habeas schmabeas

I was listening to the This American Life podcast while I was walking in the park. It was a story about the detention center at Guantanamo. The narrator was telling the story of a guy who had been there for 4 years, and had pretty much completely lost hope. After he had finally gotten to see an attorney, he asked him why he had never heard from his family in all this time. Why had they abandoned him, he asked?

As I walked past the above scene and took the picture, the attorney explained that there were letters from the family--19 of them in all, held back by the authorities. He went on to note that, even though they had no intention of giving the letters to the detainee, they had taken the time to redact each and every instance in the letters where his children wrote to tell him that they missed him.

According to the broadcast, over 400 people who have been held for years and years at Guantanamo, many of them tortured, without the benefit of habeas corpus for most of their detention, have been released, having never been charged with a crime or a terrorist act.

What's going on?