11 June 2009
Four Uighur Guantánamo Detainees Resettled in Bermuda
Washington — The Obama administration says it is “extremely grateful” to the government of Bermuda for accepting four Chinese Uighur detainees who had been cleared for release after being held at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
In a June 11 statement by the U.S. Department of Justice, Attorney General Eric Holder praised Bermuda’s government for its assistance in successfully resettling the four detainees, adding, “We commend the leadership they have demonstrated on this important issue.”
The Uighurs, who are a Turkic Muslim minority from western China, were apprehended in Pakistan in 2001 after U.S. forces fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida bombed their camp in Afghanistan. The Justice Department has since concluded that “these individuals did not travel to Afghanistan with the intent to take any hostile action against the United States,” and the Obama administration has been discussing resettlement options with a number of countries.
Before the announcement of the Bermuda resettlements, the government of Palau said it would accept 17 Uighur detainees “as a humanitarian gesture” that would be “subject to periodic review.”
The transfer of the four detainees to Bermuda marks the first resettlement of Uighurs from Guantánamo since 2006, when Albania agreed to accept five. A Justice Department report on the five Uighurs resettled to Albania found no reports of any criminal or terrorist activity by those men since their release.
On January 22, his second full day in office, President Obama signed a presidential order to close the Guantánamo detention facility within one year. Before the resettlement of the Uighurs in Bermuda, the Guantánamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of the four detainees, including a threat evaluation.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters June 11 that the closure of the Guantánamo facility is “a top priority” for President Obama and his administration is “working very hard to reach that goal of closing it within the time period the president has set.” He described it as “a complicated process involving negotiations with many different countries,” as well as various U.S. government agencies.
Kelly said the United States is involved in ongoing discussions with a number of governments, including Palau, over where to resettle the remaining Uighurs, and welcomes any offer to resettle the detainees. He said an agreement with Palau is “not finalized.”
The spokesman also acknowledged that the Chinese government, which wants the Uighurs to be repatriated to China, consistently has expressed its concerns over any resettlements into other countries.
“We've taken those concerns on board, but we've made it quite clear to them that we are not going to transfer them back to China,” he said.
As a general principle, not only concerning China, the United States has said it will not “transfer prisoners to countries in which they would have a well-founded fear of persecution,” Kelly said.
China has insisted the Uighurs are part of a separatist movement it accuses of carrying out terroristic acts in its Xinjiang province bordering Central Asia.
The full text of the Justice Department announcement is available on the department Web site.
