World cities compete for Gitmo's Uyghur prisoners
By Steven Edwards, Canwest News ServiceFebruary 6, 2009
NEW YORK — The German city of Munich added its name Friday to communities offering to welcome members of the Chinese minority Uyghur group detained at Guantanamo Bay — presenting possible alternatives to Canada as activists press Ottawa to accept at least three.
Home to the biggest Uyghur community outside China, Munich said it will accept all 17 Uyghurs who remain at the U.S. naval base in Cuba among some 240 detainees overall.
Seventeen families in the Washington, D.C., area have long said they will take the Muslim men in, while an interfaith group in Tallahassee, Fla., has said it can help three settle.
Human rights groups in Canada pushing the Canadian government to step forward say Ottawa still needs to act.
“For these 17 Uyghurs, maybe the generous Munich offer will be realized, but if there is also an option for some of those 17 to come to Canada, why should they not get the opportunity to make that choice?” said Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees.
The Uyghurs are somewhat of an exceptional case in that the 17 are the only remaining Guantanamo detainees who have been totally cleared by the U.S. authorities of having terrorist links.
But the United States fears they may face torture or other abuse if returned to China, which does consider them terrorists who seek an independent Muslim homeland in the northwestern part of the country.
A senior Ottawa official said Friday there were “no plans” for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to issue special entry permits for the three Uyghur detainees, who seek settlement in Canada as sponsored refugees under the regular administrative process — which may or may not pan out.
Other officials outlined wider security concerns.
“We’re worried that those backing entry to Canada for the Uyghurs would try to use any success in that endeavour to press for entry of detainees Canada considers far more dangerous, such as those with a history of ties to the al-Qaida network,” one said.
Dench said the list of names of detainees that groups in Canada have applied to sponsor as refugees will be announced Tuesday by her group and the sponsors, who include churches and other organizations.
“We’re concerned about all of those in Guantanamo who cannot return safely to their home countries,” she said, putting the number at about 60.
She said Canada would be asked to accept just some.
Beyond any security concerns, there remains the possibility that settling Guantanamo Uyghurs will lead to friction with China, whose embassy in Ottawa Friday issued a statement calling on governments to reject the “Chinese terrorist suspects.”
The ethnic Uyghur prisoners are members of the outlawed East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a terrorist organization officially censured by the United Nations Security Council, the statement, addressed to Canwest News Service, pointed out.
“These suspects should be handed over to China,” it continued. “We are opposed to any country accepting those suspects. It is believed that the Canadian side will properly handle this issue according to international laws and regulations.”
None of the various community offers to settle the Uyghurs is valid without approvals of the respective national governments or immigration authorities. However, they reflect a growing interest in this group regardless of whether any of its members are able to enter Canada.
“I would think that there would be competition to resettle them,” said George Clarke, a Washington-based lawyer for Anvar (Ali) Hassan, one of the three Uyghurs in Guantanamo whose application to settle in Canada has been filed.
While in Germany there is some disagreement within the coalition government over accepting any detainees, Clarke said the bigger question is what will the new administration of U.S. President Barack Obama decide in the wake of the president’s decision shortly after his inauguration to close the Guantanamo camps within a year.
“They can’t make other countries take them, but they (the U.S.) can take them,” he said.
With files from Janice Tibbetts
Source
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Guantanamo inmates pose challenge for Europe
Guantanamo inmates pose challenge for Europe
Having pledged to provide shelter for up to 60 former detainees, the EU now faces a thorny set of questions: Where exactly should they go? Who pays? What happens to them now?
By Sebastian Rotella
5:22 PM PST, February 7, 2009
Reporting from Madrid -- The decision to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay was a dream come true for many Europeans, including anti-terrorism officials who have largely condemned the facility. But European officials acknowledge that dismantling Guantanamo could be something of a nightmare.
The foreign ministers of the European Union recently pledged to help President Obama keep his promise to shutter the prison on the coast of Cuba in a year. They offered to provide refuge for up to 60 inmates who could face persecution in their native lands. Spain, France, Italy and Portugal are among the nations offering to accept former detainees; Germany, Britain and others are reluctant.
Now Europe must confront thorny questions: Which detainees will go where? Should some be prosecuted or imprisoned, if that is even possible? Who pays for medical care, housing, surveillance? Who gets the blame if something awful happens?
The questions challenge a select fraternity of European investigators, diplomats and spies who know Guantanamo firsthand from visits to interrogate or repatriate detainees. These officials have had a conflicted relationship with the prison: They think its creation was a mistake that worsened radicalization in their countries, but they acknowledge that intelligence from Guantanamo helped them disrupt networks and detect threats.
Now they will play a central role in assessing the risks in Western Europe, where the lack of internal borders makes security concerns regional.
Some of the inmates pose little threat, officials said in recent interviews. But they described others as potentially dangerous veteran militants. And they cited another legacy of Guantanamo: wrongfully accused men whose imprisonment made them radicals.
"What happened in their heads during the past years?" said Alain Grignard, a Belgian federal police commander who has made half a dozen visits to Guantanamo. "They could be bitter because of the treatment. Or there are those who . . . will feel great pressure because of their aura as a Guantanamo veteran. Other extremists will want them to issue fatwas, discuss their experiences -- they will look to them as leaders."
Because of such fears, officials predict that the 27-nation European Union might look for alternative refuges for some Guantanamo veterans. They cite an agreement in which Albania accepted five Chinese Uighur Muslims who were released without charges in 2006.
Western governments will have to wrestle with complex issues of international justice and human rights as they decide the fate of the prison's 250 inmates, said Baltasar Garzon, a high-profile Spanish investigative magistrate and vocal critic of Guantanamo.
"I propose an international commission of distinguished jurists from the United States, Europe, affected countries," Garzon said. "They could determine, case by case, whether there are grounds for prosecution or not. They could make recommendations for the distribution of those who would not be charged. It could be nonbinding, but it would have the weight of objectivity and expertise."
Others envision an international court comparable to tribunals that have judged war crimes suspects from Africa and the Balkans.
Former prisoners with EU citizenship or residency who have been repatriated include 13 sent to Britain, seven to France and two to Spain. Some were prosecuted, but most are free and have not caused problems, officials said.
Nonetheless, the recent revelation that a Guantanamo "graduate" became a chief of Al Qaeda in Yemen, appearing in a defiant video, reverberated in law enforcement circles. Guantanamo's harsh conditions and sense of hopelessness have generated rage and radicalization, anti-terrorism officials said.
"During my first visit, the prisoners I dealt with spoke with an individual voice," a European anti-terrorism official recalled. "But on the second visit, they were already speaking with a collective voice. You could see the dominance of the hard-core ideologues take effect. It's a classic process of group psychology in places like that."
The Europeans expect Washington to request refuge for inmates from countries including China, Uzbekistan, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria that have dismal human rights records. The inmates have been cleared for release but are not being sent home because of the probability that they would be persecuted, jailed and tortured.
Anti-terrorism officials generally regard the 17 Chinese Uighurs and four Uzbeks as unlikely to get involved in anti-Western violence if they are given refuge in Europe. Human rights advocates cite the case of a 31-year-old sheep farmer from Uzbekistan.
Oybek Jabbarov was a refugee with his pregnant wife and son in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led military operation in late 2001. Anti-Taliban fighters turned him over to U.S. troops, who were paying bounties for Al Qaeda militants. He denied being an extremist.
In February 2007, U.S. officials cleared the farmer for release, but he remained in custody because there was nowhere to send him. In a handwritten letter in October, he appealed to the outside world. "I did nothing wrong and I am innocent," he wrote. "But I do not blame the American people for their government's mistake. Even though I am still here in this prison, I have no hate in my heart."
In contrast, European investigators see other inmates as potentially dangerous militants even if prosecution is difficult because much of the alleged activity took place outside Europe. They cite several Tunisians linked to a militant group that assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban warlord, two days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Some of them are dangerous and hyper-motivated," said a senior Italian anti-terrorism official. "They are veterans of Afghanistan. It would be difficult to charge them, but they would have to be kept under surveillance."
Two Tunisians who raise concern among European investigators lived in Italy before their arrests: Hisham Sliti, who a U.S. judge ruled in December could not be cleared for release because of evidence that he was an enemy combatant, and Adel Hakimi.
Hakimi, 43, fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, European investigators say, then became part of a group of Tunisians who joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. In 2002, an Al Qaeda ideologue later convicted in a Belgian court told Belgian police that Hakimi was an operative who helped recruits cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan and reach the militants' base in Jalalabad, according to a Belgian police report.
Hakimi's lawyers argue that U.S. allegations against him are false and based on testimony extracted through torture. They describe him as a peaceful, Westernized resident of Italy who has never seen his 6-year-old daughter. But European investigators point out that Hakimi fathered the girl with the 13-year-old daughter of an Al Qaeda operative later convicted in Belgium.
Americans and Europeans will have to work together to handle the costs and challenges of healing, rehabilitating, housing and, if necessary, monitoring the inmates who come to Europe, Garzon said.
"We have to confront the reality that some bad people will end up walking the streets," Garzon said. "Like the former rapists, robbers and terrorists whom we have walking the streets once they complete their sentence and are released. We have to take the risks that are necessary in a democratic society."
Source
rotella@latimes.com
Having pledged to provide shelter for up to 60 former detainees, the EU now faces a thorny set of questions: Where exactly should they go? Who pays? What happens to them now?
By Sebastian Rotella
5:22 PM PST, February 7, 2009
Reporting from Madrid -- The decision to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay was a dream come true for many Europeans, including anti-terrorism officials who have largely condemned the facility. But European officials acknowledge that dismantling Guantanamo could be something of a nightmare.
