US Secretary of State Colin Powell says Washington won't send home Chinese Muslims held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- a decision that could anger Beijing.
Human-rights groups say 22 members of China's Uighur ethnic minority believed to have been detained in Afghanistan are being held at the base and could be tortured or killed if returned to China.
"The Uighurs are not going back to China, but finding places for them is not a simple matter," Powell said on Thursday at a news conference in Washington with Japanese journalists, according to a transcript released by the State Department. "We are trying to find places for them and, of course, all candidate countries are being looked at."
The decision could anger Bei-jing, a supporter of the US anti-terrorism campaign, which wants its nationals caught in Afghanistan to be repatriated to face possible terrorism charges.
Uighurs are from China's remote northwest, where the government says it is fighting an Islamic separatist movement linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network -- a claim that few outsiders believe.
Foreign experts and diplomats say most violent incidents cited by Beijing aren't related to separatists.
The Uighurs are among some 600 prisoners from 40 countries being held as terrorism suspects at the US enclave at Guantanamo.
China says that as many as 300 Uighurs trained by al-Qaeda were captured fighting for Afghanistan's former Taliban government. The US hasn't confirmed that.
US military officials deny accusations by human-rights groups that Uighurs at Guantanamo have been subjected to mistreatment.
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