Word: uighurs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...which detainees to prosecute in the U.S., which to transfer to the custody of another government and which to simply release. There are nearly 250 detainees left, ranging from hard-core jihadists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed - who pleaded guilty to masterminding the 9/11 attacks - to a group of 17 Uighur dissidents from China - who even the Pentagon says represent no threat to the U.S. President Obama wants a Cabinet-level committee to lead the reviews. A report by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) recommends that the new President appoint a "panel of eminent Americans" to sort through...
...Padmanabhan worked as the lead State Department attorney on detainee issues, the answers he got from foreign capitals about the 17 Chinese Muslims in Guantánamo was almost always the same. Dignitaries told Padmanabhan again and again that they could not take the men, who belong to China's Uighur (pronounced WEE-gur) ethnic minority. There is an active Uighur separatist movement in China, and elements of it have been accused of terrorist acts in the People's Republic. The U.S. has not admitted any freed Guantánamo prisoners onto its soil, Padmanabhan was reminded by officials from countries around...
...State Department continues to press other countries to take in the Uighurs, as Albania did with five other Uighur detainees in 2006. But Albania has apparently decided that taking in more Uighurs now is too burdensome. And Padmanabhan doubts whether any other countries will come around and solve the problem before the new White House takes shape in roughly two months. "There are no signs of hope," he says...
Meanwhile, in early October, another federal court ruling ordered the Bush Administration to release 17 Muslim detainees (who are of Uighur ethnicity but citizens of China) held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. It was one of the strongest judicial challenges yet to the Administration's claim of executive authority to bypass U.S. courts to hold and try suspected terrorists in special tribunals. The Justice Department has so far successfully resisted that order, and the case remains unresolved. Since the ruling, the Bush Administration has been working to find a country willing to accept the Uighurs, who cannot be handed...
...landmark ruling, a federal judge ordered the Bush Administration to immediately release 17 Muslims from Guantánamo Bay and bring them to the U.S. The captives, members of China's Uighur ethnic minority, haven't been considered enemy combatants since 2004 but remained at Gitmo because no country except China would take them. (The detainees' lawyers insist the captives would be tortured in their homeland.) The ruling, which faces appeal, could pave the way for more detainee releases...