The foreign ministers of the European Union recently pledged to help President Obama keep his promise to shutter the prison on the coast of Cuba in a year. They offered to provide refuge for up to 60 inmates who could face persecution in their native lands. Spain, France, Italy and Portugal are among the nations offering to accept former detainees; Germany, Britain and others are reluctant.
Now Europe must confront thorny questions: Which detainees will go where? Should some be prosecuted or imprisoned, if that is even possible? Who pays for medical care, housing, surveillance? Who gets the blame if something awful happens?
The questions challenge a select fraternity of European investigators, diplomats and spies who know Guantanamo firsthand from visits to interrogate or repatriate detainees. These officials have had a conflicted relationship with the prison: They think its creation was a mistake that worsened radicalization in their countries, but they acknowledge that intelligence from Guantanamo helped them disrupt networks and detect threats.
Now they will play a central role in assessing the risks in Western Europe, where the lack of internal borders makes security concerns regional.
Some of the inmates pose little threat, officials said in recent interviews. But they described others as potentially dangerous veteran militants. And they cited another legacy of Guantanamo: wrongfully accused men whose imprisonment made them radicals.
"What happened in their heads during the past years?" said Alain Grignard, a Belgian federal police commander who has made half a dozen visits to Guantanamo. "They could be bitter because of the treatment. Or there are those who . . . will feel great pressure because of their aura as a Guantanamo veteran. Other extremists will want them to issue fatwas, discuss their experiences -- they will look to them as leaders."
Because of such fears, officials predict that the 27-nation European Union might look for alternative refuges for some Guantanamo veterans. They cite an agreement in which Albania accepted five Chinese Uighur Muslims who were released without charges in 2006.
Western governments will have to wrestle with complex issues of international justice and human rights as they decide the fate of the prison's 250 inmates, said Baltasar Garzon, a high-profile Spanish investigative magistrate and vocal critic of Guantanamo.
"I propose an international commission of distinguished jurists from the United States, Europe, affected countries," Garzon said. "They could determine, case by case, whether there are grounds for prosecution or not. They could make recommendations for the distribution of those who would not be charged. It could be nonbinding, but it would have the weight of objectivity and expertise."
Others envision an international court comparable to tribunals that have judged war crimes suspects from Africa and the Balkans.
Former prisoners with EU citizenship or residency who have been repatriated include 13 sent to Britain, seven to France and two to Spain. Some were prosecuted, but most are free and have not caused problems, officials said.
Nonetheless, the recent revelation that a Guantanamo "graduate" became a chief of Al Qaeda in Yemen, appearing in a defiant video, reverberated in law enforcement circles. Guantanamo's harsh conditions and sense of hopelessness have generated rage and radicalization, anti-terrorism officials said.
"During my first visit, the prisoners I dealt with spoke with an individual voice," a European anti-terrorism official recalled. "But on the second visit, they were already speaking with a collective voice. You could see the dominance of the hard-core ideologues take effect. It's a classic process of group psychology in places like that."
The Europeans expect Washington to request refuge for inmates from countries including China, Uzbekistan, Libya, Tunisia and Algeria that have dismal human rights records. The inmates have been cleared for release but are not being sent home because of the probability that they would be persecuted, jailed and tortured.
Anti-terrorism officials generally regard the 17 Chinese Uighurs and four Uzbeks as unlikely to get involved in anti-Western violence if they are given refuge in Europe. Human rights advocates cite the case of a 31-year-old sheep farmer from Uzbekistan.
Oybek Jabbarov was a refugee with his pregnant wife and son in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led military operation in late 2001. Anti-Taliban fighters turned him over to U.S. troops, who were paying bounties for Al Qaeda militants. He denied being an extremist.
In February 2007, U.S. officials cleared the farmer for release, but he remained in custody because there was nowhere to send him. In a handwritten letter in October, he appealed to the outside world. "I did nothing wrong and I am innocent," he wrote. "But I do not blame the American people for their government's mistake. Even though I am still here in this prison, I have no hate in my heart."
In contrast, European investigators see other inmates as potentially dangerous militants even if prosecution is difficult because much of the alleged activity took place outside Europe. They cite several Tunisians linked to a militant group that assassinated Ahmed Shah Massoud, the anti-Taliban warlord, two days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Some of them are dangerous and hyper-motivated," said a senior Italian anti-terrorism official. "They are veterans of Afghanistan. It would be difficult to charge them, but they would have to be kept under surveillance."
Two Tunisians who raise concern among European investigators lived in Italy before their arrests: Hisham Sliti, who a U.S. judge ruled in December could not be cleared for release because of evidence that he was an enemy combatant, and Adel Hakimi.
Hakimi, 43, fought in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s, European investigators say, then became part of a group of Tunisians who joined Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. In 2002, an Al Qaeda ideologue later convicted in a Belgian court told Belgian police that Hakimi was an operative who helped recruits cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan and reach the militants' base in Jalalabad, according to a Belgian police report.
Hakimi's lawyers argue that U.S. allegations against him are false and based on testimony extracted through torture. They describe him as a peaceful, Westernized resident of Italy who has never seen his 6-year-old daughter. But European investigators point out that Hakimi fathered the girl with the 13-year-old daughter of an Al Qaeda operative later convicted in Belgium.
Americans and Europeans will have to work together to handle the costs and challenges of healing, rehabilitating, housing and, if necessary, monitoring the inmates who come to Europe, Garzon said.
"We have to confront the reality that some bad people will end up walking the streets," Garzon said. "Like the former rapists, robbers and terrorists whom we have walking the streets once they complete their sentence and are released. We have to take the risks that are necessary in a democratic society."
Source
rotella@latimes.com
Friday, February 6, 2009
3 Uighurs at Guantanamo ask Canada for asylum
3 Uighurs at Guantanamo ask Canada for asylum
By ROB GILLIES Associated Press Writer
Posted: 02/03/2009 07:49:37 PM EST
TORONTO—Three Chinese detainees cleared for release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay have applied for political asylum in Canada, lawyers for the men and a group sponsoring them said Tuesday.
The men are among 17 Chinese Muslims called Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurz) at Guantanamo. The U.S. has cleared them for release but fears they could be mistreated or even tortured if they are turned over to China, which alleges they are terrorists who belong to an outlawed separatist group.
Two of the inmates applied last week and one applied last October, said Mehmet Tohti, a member of the Uighur Canadian Association, a non-profit cultural organization that is part of the group sponsoring the men's request for asylum.
Tohti said there has been no government response so far to the Uighurs' request. But Canada has refused several requests from Washington in the past to provide asylum for Uighurs cleared for release from Guantanamo.
Danielle Norris, a spokeswoman for Canada's Citizenship and Immigration government agency, said without the consent of the men she could not speak to their specific cases because of privacy laws.
Norris said in an e-mail that the number one focus of the department is protecting the security of Canadians and that any applicant would face rejection if there were reasonable grounds to believe they have "engaged or will engage in acts of terrorism."
Seema Saifee, a New York-based lawyer who represents the
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other two Uighurs, said the economic and diplomatic threat of straining relations with China by accepting the Uighurs is enough to scare a number of governments away from taking them.
Canada—like other countries—has seemed ill at ease in the past with taking on Guantanamo prisoners to remedy a massive headache for the U.S.
The former Bush administration set up Guantanamo in January 2002 for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners, many of them plucked from battlefields in Afghanistan. They were deemed "enemy combatants" and most were never charged with any crime, or given a trial. The prison was condemned repeatedly by human rights groups and many governments.
In one of his first acts as president, Barack Obama ordered Guantanamo shut down within a year. Last month, Obama gave a U.S. task force 30 days to recommend where to put the 245 remaining detainees.
The former Bush administration contended that the Uighurs were too dangerous to be admitted to the U.S. Albania accepted five Uighur detainees in 2006 but has since balked at taking others, partly for fear of diplomatic repercussions from China.
Notes prepared for former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in February 2007, obtained by The Canadian Press news agency under Canada's Access to Information Act, indicate the Bush administration asked Canada to accept Uighur detainees who were deemed to be no threat to national security.
Canadian officials indicated to the U.S. that the men would likely be inadmissible under Canadian immigration law, according to a Foreign Affairs briefing note prepared about a meeting in 2007.
Lawyer George Clarke, whose client Anwar Hassan applied to Canada last October, said Hassan was sent to Guantanamo after being captured in Pakistan in 2002.
"At this point, he is looking forward, not backward, and wants to get on with the rest of his life," Clarke said an e-mail.
Saifee said Canada could help the U.S. by accepting the Uighurs. "It would be a very wonderful gesture of goodwill."
Canadian opposition Liberal Senator Colin Kenny said the United States should deal with Guantanamo itself.
"Why should people clean up their dirty business?" Kenny said. "I don't have much sympathy with the Americans for creating that prison."
Kenny, however, said the only Canadian at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr, should be returned to Canada. Khadr is accused of killing a U.S. medic in Afghanistan. Canada's Conservative government has not asked for his return but has come under pressure to bring him back to Canada.
Source
By ROB GILLIES Associated Press Writer
Posted: 02/03/2009 07:49:37 PM EST
TORONTO—Three Chinese detainees cleared for release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay have applied for political asylum in Canada, lawyers for the men and a group sponsoring them said Tuesday.
The men are among 17 Chinese Muslims called Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurz) at Guantanamo. The U.S. has cleared them for release but fears they could be mistreated or even tortured if they are turned over to China, which alleges they are terrorists who belong to an outlawed separatist group.
Two of the inmates applied last week and one applied last October, said Mehmet Tohti, a member of the Uighur Canadian Association, a non-profit cultural organization that is part of the group sponsoring the men's request for asylum.
Tohti said there has been no government response so far to the Uighurs' request. But Canada has refused several requests from Washington in the past to provide asylum for Uighurs cleared for release from Guantanamo.
