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Freed From Guantánamo, Uighur Muslims Bask in Bermuda Justin Maxon/The New York Times "I went swimming in the ocean for the first time ever yesterday and it was the happiest day of my life," said Salahidin Abdulahat, left, swimming with another former prisoner, Khaleel Mamut. By ERIK ECKHOLM June 14, 2009 ST. GEORGE, Bermuda — Almost exactly seven years after arriving at Guantánamo in chains as accused enemy combatants, and four days after their surprise predawn flight to Bermuda, four Uighur Muslim men basked in their new-found freedom here, grateful for the handshakes many residents had offered and marveling at...

FOX News spotted the newly freed detainees at a guest cottage complex on the island without security or electronic monitoring, but their attorney said they will have to periodically check in with local police The four of the Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, released to Bermuda from the Guantanamo Bay prison told FOX News that they are innocent, glad to be free and hold no grudges against the United States for their captivity. "We are not terrorists," they told FOX News with the help of a translator. "We don't know what Al Qaeda is. We don't know Usama bin Laden. The...

    Perhaps the Bermuda parliament is “fear-gripped”, too — or maybe just angry that their Premier cut a deal to admit al-Qaeda trained Uighur separatists into their country without consulting them or the British.  Bermuda’s House of Assembly scheduled a no-confidence vote against Ewart Brown, which would result in immediate elections and throw the Bermuda government in disarray: The United Bermuda Party today moved for a motion of no confidence against the Government led by Premier Ewart Brown.Opposition leader Kim Swan proposed the motion in the House of Assembly this morning.He said it was necessary as the Island is...

The tiny Pacific nation of Palau's decision to allow 13 Chinese Muslims from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to resettle there has sparked anger among islanders who fear for the safety of the tranquil tourist haven. The U.S. government determined last year that the Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, were not enemy combatants and should be released from the U.S. military prison in Cuba. China has objected to their resettlement, calling the men "terrorist suspects" and demanding they be sent home. The U.S. has said it fears the men would be executed if they were returned to China. Palau President Johnson...

WASHINGTON — Four Chinese Muslims detained at Guantanamo Bay prison were freed Thursday and resettled in Bermuda, sparking complaints from China and Britain even as the Obama administration tried to iron out details for sending more detainees to the Pacific island of Palau. The four were among 17 Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001. They remained at the military detention center in Cuba even after the U.S. government had determined they weren't enemy combatants and should be released. Their fate was in limbo for months while courts and nations debated their future. Their release...

...will accept up to 17 Chinese Muslims...

There’s an old saying among trial lawyers: “When you go into the woods and find a turtle high up on a tree stump, you know he didn’t get there by himself.” In other words, sometimes there is no innocent explanation for why someone is where they were when they were caught. That maxim certainly applies to the 17 Chinese Uighurs caught fleeing Afghanistan after 9/11, who are now detainees in Guantanamo Bay. The Uighurs (pronounced “wee-gers”) are a Turkic Muslim minority group from western China. They really dislike the government of China -- so much that, shortly before Sept. 11,...

Victim's family outraged Greyhound bus where man beheaded still on the road Published Thursday June 4th, 2009 Chinta Puxley, THE CANADIAN PRESS WINNIPEG - The Greyhound bus in which Vince Li attacked and dismembered fellow passenger Tim McLean last summer should be taken off the road out of respect, the victim's mother said Thursday. Carol deDelley says there was little doubt Vince Li would remain in a mental hospital for now. But she says she worries about the coming years. A spokeswoman for Greyhound said the notorious bus is now used in another part of Canada. "After an extensive restoration...

Catherine Herridge filed a report tonight from Gitmo, with a breaking story that two of the Chinese Muslim Uighurs eagerly spoke to the press when she was in Camp Iguana. They called Obama a Democrat and a Communist, and said they lived in a similar governmental system back in their own country. LOL.

With all the recent attention focused on where and how to release Guantanamo Bay detainees, the case of 17 imprisoned Uyghurs has grabbed headlines again. Massachusetts Democratic Congressmen Jim McGovern and Bill Delahunt think that at least some of these Uyghurs should be resettled right here in the United States (U.S.), maybe even in the Virginia suburbs. Speaking in late May 2009 at a world assembly of Uyghurs at the U.S. Capitol, Delahunt offered some reassuring words: “The Uyghur people are not enemies of America. In fact, I know you admire our fundamental ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit...

