U.S. rebuffs China call for 17 Guantanamo suspects

[jd in .hu]

U.S. rebuffs China call for 17 Guantanamo suspects

Tue Dec 23, 2008 10:55pm IST
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-37159620081223

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday it wants 17 Muslim Chinese
terror suspects returned if the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay
in Cuba is closed by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama.

Obama has pledged to close the prison at the U.S. naval station in
southeastern Cuba, which has come to symbolize aggressive detention
practices that opened the United States to allegations of torture.

Although the U.S. military no longer considers the 17 Chinese Uighurs
"enemy combatants," they have remained at Guantanamo because the
United States has been unable to find a country willing to take them.

"The 17 terror suspects imprisoned in the U.S. military base of
Guantanamo Bay are members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement,
which has been listed as a terrorist organization by the United
Nations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.

"For these terror suspects, the Chinese government has always
requested they be sent back to China and firmly opposes any country
accepting them," he told a news briefing.

In 2006, the United States allowed five Chinese Muslims released from
Guantanamo to go to Albania. The U.S. government has said it cannot
return the Uighurs to China because they would face persecution there.

The Obama camp has not made clear what it would do with the Uighurs.
But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush
administration understood China's point of view but needed to "assure
ourselves that if people are transferred out of Guantanamo under
whatever status that they are not going to be mistreated in any way,
shape or form.

"At this point we don't believe that it would be the right thing to do
to transfer these individuals back to China," he told reporters in
Washington.

Many Muslim Uighurs, who are from Xinjiang in far western China, seek
greater autonomy for the region and some want independence. Beijing
has waged a relentless campaign against what it calls their violent
separatist activities.

The Uighurs had been living in a camp in Afghanistan during the U.S.-
led bombing campaign that began in October 2001. They fled into the
mountains and were detained by Pakistani authorities, who handed them
over to the United States.

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