Danielle Norris, a spokeswoman for Canada's Citizenship and Immigration government agency, said without the consent of the men she could not speak to their specific cases because of privacy laws.
Norris said in an e-mail that the number one focus of the department is protecting the security of Canadians and that any applicant would face rejection if there were reasonable grounds to believe they have "engaged or will engage in acts of terrorism."
Seema Saifee, a New York-based lawyer who represents the
Advertisement
other two Uighurs, said the economic and diplomatic threat of straining relations with China by accepting the Uighurs is enough to scare a number of governments away from taking them.
Canada—like other countries—has seemed ill at ease in the past with taking on Guantanamo prisoners to remedy a massive headache for the U.S.
The former Bush administration set up Guantanamo in January 2002 for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners, many of them plucked from battlefields in Afghanistan. They were deemed "enemy combatants" and most were never charged with any crime, or given a trial. The prison was condemned repeatedly by human rights groups and many governments.
In one of his first acts as president, Barack Obama ordered Guantanamo shut down within a year. Last month, Obama gave a U.S. task force 30 days to recommend where to put the 245 remaining detainees.
The former Bush administration contended that the Uighurs were too dangerous to be admitted to the U.S. Albania accepted five Uighur detainees in 2006 but has since balked at taking others, partly for fear of diplomatic repercussions from China.
Notes prepared for former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in February 2007, obtained by The Canadian Press news agency under Canada's Access to Information Act, indicate the Bush administration asked Canada to accept Uighur detainees who were deemed to be no threat to national security.
Canadian officials indicated to the U.S. that the men would likely be inadmissible under Canadian immigration law, according to a Foreign Affairs briefing note prepared about a meeting in 2007.
Lawyer George Clarke, whose client Anwar Hassan applied to Canada last October, said Hassan was sent to Guantanamo after being captured in Pakistan in 2002.
"At this point, he is looking forward, not backward, and wants to get on with the rest of his life," Clarke said an e-mail.
Saifee said Canada could help the U.S. by accepting the Uighurs. "It would be a very wonderful gesture of goodwill."
Canadian opposition Liberal Senator Colin Kenny said the United States should deal with Guantanamo itself.
"Why should people clean up their dirty business?" Kenny said. "I don't have much sympathy with the Americans for creating that prison."
Kenny, however, said the only Canadian at Guantanamo, Omar Khadr, should be returned to Canada. Khadr is accused of killing a U.S. medic in Afghanistan. Canada's Conservative government has not asked for his return but has come under pressure to bring him back to Canada.
Source
German City Of Munich Says It Will Accept Guantanamo Uighurs
German City Of Munich Says It Will Accept Guantanamo Uighurs
Friday February 6th, 2009 / 14h36
BERLIN (AFP)--The German city of Munich, home to the biggest community of ethnic Uighurs outside China, has offered to host the 17 members of the Chinese minority held at Guantanamo Bay, authorities said Friday.
A city hall official confirmed a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily that the municipal council had supported a motion to this effect put forward by the Green party Thursday.
However the offer will need approval from the cross-party government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which is divided on the issue of taking inmates from Guantanamo after Washington closes the prison for terror suspects on Cuba.
Social Democrat Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is in favour of taking in some freed prisoners while Christian Democrat Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaueble is against.
The case of the Uighurs arrested in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo for the past seven years is exceptional.
All have been cleared of terrorist activity but Washington has declined to repatriate them to China for fear they would be persecuted or tortured.
Beijing has demanded the return of the 17, who it says were part of a U.N.-listed terror group seeking an independent homeland in the Uighur-populated Xinjiang region.
Lawyers for three of them have filed applications for refugee status in Canada, prompting a warning from Beijing Thursday.
"We have expressed our position many times about those Chinese terrorists detained in Guantanamo. We are opposed to any country accepting those people," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing.
"We hope the parties concerned can resolve conveniently this issue according to the international laws and regulations".
Uighurs, who are mostly Muslim, form the largest ethnic group in northwest China's Xinjiang region that borders Central Asia. Some hope for independence from China.
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/access/al?rnd=DUfQFoYeZEw3vhtSjGoMmw%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
Friday February 6th, 2009 / 14h36
Source
Friday February 6th, 2009 / 14h36
BERLIN (AFP)--The German city of Munich, home to the biggest community of ethnic Uighurs outside China, has offered to host the 17 members of the Chinese minority held at Guantanamo Bay, authorities said Friday.
A city hall official confirmed a report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily that the municipal council had supported a motion to this effect put forward by the Green party Thursday.
However the offer will need approval from the cross-party government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which is divided on the issue of taking inmates from Guantanamo after Washington closes the prison for terror suspects on Cuba.
Social Democrat Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is in favour of taking in some freed prisoners while Christian Democrat Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaueble is against.
The case of the Uighurs arrested in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and held at Guantanamo for the past seven years is exceptional.
All have been cleared of terrorist activity but Washington has declined to repatriate them to China for fear they would be persecuted or tortured.
Beijing has demanded the return of the 17, who it says were part of a U.N.-listed terror group seeking an independent homeland in the Uighur-populated Xinjiang region.
Lawyers for three of them have filed applications for refugee status in Canada, prompting a warning from Beijing Thursday.
"We have expressed our position many times about those Chinese terrorists detained in Guantanamo. We are opposed to any country accepting those people," Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing.
"We hope the parties concerned can resolve conveniently this issue according to the international laws and regulations".
Uighurs, who are mostly Muslim, form the largest ethnic group in northwest China's Xinjiang region that borders Central Asia. Some hope for independence from China.
Click here to go to Dow Jones NewsPlus, a web front page of today's most important business and market news, analysis and commentary: http://www.djnewsplus.com/access/al?rnd=DUfQFoYeZEw3vhtSjGoMmw%3D%3D. You can use this link on the day this article is published and the following day.
Friday February 6th, 2009 / 14h36
Source
Thursday, February 5, 2009
China demands that no country accept Gitmo Uyghurs as refugees
China demands that no country accept Gitmo Uyghurs as refugees
OMAR EL-AKKAD
Globe and Mail Update
February 5, 2009 at 11:32 PM EST
China is demanding no country accept as refugees a group of Uyghurs imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, including three who have applied for resettlement in Canada.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu did not mention Canada directly Thursday, but said China was “against any country accepting these people.”
“We hope it will be handled appropriately and in accordance with international law,” Ms. Jiang said at a regularly scheduled news conference.
Beijing contends that international law requires the men be returned to China, although there is no accepted consensus. Uyghurs are members of a Muslim minority from northwestern China.
All 17 Uyghurs still held at Guantanamo have been cleared of wrongdoing by the United States. Concerns that the prisoners would be tortured upon their return have kept Washington from sending them back to China. The Uyghurs were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, some by Pakistani bounty hunters.
Ms. Jiang did not give details or say whether China plans retaliatory action against countries that might accept the men.
As one of his first official acts, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the Guantanamo Bay prison and court system to be shut down within a year. That means Washington will have to find new homes for the 250 remaining prisoners, of which the Pentagon originally planned to charge about 80, and attempt to release about 70. The future of the remaining prisoners is even more uncertain.
Some European legislators and human-rights groups are putting pressure on the European Union to accept some of the men. Canada is also under intense pressure to repatriate Omar Khadr, a Canadian who is the only Western citizen still in the prison. Human-rights groups are also asking Ottawa to accept some or all of the Uyghur detainees, who have been cleared of wrongdoing by the United States.
Even in the United States, there is resistance to taking on any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Lawmakers from regions with “supermax” prisons – the likely home for any accused prisoners returned to the mainland – have already balked at the idea of taking the men, saying it would make those regions targets of attacks.
Omar El Akkad, with a report from The Associated Press
Source
OMAR EL-AKKAD
Globe and Mail Update
February 5, 2009 at 11:32 PM EST
China is demanding no country accept as refugees a group of Uyghurs imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, including three who have applied for resettlement in Canada.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu did not mention Canada directly Thursday, but said China was “against any country accepting these people.”
“We hope it will be handled appropriately and in accordance with international law,” Ms. Jiang said at a regularly scheduled news conference.
Beijing contends that international law requires the men be returned to China, although there is no accepted consensus. Uyghurs are members of a Muslim minority from northwestern China.
All 17 Uyghurs still held at Guantanamo have been cleared of wrongdoing by the United States. Concerns that the prisoners would be tortured upon their return have kept Washington from sending them back to China. The Uyghurs were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, some by Pakistani bounty hunters.
Ms. Jiang did not give details or say whether China plans retaliatory action against countries that might accept the men.
As one of his first official acts, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the Guantanamo Bay prison and court system to be shut down within a year. That means Washington will have to find new homes for the 250 remaining prisoners, of which the Pentagon originally planned to charge about 80, and attempt to release about 70. The future of the remaining prisoners is even more uncertain.
Some European legislators and human-rights groups are putting pressure on the European Union to accept some of the men. Canada is also under intense pressure to repatriate Omar Khadr, a Canadian who is the only Western citizen still in the prison. Human-rights groups are also asking Ottawa to accept some or all of the Uyghur detainees, who have been cleared of wrongdoing by the United States.
Even in the United States, there is resistance to taking on any of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Lawmakers from regions with “supermax” prisons – the likely home for any accused prisoners returned to the mainland – have already balked at the idea of taking the men, saying it would make those regions targets of attacks.
Omar El Akkad, with a report from The Associated Press
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* Last Updated: February 06. 2009 9:30AM UAE / February 6. 2009 5:30AM GMT
Obama has announced plans to shut down Guantanamo. But what will happen to the men inside? Joshua Kurlantzick on the plight of 22 Uighur detainees trapped in a legal limbo.
