Guantanamo Uighurs denied release in US

02/03/2009| IslamWeb

 

A  US court has refused to release 17 of China's ethnic Uighurs detained at Guantanamo Bay into the United States, spelling more legal limbo for the men cleared by Washington of "war on terror" allegations.

The Uighurs -- members of a Muslim, Turkic-speaking minority -- were captured in Afghanistan and fear torture if they return home. Beijing regards the men as "Chinese terrorists."

China has meanwhile reiterated its call for the repatriation of the men after the US court's decision to refuse to release them.

"We think that the Chinese terrorist subjects held in Guantanamo Bay should be handed over to China to be dealt with in accordance with the law," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told journalists.

"These suspects are members of the East Turkestan terrorist organization," she said, referring to a group that Beijing accuses of seeking an independent homeland in the Uighur-populated Xinjiang region.

By a two to one vote, a three judge panel in the US appeals court ruled that a federal judge does not have the authority to decide who can legally enter the United States, a power they said resides only with the president or Congress.

The court struck down an October 8 ruling by US District Judge Ricardo Urbina who ordered the federal government to free the 17 men in the Washington area where there is a large Uighur community.

"We are certain that no habeas corpus court since the time of Edward I ever ordered such an extraordinary remedy," wrote senior Circuit Court Judge Raymond Randolph.

The Uighurs have been imprisoned at the US detention center at Guantanamo for six years, even though they were cleared two years ago of being "enemy combatants."

US President Barack Obama plans to shut down by early 2010 the detention camp in Cuba.

Leading Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer, who lives in exile in Washington, said she was "disappointed" by the court decision.

"But I hope that the Obama administration still consider releasing and resettling the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo in the US," she said.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's National Security Project, denounced the court move as a throwback to the Bush era.

"This decision only underscores how important it is that the Obama administration act quickly to dismantle the Bush administration's misguided national security policies and to close Guantanamo altogether," he said.

The United States has been struggling to find a third country to take the 17 Uighurs.

China's foreign ministry earlier this month warned Canada not to accept three of them seeking asylum, saying Beijing was "opposed to any country accepting those people."

The German city of Munich, which like Washington is home to a major Uighur community, has offered to take in the 17 men, but Chancellor Angela Merkel's cross-party government is divided on taking inmates from Guantanamo.

The Obama administration said last month it "cannot imagine" sending the inmates to China, saying they could be mistreated.

In response, the Uighurs' lawyers urged their release into the Washington area, saying that the United States was the only nation where they could go and that the decision would encourage other countries to accept inmates.

But the Washington federal appeals court rejected the argument that the Uighurs deserve to be released into the United States "after all they have endured at the hands of the US."

"Such sentiments, however high-minded, do not represent a legal basis for upsetting settled law and overriding the prerogatives of political branches," Randolph wrote.

Randolph argued that the court "has, without exception, sustained the exclusive power of the political branches to decide which aliens may, and which aliens may not, enter the United States, and on what terms."

"What law authorized the district court to order the government to bring petitioners to the United States and release them here?" he asked.

He said the court did not know "whether all petitioners or any of them would qualify for entry or admission under the immigration laws."

Only Albania has so far agreed to take any Uighur detainees, welcoming a group of five in 2006.

The Uighurs were living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led bombing campaign began in October 2001. They fled to the mountains, but were turned over to Pakistani authorities, who then handed them over to the United States.

PHOTO CAPTION

Demonstrators protest the detention of Uighurs at the Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba on February 12, 2009 in Washington, DC, near the Lincoln Memorial.

AFP