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. Yet the U.S. government insisted that Janko was still “part of” the Taliban or al-Qaeda when he was seized by U.S. forces.

The government’s position “defies common sense,” wrote Leon in an opinion issued yesterday. “[T]he relationship that existed in 2000 — such as it was — no longer existed whatsoever in 2002 when Janko was taken into custody.”

Even in 2000, the relationship was “in its formative stage,” Leon wrote. “To say the least, five days at a guesthouse in Kabul combined with eighteen days at a training camp does not add up to a longstanding bond of brotherhood.” The terrorists’ subsequent torture and imprisonment of Janko, “evinces a total evisceration of whatever relationship might have existed!”  (The opinion is peppered with exclamation points.)

In sum, Judge Leon ruled, the government failed to establish that Janko “was lawfully detainable as an enemy combatant” when he was taken into custody seven and a half years ago, and ordered the government “to take all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate his release forthwith.”

The case is the latest in a string of losses for — and stinging rebukes against — the government in detainee cases.  In May, Judge Gladys Kessler rejected the government’s “mosaic theory” of the evidence in the case of Alla Ali Bin Ali Ahmed, held by the United States since 2002, when he was a teenager. The government’s case similarly rested on claims that Ahmed had stayed at a particular guesthouse or named by other prisoners who’d been tortured. Concluding that the government had nothing more solid than “guilt by association,” she granted Ahmed’s petition and ordered his release.

Although the government has lost about three-quarters of the habeas cases decided so far, most of the petitioners who’ve won are still awaiting their release.

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