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US looking for a home for captured Uighurs
 One of the most vexing and peculiar problems that the imprisonment of people suspected of being terrorists at the naval base here has caused for the Bush administration has been what to do with the ethnic Uighur detainees here. Guantänamo has 22 Uighur (pronounced WEE-ger) detainees, most captured in Afghanistan. They traveled there from their homeland in the Xinjiang Province of China where the mostly Muslim Uighurs have fought a low-level insurgency against Beijing's rule for years.United States military officials have concluded that at least half of the Uighurs here are eligible for release, but the prisoners have said they do not want to be returned to China because they fear they will be tortured or killed as terrorists. That has sent United States officials scrambling to find a third country willing to accept the Uighurs. So far, several European countries, including Norway and Switzerland, have declined. European newspapers in other countries have reported that their governments have refused as well. Beijing, for its part, has asserted that the Uighurs are terrorists and that the United States should return them to China to demonstrate its commitment to fighting terrorism around the world. A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry warned last week that relations between Washington and Beijing could be harmed if the United States sent any Uighurs to a third country. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-11-08 |
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