As I wandered through a twisting back alley, I nearly got lost in a maze of brick homes. Stumbling into an interior courtyard, I saw two elderly men with skullcaps and stringy white beards dipping nan into tea at a tiny table. Nearby, two women, their faces covered except for the eyes, wielded long knives to pluck the rind from sweet melons.
The call to prayer rang out, and the older men roused themselves. I followed them back into the alley, and saw hundreds of men pushing toward the mosque. I went with the crowd, shoved past carpet sellers, knife-sharpeners and a man getting a precarious-looking straight razor shave in the middle of the surging mob. Then I exited the alley and, with a shock, came to a wide boulevard policed by stern-looking Chinese security officials standing ramrod-straight.
It is easy to forget you are in China in the backstreets of Kashgar, the westernmost major city in the country. Indeed, for centuries the vast western part of China, known today as Xinjiang, was linked more to Central Asia and the Middle East than to the Middle Kingdom. A hub on the Silk Road, Xinjiang was populated primarily by Muslim Turkic peoples known as Uighurs, who spoke a language similar to Turkish. Several times in the past two hundred years, the Uighurs had their own independent country, but after the Communist takeover of Beijing, Xinjiang fell under Chinese rule.
It has not been an easy marriage. During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese officials housed pigs in the region’s mosques just to insult the Uighurs and forbade any traditional religious or cultural celebrations; sometimes they simply burnt mosques to the ground.
Even as the government loosened its hand in other parts of the country in the 1980s and 1990s, control remained tight in Xinjiang, since Beijing always feared separatist sentiment in the province. Even today, Uighurs told me, government officials make it almost impossible for them to go on pilgrimage abroad and security forces monitor activity at every mosque. Beijing has also created incentives for Han Chinese to migrate to the province, changing the ethnic balance and making it harder for Uighurs to find work.
According to a report by Human Rights Watch, China commits even worse atrocities: it alleges that, in Xinjiang, “peaceful activists who practice their religion in a manner deemed unacceptable by state authorities or Chinese Communist Party officials are arrested, tortured and at times executed”.
Given this sour history, perhaps it should not have been surprising that, in their post-September 11 sweep of Afghanistan, American forces discovered a group of Uighur men in the Afghan mountains. The US troops immediately assumed the Uighurs had travelled to Afghanistan to attend terrorist training camps, allegedly in the Tora Bora region. Contending they were members of a terror group operating in Xinjiang, US forces shipped 22 of the Uighurs to Guantanamo Bay. But there was one problem: America could not prove the men had done anything wrong.
By 2005, in fact, the Pentagon had decided that most of the Uighurs posed no threat to the United States. Today these same men, declared innocent, still sit inside Guantanamo, where, according to one affidavit, the Uighurs were held round-the-clock in almost total isolation, a condition that could drive anyone insane.
They remained there because, in those intervening years, Washington realised the real problem with the Uighurs, one that will confront Barack Obama as he tries to figure out how to close Guantanamo Bay: What do you do with men you’ve branded as terrorists, once you realised they’re not?
The story of the Uighurs in Guantanamo, which is now being heard in America’s highest courts, might have been the tale of many young men in Xinjiang chafing at Chinese rule and searching for work in a province increasingly dominated by Chinese migrants. On several trips through the province, I found an almost totally balkanised society.
In cities like Kashgar and Urumqi, the capital, thousands of Chinese migrants have arrived, lured by an influx of state money ploughed into new infrastructure projects, like upgraded road and rail systems. The Chinese cluster in their own part of town; one area of Kashgar has been entirely made up of cheap hotels and restaurants catering to migrants from Sichuan province. The Uighurs, meanwhile, keep to their own areas. “I didn’t really speak with many of the Chinese students at my school,” one Uighur girl told me.
Under the surface, anger simmers across Xinjiang. On an average summer Sunday, I visited Kashgar’s famed weekend market, which draws thousands of traders from across Central Asia. Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Uighurs and Pakistanis haggled over long knives from southern Xinjiang, thick woven carpets from Afghanistan and flashy mobile phones from eastern China. Commerce seemed the order of the day. But later that Sunday afternoon, I stopped for a meal at the courtyard home of a Uighur family. After only a few minutes of chatting over slices of the candy-sweet local hami melon, the family’s true feelings emerged. “Uighurs cannot get any jobs – anything good is reserved for Chinese,” one girl said. “We’re just left here, and now we’ll lose our houses” in the Chinese reconstruction of Kashgar, which is levelling many old neighbourhoods.
In recent years some Uighurs have begun acting upon this hatred. To be sure, most live in a cold peace with China, and the region is known for its moderate Islam, which mixed over the years with local folk customs. But in the early 1990s, large anti-China riots broke out in several cities, killing several Chinese officials. More recently, in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, militants allegedly targeted a police post in Kashgar, tossing explosives at the policemen and then attacking them with knives, killing 16. Beijing claims that militant Uighurs have formed several terrorist groups, including one called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Uighur terror groups have also allegedly claimed responsibility for other recent attacks, including bombings in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan in 2008.
Abu Bakr Qassim could easily have been one of those angry young men. In China, he had slowly become more and more opposed to Beijing’s rule. After joining a series of demonstrations against China in the late 1990s, he wound up in the hands of Chinese security forces, who tortured him with electric shocks before eventually releasing him. Several years later, Abu Bakr journeyed to Afghanistan and Pakistan – possibly to receive militant training, or, as he claims, for completely benign reasons.
Picked up by American forces near the mountains of Tora Bora, Abu Bakr claimed that he’d never had contact with any terror group. He also claimed to have nothing against the United States. In fact, as I learned in Xinjiang, many Uighurs have historically looked up to America, which has consistently highlighted Beijing’s abuses against Chinese Muslims; the Uighurs are among the most pro-America Muslims on earth. “The US is traditionally viewed positively in Xinjiang – a beacon for freedom of expression and religion,” says Nicholas Becquelin, a Uighur expert at Human Rights Watch.
In the furious pace of the Afghan war, of course, American forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan had little time to sort out such stories. Along with 21 other Uighurs, including many captured in Pakistan by bounty hunters eager for reward, Abu Bakr was shipped to a holding centre in Kandahar and packed onto a military flight. The Uighurs thought they were being flown to America, and despite the travelling conditions – blindfolds, shackles – they were overjoyed. As one Uighur human rights activist told me, many of the detainees were thrilled: they expected to be released into the United States.
But instead of arriving in America the Uighurs entered a world of nightmarish and bewildering confinement. As foreign citizens facing charges on US soil, the detainees still did not have the right to file a complaint in an American court. Many learned about al Qa’eda and the war in Afghanistan for the first time after they arrived at Guantanamo. “Al Qa’eda’s name we heard in here,” one detainee told a military tribunal, according to his transcript. “This is the first time I have ever heard of them,” another detainee said when asked about the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
The Uighurs could not even see the evidence against them. One exchange between a Uighur prisoner and the military tribunal perfectly captured this absurdity: “When you accuse me as an enemy combatant, do you have any evidence?” one Uighur detainee asked at a tribunal hearing. “You have all the information you may see now. We will see more information but you are not permitted to see it,” the tribunal president responded. In other hearings, the Uighur detainees showed their ignorance of Islamism in general and Al Qa’eda specifically, confounding their jailers. Many had not even heard about September 11 in Afghanistan.
Like most of the Guantanamo detainees, the Uighurs endured extremely repressive and isolating conditions. One of the Uighurs, who had severe food allergies, found that the guards’ response was simply to feed him nothing. Others started hearing voices after spending years without significant human contact. In a court filing, one of the Uighurs’ lawyers described the men as feeling an intense “abandonment by the world” and living in a constant state of despair. In an unusual letter released to the public, a Uighur detainee named Abdulghappar Turkistani complains that he is “surrounded with a metal box all around” and allowed virtually no light or fresh air. The conditions, he laments, “are not suitable for a human being.”
The Uighurs soon became pawns in a much larger game of US-China relations. Before September 11, the Bush administration, dominated by hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney, vowed to take a hard line with Beijing. But the White House rapidly shifted course after the attacks, realising it couldn’t launch a global war on terror and confront China at the same time. So, even as most American officials quietly doubted whether any real Uighur terrorist groups existed, in 2002 the State Department placed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement on its watchlist of international terror groups, alongside real global threats like al Qa’eda. “The entire mood toward China changed” in the White House, one former Bush administration official told me. “You had no appetite for taking on China now.”
One court filing by the Uighurs’ lawyers suggests the White House went much farther in trying to please China. In the brief, the lawyers suggest that the administration agreed in 2002 to keep the Uighurs locked up in Guantanamo for a lengthy period of time, and in exchange Beijing, a member of the UN Security Council, would not oppose the US invasion of Iraq. Indeed, the White House allowed the very Chinese security services accused of widespread abuses in the State Department’s annual human rights reports to visit Guantanamo and question the Uighur detainees. The US handed files on the Uighur detainees – containing details like the names and addresses of their family members – over to Chinese security forces.
Worst of all, according to one report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General, US forces at Guantanamo took part in the questioning of prisoners alongside Chinese interrogators. According to the report, the Americans went so far as to deprive the Uighurs of sleep, heat, and food before Chinese security forces came to their Guantanamo cells, presumably to soften them up for questioning. In testimony to Congress, the Inspector General, Glenn Fine, confirmed as much, saying that US forces utilised sleep deprivation “to put the Uighurs in a position to be interrogated by the Chinese government” and then forcibly restrained the Uighurs so they could be interrogated by the Chinese.
