Washington has asked Germany to take in some of the 17 Uighurs held at Guantanamo Bay for years and cleared for release, while France will accept an Algerian inmate, US officials said on Tuesday.
The administration of US President Barack Obama also plans to release some of the Uighurs in the US, a US official said, although a US senator has vowed to oppose the move.
Attorney General Eric Holder formally asked Germany to take the Uighurs — Muslims from China’s Xinjiang Province — during his April 29 visit to Berlin, a US official said on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, France has agreed to accept Algerian Lakhdar Boumediene, 43, held at Guantanamo for seven years and cleared of wrongdoing in November, sources said on Tuesday.
Obama has vowed to shut the notorious “war on terror” jail located at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by January.
Many of the inmates have already been cleared for release, but US officials are having difficulty finding countries that will take them in, and meeting resistance at home to housing them on US soil.
US officials have tried for years to transfer the Uighurs, captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, to a third country, saying they face the risk of persecution if they return to China, as Beijing regards them as “Chinese terrorists.”
The German interior ministry said on Sunday it had received a request to take in Guantanamo prisoners, but did not give their identities or their number.
On Capitol Hill, Republican US Senator Saxby Chambliss said he planned to introduce legislation that would block the release on US soil of any Guantanamo detainee and refuse funding for any such move.
The bill is aimed at reassuring the US public that the ex-detainees are “not going to be re-released into their neighborhoods where they’re going to immediately form cells where they will seek to kill and harm Americans,” Chambliss said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not