Two lawmakers of President Barack Obama's Democratic Party appealed Thursday to let Uighurs locked up at Guantanamo Bay move to the United States, saying they were victims of injustice. The plea came despite an overwhelming Senate vote a day earlier to block money to transfer inmates out of the deeply controversial "war on terror" prison in Cuba, which Obama on Thursday vowed again to shut down. US authorities four years ago cleared 17 imprisoned Uighurs -- members of a largely Muslim group in northwestern China who the State Department says face worsening persecution by Beijing. But they are stuck at...

President Obama has heeded his generals and decided not to release more photos of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and good for him. Now he needs to put our national security ahead of politics once again and reverse his dangerous decision to release trained terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay into American suburbs. America, meet the Uighurs. Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. These Uighurs have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups. The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state....

Rep. Frank R. Wolf on Monday reiterated his opposition to jailing and prosecuting Guantanamo Bay detainees in Alexandria, after a fellow Northern Virginia congressman said over the weekend he was open to the idea. "To bring someone to Alexandria, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - who killed Daniel Pearl and was a mastermind of 9/11 - would be a mistake," Mr. Wolf, a Republican, told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. President Obama plans to close the terrorism-suspect detention facility at the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay by January. Officials have said the fates of its roughly 240 detainees will...

WASHINGTON - A large federal security operation is in place to keep tabs on several Guantanamo Bay inmates who may soon be released in Virginia, the Daily News has learned. A half-dozen ethnic Chinese detainees known as Uyghurs will be flown by marshals from the U.S. naval base in Cuba to live in the Washington suburbs if lingering legal, logistical and political problems are ironed out, government officials said Thursday. Some lawmakers and counter-terror officials worry about terrorists living next door. Northern Virginia was chosen because it has an Uyghur Muslim community that could help the ex-prisoners adjust.

Culpeper’s Congressman Eric Cantor, Chief Minority Whip in the U.S. House, will join other Republicans today in D.C. in decrying the potential for relocating Guantanamo Bay detainees to prisons in the United States. President Barack Obama, on his second day in office, signed an executive order ordering the terrorist detention center in Cuba closed within a year. The White House has not announced where the 250 prisoners will be transferred. But a couple weeks after Obama made the decision to close Guantanamo, Cantor issued a statement objecting to possible “ramifications” of the announcement. “Do Not Move Known Terrorists to Virginia,”...

Obama Budget Seeks $100 Million To Close Guantanamo Detention Facility WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. President Barack Obama's budget requests $100 million to help close the Guantanamo military detention facility, after House Democrats stripped out a similar request from a bill to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq through the rest of fiscal 2009. The president had included a request of $80 million to pay for the closing the prison in an $83.4 billion war funding bill submitted to Congress last month. The revised $100 million request was included in Obama's $3.6 trillion budget for fiscal 2010, details of...

Should foreigners picked up conducting terrorist training with Al Qaeda and subsequently held at Guantanamo Bay just be released into our communities, no questions asked? Believe it or not, it could happen. And soon. The Obama administration is ready to release a number of Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 into the United States, according to several recent press reports. Information I have received, however, indicates that the 17 Uighurs being held at Guantanamo may be more dangerous than the public has been led to believe. Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security...

Washington D.C. May 4th 2009 - Rep. Frank Wolf, R-VA took to the House floor this afternoon and blasted the Obama Administration and the plan to release the first wave of GITMO terrorists onto American city streets....at taxpayer expense. The Uyghurs, pronounced Wheegerz, are the Muslim group of terrorists the Chinese were so concerned over during the recent Olympics. They were picked up on the battlefield in 2001 and have been active jihad warriors even prior to 2001. There are almost two dozen of the Uyghurs, members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement and have all received Taliban and a-Queda...

The Uighers are a group of Chinese separatists that often resort to violency in their goal of breaking their own traditional ethnicity and freeing it from the rest of China. In GITMO, there are a group of seventeen Uighers. Last year, the Pentagon decided to change their status from "enemy combatant". The reasoning behind this was that the Uighers beef was with China not the U.S. The reasoning was rather dubious. These particular Uighers were picked up in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some of them were picked up on the battlefield fighting American forces. Furthermore, these Uighers were known to...

Moving quickly to release Chinese Uighur terrorists into the United States, Obama administration officials have -- for the second time -- overridden objections of federal agencies responsible for national security. The first time -- as I reported on April 20 -- the White House overrode the inter-agency panel it created from all the national security agencies to review all the cases of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. That panel found that the seventeen Uighurs -- members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement captured at an al-Queda training camp in Pakistan -- were too dangerous to release in the United States.