As with many of the other prisoners held at Guantanamo, though, the case against the Uighurs was far from clear. Were they terrorists? Had they actually targeted the US on the field of combat? After all, Guantanamo was designed to hold enemy combatants, not just any militant with separatist aims – the US was not locking up Tamil Tigers or Zapatistas there. Most of the Uighur detainees professed respect for the United States. “America never hurt me; why would I join against them? If I wanted military training it would have been to fight the Chinese government. There have never been problems between the Americans and the Uighurs,” one Uighur detainee said at his tribunal hearing.
Similar to Abu Bakr Qassim, most of the men claimed to be traders who had been travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan on the way to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where they peddled cheap Chinese goods. “When I was in my country the Chinese government tortured our people. We suffered much and I can’t take it … I was in Pakistan and tried to do business, but it didn’t work out,” one detainee said, according to a transcript of his tribunal. (Some transcripts have been publicly released, but others have not; I was able to obtain unreleased and unclassified documents from human rights activists and lawyers.)
One of the younger captives, Ayoub Haji Mamet, 18, said he had been on a long journey with one ultimate goal: trying to get to America to go to school. Some of the Uighurs did admit they’d received limited military training in Afghanistan in order to oppose Beijing in the future, but that they had no plans to commit terrorist attacks, and had nothing against America. Others expressed a decidedly moderate view of Islam. Pressed by the military tribunal to admit he was an Islamic militant who wanted to convert the whole world to his faith, one detainee answered: “People have a choice. You cannot ask people to join; it’s the person’s choice.”
By 2003, many in the Pentagon already had doubts that the Uighurs posed any danger to the US. And by 2005, its review boards formally said the same. Finally, the Uighur captives thought their journey was over. As I learned from several Uighur activists in the US, the detainees, still sympathetic to the US despite their ordeal, believed America might take them as refugees. After all, America had already welcomed Rabeeya Kadeer, probably the most famous Uighur political activist, jailed in China before personal appeals by President Bush helped win her freedom.
In reality, though, the Uighurs’ saga was only beginning. Once they had been determined to be no threat to the US, the White House wanted to get them out of Guantanamo, sensing the potential embarrassment of holding men now essentially deemed innocent. In 2005, a District Court Judge ruled that the White House was breaking US law in continuing to imprison Uighurs who were not enemy combatants. By the end of the following year, Pentagon Administrative Review Boards had approved 21 of the 22 Uighur captives for release.
But the Bush administration – which had loudly proclaimed the Guantanamo detainees to be “the worst of the worst” – had made the men persona non grata everywhere else. “We know that these are dangerous terrorists being kept at Guantá=namo Bay. They are people determined to harm innocent civilians,” the former White House spokesman Scott McClellan once told reporters. Now, the White House wanted to dump these “dangerous terrorists” on another country. A return to China appeared out of the question, for fear the men would be locked up again and tortured back in the People’s Republic, so the administration sought a third country.
Quietly, for fear of offending China, administration officials told me, the White House approached several European countries and Canada, seeking to place the Uighurs. But few countries wanted to take a chance on men tainted by their time in Guantanamo: after all, Washington wouldn’t take them in either. As Becquelin, of Human Rights Watch says: “The US government lost all leverage with third countries by refusing to take on its soil Uighur detainees cleared for release. Many EU countries did not see why they should help the US.”
At the same time, I learned, Beijing was twisting the screws on Berlin, Paris and many other European capitals, where trade with China has become far more important over the past decade – Chinese firms in recent years have bought up European brands such as Britain’s MG Rover and essentially bailed out a range of European financial houses. No country wants to alienate China – and taking in Uighurs as refugees would be a massive slap in the face, a tacit acknowledgement that Beijing’s rule over Xinjiang is harsh and repressive. At one point, the White House thought Canada might take some of the Uighurs, but at the last second Ottawa backed off, thanks to intense pressure from China. Ultimately, several US officials say, the White House tried to get nearly 100 nations to take in the Uighurs, with no takers, due to intense Chinese pressure behind the scenes.
Only two decades removed from a brutal, isolationist dictatorship, the streets of Tirana, capital of the tiny country of Albania, remain dominated by squat, drab Soviet-style apartment blocks that look like oversized rabbit hutches. Many of the apartment blocks are rotting from years of neglect and poverty, their tiny balconies rusting away.
But lonely Albania became the Uighurs’ hope. Deeply indebted to the United States, which helped rescue Albanians’ ethnic brethren in Kosovo in the late 1990s and pushed Albania’s case for joining the European Union, the country had to listen to a Bush administration request. (When President Bush visited the country in 2007, Albanians mobbed him like he was a rock star.)
Shortly before an appeals court hearing to consider the Uighurs’ request for admission to the United States, a military plane brought five of them to Albania. On their way out, according to one account, the guards offered them a brief apology for their poor stay, as if they’d been in a shabby hotel and the room service order got screwed up. Some human rights activists in the US believe that Washington sent them to Albania to prevent them from winning their release into the US and, potentially, telling all about conditions at Guantanamo.
Living on stipends worth less than $100 per month, they struggled to find work or local contacts, since Albania, unlike other European nations such as Germany, has virtually no Uighur community. Mostly, according to people who’ve followed their case, the Uighur refugees studied the Quran all day and worried about their friends back in Guantanamo. Under pressure from China, even Albania eventually decided it would take no more Uighurs, leaving 17 at Guantanamo.
In October 2008, US District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina declared that since the remaining Uighurs had been cleared, they could no longer be jailed at Guantanamo while the White House sought a new home for them; instead, it would have to bring them to America. Inside the courtroom, packed with human rights activists and some Uighurs living in the US, a crowd broke into cheers. In the Washington, DC area, local Uighurs started making plans to take in the refugees and acclimate them to life in America.
Following the ruling, the White House issued a most extraordinary appeal. Admitting the Uighurs were not enemy combatants, the administration still asked a higher court to stay the federal judge’s decision and keep the Uighurs locked up. “The district court’s ruling, if allowed to stand, could be used as precedent for other detainees held at Guantánamo, including sworn enemies of the US suspected of planning the attacks of 9/11, who may also seek release into our country,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
The Uighurs’ bizarre saga is sadly not a unique one: despite declaring that a majority of the detainees at Guantanamo are no longer enemy combatants, the White House still holds some 250 men there – not only Uighurs but also most probably Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians and men from other countries with weak rule of law, for fear of the treatment they will receive if returned home. (The Pentagon keeps the exact national breakdown of Guantanamo detainees secret.) One Tunisian detainee was reportedly forced to sign a document back in Tunisia confessing to being a terrorist – after security forces threatened to rape his wife and daughter. Prisoners released to Tajikistan were quickly sentenced to jail time when they returned home. In another case, documented by Human Rights Watch, the administration released seven Russian detainees back to their home country, despite having little assurance they would be treated humanely. (The State Department’s human rights report chronicles numerous abuses by the Russian security forces.)
Upon arriving at the airport in Russia, Human Rights Watch found, the detainees were immediately beaten in a kind of perverse welcome home, and then thrown in jail without due process and tortured. Their Guantanamo sojourn, apparently, had marked them for life. “I was told many times that after my time in Guantanamo, it wasn’t necessary to prove I was a terrorist,” one of the Russian detainees said.
“The current administration hasn’t taken the problem of torture upon return seriously enough,” says Joanne Mariner, who follows detainee issues at Human Rights Watch. But, she says, she is hopeful that the Obama administration will “resettle some detainees itself” – in America.
Obama has now signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year and banned torture by American forces, making a sharp break from Bush. But closing the prison camp may be easier said than done: within days of Obama’s executive order, the New York Times revealed that a former Guantanamo detainee, Said Ali al Shihri, who had been returned to Saudi Arabia to be rehabilitated, had re-emerged as the number two in al Qa’eda Yemen. Saudi authorities reportedly worry that other former detainees, who have dropped out of their view, have also rejoined militant groups. Even some Democrats worry privately, in light of stories like al Shihri’s, that closing the prison camp too soon may be a mistake.
Obama has not made any major comment on the risk of releasing dangerous men, but one experienced Washington counterterror expert believes he may have to devise some compromise to hold detainees who appear to be genuine militants even if the US lacks sufficient evidence to make a case against them in American courts.
Despite the executive order, Obama’s approach still “keeps all options on the table,” according to the Brookings Institution legal scholar Benjamin Wittes, who says the new administration retains “wide latitude to make policy” if it believes some detainees are too dangerous to be released. “[The executive order] is careful to preserve all options for each detainee. It does not require any detainee’s release or transfer. It does not require any detainee’s prosecution. It does not preclude the eventual use of military commissions or some other alternative trial venue.”
“Even without passing legislation,” Joanne Mariner says, “the new administration might rely de facto on preventive detention to continue to hold some number of Guantanamo detainees without prosecuting them” – just as the Bush administration did.
Indeed, if Obama takes in some of the detainees as refugees to America, he risks losing a huge political battle, since opponents could claim that he is allowing terrorists into the country. (Already, several prominent GOP leaders have attacked Obama over his plans to close the prison.) If he tries to find third countries to take in detainees from valued US allies like Saudi Arabia because of fears of torture and illegal detention back home, he risks offending their governments. And as he releases more men from Guantanamo, Obama may be left with the few detainees who are truly terrorists, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – as well as men who are probably violent jihadists but cannot be prosecuted for lack of admissible evidence.
So the Uighurs wait in Guantanamo. These court decisions did not ease the conditions of their captivity. The Pentagon kept most of the Uighurs, now cleared charges that they fought against the US, in solitary confinement. According to the Washington Post, many remained shackled to the floor.
