At least four Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay will be transferred to the Pacific island nation of Palau, Palau President Johnson Toribiong said.
“We have received word Friday from the United States government confirming their position” of temporarily resettling the Uighurs in Palau, Toribiong said.
“Four Uighurs are confirmed to temporarily settle in Palau,” he said.
Toribiong did not give any other details of the move, including the likely timing of the Uighurs’ shift from the controversial detention camp in Cuba.
He had earlier said the transfer was expected to occur before January.
The lawyer for some of the 13 Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo said on Friday that two of them expected to be transferred next month.
“Two of my clients have accepted offers” to relocate to Palau, lawyer George Clarke said, adding that they could leave the US “war on terror” prison in the middle of next month.
He said others among the 13 Chinese Uighurs at Guantanamo had accepted the offer, but did not give details.
Uighurs are a minority Muslim and Turkic-speaking group in China’s northwest.
The detainees were part of a group of 22 Uighurs living in a camp in Afghanistan when the US-led invasion of the country began in October 2001, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
They said they had fled to Afghanistan to escape persecution in their vast home region of Xinjiang. The US cleared them of any wrongdoing four years ago, but they remained in legal limbo, with Washington unwilling to send them back to China, despite Beijing’s demands.
China wanted the detainees returned home to be tried, saying they belonged to the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement. But US officials refused to extradite the Uighurs, amid fears they could face torture.
Four of the original group were flown to Bermuda in June from Guantanamo, where some 229 “war on terror” suspects are still held. Another five were released to Albania in 2006.
US President Barack Obama has promised to shut down Guantanamo by January and Washington has been pushing for other countries to accept inmates with no charges against them.
Toribiong announced in June that his country, with a population of about 21,000 people, had agreed in principle to provide a temporary home for the Uighur detainees.
He has denied any link between agreeing to accept the detainees and negotiations over future US aid to Palau, saying the decision was made as a “humanitarian gesture.”
Made up of more than 586 islands, of which only nine are inhabited, Palau lies about 800km east of the Philippines, and was administered by the US until independence in 1994.
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
RSS