The Bush administration believes the 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp should not be released into the US because they pose a “risk distinct to this nation,” court documents obtained by reporters on Friday showed.
The potential risks, said the US Justice Department, were compounded by the fact “that petitioners were detained for six years by the country to which the district court has ordered them brought.”
A federal judge last week ordered that the group be released and brought before him in Washington — an historic ruling where, for the first time, a court ordered that “war on terror” prisoners detained at the US Navy-run prison in Cuba should be released onto US soil.
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia halted the process a day after the ruling, to give the US Justice Department time to prepare an appeal.
“Most of these aliens were detained after attending or traveling to, terrorist training camps,” read the US government’s appeal, filed late on Thursday. “The district court’s order could also make it more difficult for the government to negotiate with third countries over resettlement.”
The group has been held in limbo at Guantanamo — despite being cleared of “enemy combatant” status in 2003 and cleared for release in 2004 by the US government — because officials cannot find a country willing to take them. The men cannot be returned to China due to concerns they would be tortured there as political dissidents.
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which has defended many of the Uighurs in court, said on Friday it was a “baseless assertion” that the prisoners were too dangerous to be released into the US.
“It would be ironic if this were true, since the government exonerated these men as long ago as 2003 and has been trying to resettle them with our closest allies since then,” the CCR said in a statement.
On Wednesday the New York Times reported that the Uighur case had become a focus of many Guantanamo critics.
“The true fear is not that they will pose a security threat,” Jennifer Daskal, a counterterrorism specialist at Human Rights Watch, told the newspaper.
Rather, if the group was released, they would “serve as living reminders of the administration’s mistakes in setting up Guantanamo,” she said.
The Uighurs were living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led coalition bombing campaign began in October 2001. They fled to the mountains, but were turned over to Pakistani authorities, who then handed them to the US.
Beijing has urged Washington to repatriate the group, alleging they were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement “which has been listed as a terrorist organization by the UN Security Council.”
“China has urged the US to repatriate these Chinese terrorist suspects to China on many occasions,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said last Tuesday.
For years the US has attempted to persuade other countries to resettle the group, recognizing that the Turkic-speaking minority has been widely persecuted by Chinese authorities.
Only Albania has agreed to take the Uighurs, welcoming a group of five in 2006, who now live far from their homes with no possibility of returning to their families any time soon.
The White House immediately condemned the federal judge’s ruling last week, saying it paved the way for extremists to demand the same freedom.
The Bush administration fears the ruling could have widespread effects on other cases before the federal courts, with some 250 detainees still held in Guantanamo, many of whom are challenging their detentions.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was