Back in Xinjiang, some Uighurs seem shockingly placid about America, despite the treatment of their brethren. “Uighurs’ reaction has been both relief and disappointment,” says Nury Turkel, a prominent Uighur activist and lawyer in Washington, DC, who has been in touch with the families of many of the detainees. “They’re relieved because the [US] government has refused to hand the men over to the Chinese.” Or as one Uighur girl told me in 2007, in the ultimate sign of America’s enduring appeal. “I may try to go to Malaysia if I can get a passport [to leave China] … but I hope to come study in America one day at least.”
Eventually, if they wait long enough, the Uighurs in Guantanamo might get so lucky. Perhaps pressure by US courts and human rights activists will force the Obama administration to take a political risk and accept some of the Uighurs still in Cuba. In the past, Uighurs have found the US welcoming, and fit in relatively well; as Turkel notes, before the Guantanamo detentions, the Uighurs had one of the highest rates of refugee acceptance, per capita, into America.
Or, as the world’s anger at the Bush administration and Guantanamo begins to fade, other countries might prove more willing to accept detainees. Portugal has publicly agreed to take in some men and urged other European nations to follow suit; some of them have begun to consider doing so, though it remains to be seen if their generosity will extend to the Uighurs, for fear of angering China.
Yet for some of the Uighurs still at Guantanamo, seven years of captivity, confusion and isolation has soured them irreparably – America has come to remind them, sadly, of their homeland. “Our country does not give us a chance to learn the Quran,” one detainee said, in the midst of his military tribunal, after he realised some of the evidence presented against him was that he’d travelled to Afghanistan to study. “If the US reads the Quran and [says] it is a crime [to read it], what is the difference between the US and China?”
Joshua Kurlantzick is the author of Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World.
Source
* Last Updated: February 06. 2009 9:30AM UAE / February 6. 2009 5:30AM GMT
Obama has announced plans to shut down Guantanamo. But what will happen to the men inside? Joshua Kurlantzick on the plight of 22 Uighur detainees trapped in a legal limbo.
As I wandered through a twisting back alley, I nearly got lost in a maze of brick homes. Stumbling into an interior courtyard, I saw two elderly men with skullcaps and stringy white beards dipping nan into tea at a tiny table. Nearby, two women, their faces covered except for the eyes, wielded long knives to pluck the rind from sweet melons.
The call to prayer rang out, and the older men roused themselves. I followed them back into the alley, and saw hundreds of men pushing toward the mosque. I went with the crowd, shoved past carpet sellers, knife-sharpeners and a man getting a precarious-looking straight razor shave in the middle of the surging mob. Then I exited the alley and, with a shock, came to a wide boulevard policed by stern-looking Chinese security officials standing ramrod-straight.
It is easy to forget you are in China in the backstreets of Kashgar, the westernmost major city in the country. Indeed, for centuries the vast western part of China, known today as Xinjiang, was linked more to Central Asia and the Middle East than to the Middle Kingdom. A hub on the Silk Road, Xinjiang was populated primarily by Muslim Turkic peoples known as Uighurs, who spoke a language similar to Turkish. Several times in the past two hundred years, the Uighurs had their own independent country, but after the Communist takeover of Beijing, Xinjiang fell under Chinese rule.
It has not been an easy marriage. During the Cultural Revolution, Chinese officials housed pigs in the region’s mosques just to insult the Uighurs and forbade any traditional religious or cultural celebrations; sometimes they simply burnt mosques to the ground.
Even as the government loosened its hand in other parts of the country in the 1980s and 1990s, control remained tight in Xinjiang, since Beijing always feared separatist sentiment in the province. Even today, Uighurs told me, government officials make it almost impossible for them to go on pilgrimage abroad and security forces monitor activity at every mosque. Beijing has also created incentives for Han Chinese to migrate to the province, changing the ethnic balance and making it harder for Uighurs to find work.
According to a report by Human Rights Watch, China commits even worse atrocities: it alleges that, in Xinjiang, “peaceful activists who practice their religion in a manner deemed unacceptable by state authorities or Chinese Communist Party officials are arrested, tortured and at times executed”.
Given this sour history, perhaps it should not have been surprising that, in their post-September 11 sweep of Afghanistan, American forces discovered a group of Uighur men in the Afghan mountains. The US troops immediately assumed the Uighurs had travelled to Afghanistan to attend terrorist training camps, allegedly in the Tora Bora region. Contending they were members of a terror group operating in Xinjiang, US forces shipped 22 of the Uighurs to Guantanamo Bay. But there was one problem: America could not prove the men had done anything wrong.
By 2005, in fact, the Pentagon had decided that most of the Uighurs posed no threat to the United States. Today these same men, declared innocent, still sit inside Guantanamo, where, according to one affidavit, the Uighurs were held round-the-clock in almost total isolation, a condition that could drive anyone insane.
They remained there because, in those intervening years, Washington realised the real problem with the Uighurs, one that will confront Barack Obama as he tries to figure out how to close Guantanamo Bay: What do you do with men you’ve branded as terrorists, once you realised they’re not?
The story of the Uighurs in Guantanamo, which is now being heard in America’s highest courts, might have been the tale of many young men in Xinjiang chafing at Chinese rule and searching for work in a province increasingly dominated by Chinese migrants. On several trips through the province, I found an almost totally balkanised society.
In cities like Kashgar and Urumqi, the capital, thousands of Chinese migrants have arrived, lured by an influx of state money ploughed into new infrastructure projects, like upgraded road and rail systems. The Chinese cluster in their own part of town; one area of Kashgar has been entirely made up of cheap hotels and restaurants catering to migrants from Sichuan province. The Uighurs, meanwhile, keep to their own areas. “I didn’t really speak with many of the Chinese students at my school,” one Uighur girl told me.
Under the surface, anger simmers across Xinjiang. On an average summer Sunday, I visited Kashgar’s famed weekend market, which draws thousands of traders from across Central Asia. Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Uighurs and Pakistanis haggled over long knives from southern Xinjiang, thick woven carpets from Afghanistan and flashy mobile phones from eastern China. Commerce seemed the order of the day. But later that Sunday afternoon, I stopped for a meal at the courtyard home of a Uighur family. After only a few minutes of chatting over slices of the candy-sweet local hami melon, the family’s true feelings emerged. “Uighurs cannot get any jobs – anything good is reserved for Chinese,” one girl said. “We’re just left here, and now we’ll lose our houses” in the Chinese reconstruction of Kashgar, which is levelling many old neighbourhoods.
In recent years some Uighurs have begun acting upon this hatred. To be sure, most live in a cold peace with China, and the region is known for its moderate Islam, which mixed over the years with local folk customs. But in the early 1990s, large anti-China riots broke out in several cities, killing several Chinese officials. More recently, in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, militants allegedly targeted a police post in Kashgar, tossing explosives at the policemen and then attacking them with knives, killing 16. Beijing claims that militant Uighurs have formed several terrorist groups, including one called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Uighur terror groups have also allegedly claimed responsibility for other recent attacks, including bombings in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan in 2008.
Abu Bakr Qassim could easily have been one of those angry young men. In China, he had slowly become more and more opposed to Beijing’s rule. After joining a series of demonstrations against China in the late 1990s, he wound up in the hands of Chinese security forces, who tortured him with electric shocks before eventually releasing him. Several years later, Abu Bakr journeyed to Afghanistan and Pakistan – possibly to receive militant training, or, as he claims, for completely benign reasons.
Picked up by American forces near the mountains of Tora Bora, Abu Bakr claimed that he’d never had contact with any terror group. He also claimed to have nothing against the United States. In fact, as I learned in Xinjiang, many Uighurs have historically looked up to America, which has consistently highlighted Beijing’s abuses against Chinese Muslims; the Uighurs are among the most pro-America Muslims on earth. “The US is traditionally viewed positively in Xinjiang – a beacon for freedom of expression and religion,” says Nicholas Becquelin, a Uighur expert at Human Rights Watch.
In the furious pace of the Afghan war, of course, American forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan had little time to sort out such stories. Along with 21 other Uighurs, including many captured in Pakistan by bounty hunters eager for reward, Abu Bakr was shipped to a holding centre in Kandahar and packed onto a military flight. The Uighurs thought they were being flown to America, and despite the travelling conditions – blindfolds, shackles – they were overjoyed. As one Uighur human rights activist told me, many of the detainees were thrilled: they expected to be released into the United States.
But instead of arriving in America the Uighurs entered a world of nightmarish and bewildering confinement. As foreign citizens facing charges on US soil, the detainees still did not have the right to file a complaint in an American court. Many learned about al Qa’eda and the war in Afghanistan for the first time after they arrived at Guantanamo. “Al Qa’eda’s name we heard in here,” one detainee told a military tribunal, according to his transcript. “This is the first time I have ever heard of them,” another detainee said when asked about the East Turkestan Islamic Movement.
The Uighurs could not even see the evidence against them. One exchange between a Uighur prisoner and the military tribunal perfectly captured this absurdity: “When you accuse me as an enemy combatant, do you have any evidence?” one Uighur detainee asked at a tribunal hearing. “You have all the information you may see now. We will see more information but you are not permitted to see it,” the tribunal president responded. In other hearings, the Uighur detainees showed their ignorance of Islamism in general and Al Qa’eda specifically, confounding their jailers. Many had not even heard about September 11 in Afghanistan.
Like most of the Guantanamo detainees, the Uighurs endured extremely repressive and isolating conditions. One of the Uighurs, who had severe food allergies, found that the guards’ response was simply to feed him nothing. Others started hearing voices after spending years without significant human contact. In a court filing, one of the Uighurs’ lawyers described the men as feeling an intense “abandonment by the world” and living in a constant state of despair. In an unusual letter released to the public, a Uighur detainee named Abdulghappar Turkistani complains that he is “surrounded with a metal box all around” and allowed virtually no light or fresh air. The conditions, he laments, “are not suitable for a human being.”
