(MintPress)-Two detainees from western China were voluntarily transferred to El Salvador for resettlement after being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba for nearly a decade without charge, the U.S. Department of Defense said Thursday.
“They are well and very happy,” said Susan Baker Manning, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer for one of the men. “We are extremely pleased that the government of El Salvador has taken them in and granted them refuge,” Manning said, according to the Associated Press.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in El Salvador said in a statement that the government had decided to accept the two detainees as refugees after both were cleared of all criminal charges in the U.S. judicial system. The statement also hinted that its decision was made as a favor to “various friendly countries,” including the United States, where its own people sought refuge during past decades of war.
The two men, ethnic Uighurs from China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, are among 22 members of the Turkic ethnic group arrested at a camp in the mountains of Afghanistan after the U.S.-led coalition invaded in 2001.
Almost all of the Uighurs detained at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba were determined to be “no longer enemy combatants” (NLECs) after 2005, yet most remained in custody for many years to follow. A U.S. District Court issued a court order for the detainees’ release in 2008, but three Uighurs are still awaiting release from Guantanamo Bay.
Uighur Detainees: A political nightmare for US
Brought to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in 2002 under allegations of supporting the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and participating in militant training with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, the Uighur detainees have proved to be a political nightmare for the United States.
It became clear early on that some of the men were wrongly accused of terrorism while trying to escape persecution in China when they were caught by Pakistani bounty hunters seeking U.S. payoffs. Others were deemed low-risk detainees whose primary interest was fighting China’s communist government.
However, the U.S. government was not able to return the detainees to China because they would likely face imprisonment, torture or execution. The U.S. was also concerned that “repatriation would be seen as a justification of China’s discriminatory policy toward its Uighur citizens,” reported Adam Wolfe, communications analyst and a contributor to the Power and Interest News Report.
“The Uighur [presents] sort of a conundrum – we would like to transfer or release a number of the Uighurs who are in Guantanamo, and – but we have not been able to find any country in the world that is willing to take them back…And at this point, it’s difficult for us because we’ve been criticized for holding them…and yet have not found a country that is willing to help us to take them,” said John Bellinger, State Department Legal Advisor, in a 2006 briefing.
Hours before an appeals hearing was to begin in 2006 regarding the immediate release of the detainees, five Uighurs were transferred to a refugee center in Albania. Although the government claimed the timing of the transfer was coincidental, lawyers for the detainees find it suspicious and believe it was done to avoid a court ruling on whether innocent men could be kept in jail.
“The circumstances surrounding the transfer have never been fully disclosed,” said Jason Pinney, lawyer for one of the men. “We do know however, that Vice President Cheney endorsed Albania for admission into NATO the day after the transfer, a move that would have significant financial benefits for the second poorest country in Europe.”
The Uighur community in the U.S. as well as other resettlement organizations have offered to provide housing, language and job training, and other support to the detainees if they are given asylum within the United States. However, the government insists on repatriating detainees to third countries to avoid tension between Beijing and Washington.
Through negotiations, several detainees were eventually transferred to Palau and Bermuda in 2009. Munich, home to the largest Uighur community outside of China was also considered as a destination for repatriation. Though most countries continue to refuse asylum to Uighur detainees because of the backlash it may cause from China.
Protection through continued confinement?
While a U.S. District Court ordered the release of the Uighur detainees in 2008, a 2009 appellate court decision, while acknowledging that the men were wrongfully detained, held that only the executive has the power to order their release into the United States.
Human Rights Watch reports that, “Under this reasoning, detainees who win their suits for habeas corpus and have been found to be wrongfully detained must stay in Guantanamo unless the Obama administration negotiates their transfer elsewhere or decides – on its own – to release the men into the United States.”
So while the Uighurs could not be repatriated due to humane treatment or related concerns in their home countries, particularly because of the conflict between the Chinese government and the separatist movement in the Muslim western Xinjiang province, the detainees remained in Guantanamo Bay detention camp, known for its controversial detainment and interrogation tactics, until a third country agreed to take them.
The Washington Post reported in 2007 that many Chinese Uighurs had been held in around-the-clock, near-total isolation settings. P. Sabin Willett, a lawyer representing some of the Uighurs, said in a court filing, “They pass days of infinite tedium and loneliness…[one Uighur’s] neighbor is constantly hearing voices, shouting out and being punished. All describe a feeling of despair…and abandonment by the world.”
Seema Saifee, an attorney for one of the Uighur detainees released last week, hopes more repatriations will follow El Salvador’s example. “Hopefully more nations will follow by opening their doors to the other men at Guantanamo who are cleared for release but cannot safely be repatriated,” she said.
In total, 169 prisoners remain at the U.S. detention facility in Cuba. Three Uighars and more than 40 other detainees are awaiting repatriation to a third country. Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale told AFP, “Negotiations with our allies are continuing to try to repatriate the others.”