At least four Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay will be transferred to the Pacific island nation of Palau, Palau President Johnson Toribiong said.
“We have received word Friday from the United States government confirming their position” of temporarily resettling the Uighurs in Palau, Toribiong said.
“Four Uighurs are confirmed to temporarily settle in Palau,” he said.
Toribiong did not give any other details of the move, including the likely timing of the Uighurs’ shift from the controversial detention camp in Cuba.
He had earlier said the transfer was expected to occur before January.
The lawyer for some of the 13 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo said on Friday that two of them expected to be transferred next month.
“Two of my clients have accepted offers” to relocate to Palau, lawyer George Clarke said, adding that they could leave the US “war on terror” prison in the middle of next month.
He said others among the 13 Chinese Uighurs at Guantanamo had accepted the offer, but did not give details.
Uighurs are a minority Muslim and Turkic-speaking group in China’s northwest.
The detainees were part of a group of 22 Uighurs living in a camp in Afghanistan when the US-led invasion of the country began in October 2001, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
They said they had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution in their vast home region of Xinjiang. The US cleared them of any wrongdoing four years ago, but they remained in legal limbo, with Washington unwilling to send them back to China, despite Beijing’s demands.
China wanted the detainees returned home to be tried, saying they belonged to the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement. But US officials refused to extradite the Uighurs, amid fears they could face torture.
Four of the original group were flown to Bermuda in June from Guantanamo, where some 229 “war on terror” suspects are still held. Another five were released to Albania in 2006.
US President Barack Obama has promised to shut down Guantanamo by January and Washington has been pushing for other countries to accept inmates with no charges against them.
Toribiong announced in June that his country, with a population of about 21,000 people, had agreed in principle to provide a temporary home for the Uighur detainees.
He has denied any link between agreeing to accept the detainees and negotiations over future US aid to Palau, saying the decision was made as a “humanitarian gesture.”
Made up of more than 586 islands, of which only nine are inhabited, Palau lies about 800km east of the Philippines, and was administered by the US until independence in 1994.
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