The Uighurs soon became pawns in a much larger game of US-China relations. Before September 11, the Bush administration, dominated by hawks like Vice President Dick Cheney, vowed to take a hard line with Beijing. But the White House rapidly shifted course after the attacks, realising it couldn’t launch a global war on terror and confront China at the same time. So, even as most American officials quietly doubted whether any real Uighur terrorist groups existed, in 2002 the State Department placed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement on its watchlist of international terror groups, alongside real global threats like al Qa’eda. “The entire mood toward China changed” in the White House, one former Bush administration official told me. “You had no appetite for taking on China now.”
One court filing by the Uighurs’ lawyers suggests the White House went much farther in trying to please China. In the brief, the lawyers suggest that the administration agreed in 2002 to keep the Uighurs locked up in Guantanamo for a lengthy period of time, and in exchange Beijing, a member of the UN Security Council, would not oppose the US invasion of Iraq. Indeed, the White House allowed the very Chinese security services accused of widespread abuses in the State Department’s annual human rights reports to visit Guantanamo and question the Uighur detainees. The US handed files on the Uighur detainees – containing details like the names and addresses of their family members – over to Chinese security forces.
Worst of all, according to one report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General, US forces at Guantanamo took part in the questioning of prisoners alongside Chinese interrogators. According to the report, the Americans went so far as to deprive the Uighurs of sleep, heat, and food before Chinese security forces came to their Guantanamo cells, presumably to soften them up for questioning. In testimony to Congress, the Inspector General, Glenn Fine, confirmed as much, saying that US forces utilised sleep deprivation “to put the Uighurs in a position to be interrogated by the Chinese government” and then forcibly restrained the Uighurs so they could be interrogated by the Chinese.
As with many of the other prisoners held at Guantanamo, though, the case against the Uighurs was far from clear. Were they terrorists? Had they actually targeted the US on the field of combat? After all, Guantanamo was designed to hold enemy combatants, not just any militant with separatist aims – the US was not locking up Tamil Tigers or Zapatistas there. Most of the Uighur detainees professed respect for the United States. “America never hurt me; why would I join against them? If I wanted military training it would have been to fight the Chinese government. There have never been problems between the Americans and the Uighurs,” one Uighur detainee said at his tribunal hearing.
Similar to Abu Bakr Qassim, most of the men claimed to be traders who had been travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan on the way to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where they peddled cheap Chinese goods. “When I was in my country the Chinese government tortured our people. We suffered much and I can’t take it … I was in Pakistan and tried to do business, but it didn’t work out,” one detainee said, according to a transcript of his tribunal. (Some transcripts have been publicly released, but others have not; I was able to obtain unreleased and unclassified documents from human rights activists and lawyers.)
One of the younger captives, Ayoub Haji Mamet, 18, said he had been on a long journey with one ultimate goal: trying to get to America to go to school. Some of the Uighurs did admit they’d received limited military training in Afghanistan in order to oppose Beijing in the future, but that they had no plans to commit terrorist attacks, and had nothing against America. Others expressed a decidedly moderate view of Islam. Pressed by the military tribunal to admit he was an Islamic militant who wanted to convert the whole world to his faith, one detainee answered: “People have a choice. You cannot ask people to join; it’s the person’s choice.”
By 2003, many in the Pentagon already had doubts that the Uighurs posed any danger to the US. And by 2005, its review boards formally said the same. Finally, the Uighur captives thought their journey was over. As I learned from several Uighur activists in the US, the detainees, still sympathetic to the US despite their ordeal, believed America might take them as refugees. After all, America had already welcomed Rabeeya Kadeer, probably the most famous Uighur political activist, jailed in China before personal appeals by President Bush helped win her freedom.
In reality, though, the Uighurs’ saga was only beginning. Once they had been determined to be no threat to the US, the White House wanted to get them out of Guantanamo, sensing the potential embarrassment of holding men now essentially deemed innocent. In 2005, a District Court Judge ruled that the White House was breaking US law in continuing to imprison Uighurs who were not enemy combatants. By the end of the following year, Pentagon Administrative Review Boards had approved 21 of the 22 Uighur captives for release.
But the Bush administration – which had loudly proclaimed the Guantanamo detainees to be “the worst of the worst” – had made the men persona non grata everywhere else. “We know that these are dangerous terrorists being kept at Guantá=namo Bay. They are people determined to harm innocent civilians,” the former White House spokesman Scott McClellan once told reporters. Now, the White House wanted to dump these “dangerous terrorists” on another country. A return to China appeared out of the question, for fear the men would be locked up again and tortured back in the People’s Republic, so the administration sought a third country.
Quietly, for fear of offending China, administration officials told me, the White House approached several European countries and Canada, seeking to place the Uighurs. But few countries wanted to take a chance on men tainted by their time in Guantanamo: after all, Washington wouldn’t take them in either. As Becquelin, of Human Rights Watch says: “The US government lost all leverage with third countries by refusing to take on its soil Uighur detainees cleared for release. Many EU countries did not see why they should help the US.”
At the same time, I learned, Beijing was twisting the screws on Berlin, Paris and many other European capitals, where trade with China has become far more important over the past decade – Chinese firms in recent years have bought up European brands such as Britain’s MG Rover and essentially bailed out a range of European financial houses. No country wants to alienate China – and taking in Uighurs as refugees would be a massive slap in the face, a tacit acknowledgement that Beijing’s rule over Xinjiang is harsh and repressive. At one point, the White House thought Canada might take some of the Uighurs, but at the last second Ottawa backed off, thanks to intense pressure from China. Ultimately, several US officials say, the White House tried to get nearly 100 nations to take in the Uighurs, with no takers, due to intense Chinese pressure behind the scenes.
Only two decades removed from a brutal, isolationist dictatorship, the streets of Tirana, capital of the tiny country of Albania, remain dominated by squat, drab Soviet-style apartment blocks that look like oversized rabbit hutches. Many of the apartment blocks are rotting from years of neglect and poverty, their tiny balconies rusting away.
But lonely Albania became the Uighurs’ hope. Deeply indebted to the United States, which helped rescue Albanians’ ethnic brethren in Kosovo in the late 1990s and pushed Albania’s case for joining the European Union, the country had to listen to a Bush administration request. (When President Bush visited the country in 2007, Albanians mobbed him like he was a rock star.)
Shortly before an appeals court hearing to consider the Uighurs’ request for admission to the United States, a military plane brought five of them to Albania. On their way out, according to one account, the guards offered them a brief apology for their poor stay, as if they’d been in a shabby hotel and the room service order got screwed up. Some human rights activists in the US believe that Washington sent them to Albania to prevent them from winning their release into the US and, potentially, telling all about conditions at Guantanamo.
Living on stipends worth less than $100 per month, they struggled to find work or local contacts, since Albania, unlike other European nations such as Germany, has virtually no Uighur community. Mostly, according to people who’ve followed their case, the Uighur refugees studied the Quran all day and worried about their friends back in Guantanamo. Under pressure from China, even Albania eventually decided it would take no more Uighurs, leaving 17 at Guantanamo.
In October 2008, US District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina declared that since the remaining Uighurs had been cleared, they could no longer be jailed at Guantanamo while the White House sought a new home for them; instead, it would have to bring them to America. Inside the courtroom, packed with human rights activists and some Uighurs living in the US, a crowd broke into cheers. In the Washington, DC area, local Uighurs started making plans to take in the refugees and acclimate them to life in America.
Following the ruling, the White House issued a most extraordinary appeal. Admitting the Uighurs were not enemy combatants, the administration still asked a higher court to stay the federal judge’s decision and keep the Uighurs locked up. “The district court’s ruling, if allowed to stand, could be used as precedent for other detainees held at Guantánamo, including sworn enemies of the US suspected of planning the attacks of 9/11, who may also seek release into our country,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
The Uighurs’ bizarre saga is sadly not a unique one: despite declaring that a majority of the detainees at Guantanamo are no longer enemy combatants, the White House still holds some 250 men there – not only Uighurs but also most probably Saudis, Syrians, Egyptians and men from other countries with weak rule of law, for fear of the treatment they will receive if returned home. (The Pentagon keeps the exact national breakdown of Guantanamo detainees secret.) One Tunisian detainee was reportedly forced to sign a document back in Tunisia confessing to being a terrorist – after security forces threatened to rape his wife and daughter. Prisoners released to Tajikistan were quickly sentenced to jail time when they returned home. In another case, documented by Human Rights Watch, the administration released seven Russian detainees back to their home country, despite having little assurance they would be treated humanely. (The State Department’s human rights report chronicles numerous abuses by the Russian security forces.)
Upon arriving at the airport in Russia, Human Rights Watch found, the detainees were immediately beaten in a kind of perverse welcome home, and then thrown in jail without due process and tortured. Their Guantanamo sojourn, apparently, had marked them for life. “I was told many times that after my time in Guantanamo, it wasn’t necessary to prove I was a terrorist,” one of the Russian detainees said.
“The current administration hasn’t taken the problem of torture upon return seriously enough,” says Joanne Mariner, who follows detainee issues at Human Rights Watch. But, she says, she is hopeful that the Obama administration will “resettle some detainees itself” – in America.
Obama has now signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year and banned torture by American forces, making a sharp break from Bush. But closing the prison camp may be easier said than done: within days of Obama’s executive order, the New York Times revealed that a former Guantanamo detainee, Said Ali al Shihri, who had been returned to Saudi Arabia to be rehabilitated, had re-emerged as the number two in al Qa’eda Yemen. Saudi authorities reportedly worry that other former detainees, who have dropped out of their view, have also rejoined militant groups. Even some Democrats worry privately, in light of stories like al Shihri’s, that closing the prison camp too soon may be a mistake.
