Deal Between The US and The PRC To Persecute Them?
An article in the December 5, 2006 edition of The Washington Post reported on a legal appeal launched on behalf of seven of the Uyghurs remaining in detention in Guantanamo. The article reports that the Uyghurs' lawyers argued that the evidence against their clients was essentially identical to that against the five Uyghurs who were released; that the process by which their "enemy combatant" status had been determined, and reviewed, was flawed.
The article went on to quote Washington officials, and former officials, about whether the group that the Uyghurs were accused of belonging to had been added to the State Department's list of Terrorist organizations largely to secure acquiescence from the PRC to the then imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq. The article quotes the Uyghurs' lawsuit:
- "In the crisis atmosphere of the time, the interests of a few dozen refugees paled beside the urgency of the Administration's war plans,"
The article quotes Susan Baker Manning, one of the Uyghurs' lawyers:"It is amazing to me that the US has agreed to in effect hold political prisoners for China in exchange for anything. That goes against everything that we, I thought, stood for in this country."
Guantanamo spokesmen, Commander Jeffrey Gordon, responded to the appeal with the comment: "There is a significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified, which supports detention by U.S. forces," According to the Associated Press Gordon told reporters: "...the seven had 'multiple' reviews and were properly classified as enemy combatants."
An article about the Uyghurs' appeal, in The Jurist, citing the Fifth Denbeaux Report: The no-hearing hearings, called the Uighur's Combatant Status Review Tribunals "show trials".
An article published on April 18, 2007 discussed the diplomatic problem posed by finding a new home for the Uyghurs in detail. The article quotes their lawyer, Sabin Willett:
"No country will take them because either they've read all the newspapers printing claims by U.S. authorities that Guantanamo is a place where the worst of the worst are being held, and they believe that it's true, or, these countries say, 'Well if these guys are innocent, then why don't you, the United States, take them? Why won't you take them if they're not bad guys?'
"And the U.S. doesn't really have a good answer for that."
Read more about this topic: Bahtiyar Mahnut
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)