Obama has not made any major comment on the risk of releasing dangerous men, but one experienced Washington counterterror expert believes he may have to devise some compromise to hold detainees who appear to be genuine militants even if the US lacks sufficient evidence to make a case against them in American courts.
Despite the executive order, Obama’s approach still “keeps all options on the table,” according to the Brookings Institution legal scholar Benjamin Wittes, who says the new administration retains “wide latitude to make policy” if it believes some detainees are too dangerous to be released. “[The executive order] is careful to preserve all options for each detainee. It does not require any detainee’s release or transfer. It does not require any detainee’s prosecution. It does not preclude the eventual use of military commissions or some other alternative trial venue.”
“Even without passing legislation,” Joanne Mariner says, “the new administration might rely de facto on preventive detention to continue to hold some number of Guantanamo detainees without prosecuting them” – just as the Bush administration did.
Indeed, if Obama takes in some of the detainees as refugees to America, he risks losing a huge political battle, since opponents could claim that he is allowing terrorists into the country. (Already, several prominent GOP leaders have attacked Obama over his plans to close the prison.) If he tries to find third countries to take in detainees from valued US allies like Saudi Arabia because of fears of torture and illegal detention back home, he risks offending their governments. And as he releases more men from Guantanamo, Obama may be left with the few detainees who are truly terrorists, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – as well as men who are probably violent jihadists but cannot be prosecuted for lack of admissible evidence.
So the Uighurs wait in Guantanamo. These court decisions did not ease the conditions of their captivity. The Pentagon kept most of the Uighurs, now cleared charges that they fought against the US, in solitary confinement. According to the Washington Post, many remained shackled to the floor.
Back in Xinjiang, some Uighurs seem shockingly placid about America, despite the treatment of their brethren. “Uighurs’ reaction has been both relief and disappointment,” says Nury Turkel, a prominent Uighur activist and lawyer in Washington, DC, who has been in touch with the families of many of the detainees. “They’re relieved because the [US] government has refused to hand the men over to the Chinese.” Or as one Uighur girl told me in 2007, in the ultimate sign of America’s enduring appeal. “I may try to go to Malaysia if I can get a passport [to leave China] … but I hope to come study in America one day at least.”
Eventually, if they wait long enough, the Uighurs in Guantanamo might get so lucky. Perhaps pressure by US courts and human rights activists will force the Obama administration to take a political risk and accept some of the Uighurs still in Cuba. In the past, Uighurs have found the US welcoming, and fit in relatively well; as Turkel notes, before the Guantanamo detentions, the Uighurs had one of the highest rates of refugee acceptance, per capita, into America.
Or, as the world’s anger at the Bush administration and Guantanamo begins to fade, other countries might prove more willing to accept detainees. Portugal has publicly agreed to take in some men and urged other European nations to follow suit; some of them have begun to consider doing so, though it remains to be seen if their generosity will extend to the Uighurs, for fear of angering China.
Yet for some of the Uighurs still at Guantanamo, seven years of captivity, confusion and isolation has soured them irreparably – America has come to remind them, sadly, of their homeland. “Our country does not give us a chance to learn the Quran,” one detainee said, in the midst of his military tribunal, after he realised some of the evidence presented against him was that he’d travelled to Afghanistan to study. “If the US reads the Quran and [says] it is a crime [to read it], what is the difference between the US and China?”
Joshua Kurlantzick is the author of Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World.
Source
Freed Uighur Praises Obama, Slams China On Guantanamo
Freed Uighur Praises Obama, Slams China On Guantanamo
Guantanamo-4 Abu Bakker Qassim, a Chinese Muslim freed from Guantanamo, says his joy at Barack Obama's prompt decision to close the US prison has been soured by Beijing's insistence that he's a "terrorist."
Story Continues Below:
US President "Obama has understood that Guantanamo was a huge mistake which should be corrected, but China still considers us as terrorists," Qassim said in an interview with AFP.
Qassim is one of five Chinese ethnic Uighurs resettled in Albania after being released from the Cuban detention camp in 2006. He was among several Uighurs captured in Pakistan when the US launched its "war on terror."
Beijing has demanded all Chinese nationals from Guantanamo be returned but Washington held them back for fear the Beijing government would persecute or torture them.
US authorities asked nearly two dozen nations to provide asylum for the Uighurs, with all but Albania apparently refusing partly because they did not want to anger the Chinese.
Qassim still hopes that, with US assistance, he could one day be able to rejoin his family in China, whom he has not seen for nine years.
"Neither the United Nations were able to help us, nor Albania," he said.
"We cannot return to China because it accuses us of being linked with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)," said the 39-year-old, who has been trying to start a new life in Albania's capital Tirana.
ETIM has been fighting to re-establish the independent state of East Turkestan in Xinjiang since the province became an autonomous region of China in 1955.
At the time of their release to Albania, China demanded the handover of the five, describing them as members of a grouping the United Nations listed as a terrorist organisation.
Albanian authorities indicated they "would enquire seriously into the activities of these people" after their release from Guantanamo.
Ajup Muhamet, 25, the youngest in the group, has enrolled in a Tirana university and said he would like to marry an Albanian woman.
Two other Uighurs have given permission to their wives in China to remarry, but Qassim does not want to do so.
He has a family, a wife and three children whose photos cover almost all the walls in his tiny Tirana flat.
In Tirana, he said, he lives "under threats and prejudices because of being a former Guantanamo prisoner, and still unjustified terrorist claims by China."
"In Guantanamo, we kept our beards as this was a part of our customs, but after coming to Tirana, I had it shaved because there are still people like everywhere else who think all those with beards are terrorists," said Qassim, dressed in a well-tailored Western suit.
Like the four other Uighurs, he spent four and a half years in Guantanamo, which he described as a place where "laws do not exist, and people are nothing but numbers."
He is still haunted by the days spent in a cage-like cell of only two square metres, with thick iron bars.
"I still have nightmares, sometimes it seems that I again hear the screams and cries of the prisoners, some of whom have gone insane after torture and psychological pressure," said Qassim, known in Guantanamo as prisoner 283.
During his three years in Albania, he has been working as a pizza maker, regularly goes to the mosque and often prepares traditional Uighur dishes in a Turkish friend's restaurant.
Qassim and his friends say they are mostly at home in Albania, which has also welcomed three other former Guantanamo detainees from Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan.
"But there are still 17 other Uighurs who are in Guantanamo and no one wants to accept them," said Qassim.
However he also worries about his future in Albania, whose government is to halt its financial assistance for the five by the end of this year, meaning an end to accommodation payments.
"It is necessary for Obama to intervene, to use his influence with the Albanian authorities for us to be able to continue living here," he said.
Source
Guantanamo-4 Abu Bakker Qassim, a Chinese Muslim freed from Guantanamo, says his joy at Barack Obama's prompt decision to close the US prison has been soured by Beijing's insistence that he's a "terrorist."
Story Continues Below:
US President "Obama has understood that Guantanamo was a huge mistake which should be corrected, but China still considers us as terrorists," Qassim said in an interview with AFP.
Qassim is one of five Chinese ethnic Uighurs resettled in Albania after being released from the Cuban detention camp in 2006. He was among several Uighurs captured in Pakistan when the US launched its "war on terror."
Beijing has demanded all Chinese nationals from Guantanamo be returned but Washington held them back for fear the Beijing government would persecute or torture them.
US authorities asked nearly two dozen nations to provide asylum for the Uighurs, with all but Albania apparently refusing partly because they did not want to anger the Chinese.
Qassim still hopes that, with US assistance, he could one day be able to rejoin his family in China, whom he has not seen for nine years.
"Neither the United Nations were able to help us, nor Albania," he said.
"We cannot return to China because it accuses us of being linked with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)," said the 39-year-old, who has been trying to start a new life in Albania's capital Tirana.
ETIM has been fighting to re-establish the independent state of East Turkestan in Xinjiang since the province became an autonomous region of China in 1955.
At the time of their release to Albania, China demanded the handover of the five, describing them as members of a grouping the United Nations listed as a terrorist organisation.
Albanian authorities indicated they "would enquire seriously into the activities of these people" after their release from Guantanamo.
Ajup Muhamet, 25, the youngest in the group, has enrolled in a Tirana university and said he would like to marry an Albanian woman.
Two other Uighurs have given permission to their wives in China to remarry, but Qassim does not want to do so.
He has a family, a wife and three children whose photos cover almost all the walls in his tiny Tirana flat.
In Tirana, he said, he lives "under threats and prejudices because of being a former Guantanamo prisoner, and still unjustified terrorist claims by China."
"In Guantanamo, we kept our beards as this was a part of our customs, but after coming to Tirana, I had it shaved because there are still people like everywhere else who think all those with beards are terrorists," said Qassim, dressed in a well-tailored Western suit.
Like the four other Uighurs, he spent four and a half years in Guantanamo, which he described as a place where "laws do not exist, and people are nothing but numbers."
He is still haunted by the days spent in a cage-like cell of only two square metres, with thick iron bars.
"I still have nightmares, sometimes it seems that I again hear the screams and cries of the prisoners, some of whom have gone insane after torture and psychological pressure," said Qassim, known in Guantanamo as prisoner 283.
During his three years in Albania, he has been working as a pizza maker, regularly goes to the mosque and often prepares traditional Uighur dishes in a Turkish friend's restaurant.
Qassim and his friends say they are mostly at home in Albania, which has also welcomed three other former Guantanamo detainees from Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan.
"But there are still 17 other Uighurs who are in Guantanamo and no one wants to accept them," said Qassim.
However he also worries about his future in Albania, whose government is to halt its financial assistance for the five by the end of this year, meaning an end to accommodation payments.
"It is necessary for Obama to intervene, to use his influence with the Albanian authorities for us to be able to continue living here," he said.
Source
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