Uyghur detainees at Guantanamo Bay
Starting in 2002, the American government detained 22 Uyghurs in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. The last 3 Uyghur detainees, Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghupur and Saidullah Khali, were released from Guantanamo on December 29, 2013, and later transferred to Slovakia.
Uyghurs are an ethnic group from Central Asia, native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Western China. Since the People's Republic of China gained control of Xinjiang in 1949, Uyghurs have led a series of rebellions and uprisings against the Chinese, gaining intense coverage in the 90s and early 2000s, culminating in a series of protests, demonstrations, and terrorist attacks. Uyghurs have also frequently called for the international recognition of their own state through the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which the United States used to recognize as a terrorist group.
The Washington Post reported on August 24, 2005, that fifteen Uyghurs had been determined to be "No longer enemy combatants".
The Post reported that detainees who had been classified as NLEC were, not only still being incarcerated, but one was shackled to the floor for reasons not disclosed by his attorney. Five of these Uyghurs, who had filed for writs of habeas corpus, were transported to Albania on May 5, 2006, just prior to a scheduled judicial review of their petitions. The other seventeen obtained writs of habeas corpus in 2008.
Common elements in the detainees' testimony
Several of the detainees admitted receiving training on the AK-47, including Bahtiyar Mahnut, Yusef Abbas, and Abdul Hehim. They described being trained by East Turkestan Islamic Movement leaders Abdul Haq and Hassan Maksum. At least one described being trained on a pistol.The Uyghurs who were present at the alleged camp reported that they did not expect their camp to be bombed. Some of them acknowledged that they had heard of the September 11 attacks on the radio, but none of them knew that the Taliban were accused of involvement. They all acknowledged having fled the camp when it was bombed. They all stated that they were unarmed. One of the Uyghurs said Maksum was killed in the bombing.
None of the Uyghurs described seeing the United States as an enemy. All of the Uyghurs mentioned the People's Republic of China and described its government as an oppressive occupation. Some of the Uyghurs said that they sought out the training in order to go back to China and defend their fellow Uyghurs against their Chinese occupiers. Some of the other Uyghurs said they sought out the camp of fellow Uyghurs because they were waiting for a visa to Iran, one of the countries they had to pass through on their way to Turkey. They had heard that Turkey would grant them political asylum.
Combatant Status Review Tribunal results
From July 2004 through March 2005, all 568 of the detainees held at Guantanamo had their detention reviewed by Combatant Status Review Tribunals. 38 of the detainees were determined to be NLEC. Five Uyghurs were among the 38 detainees determined not to have been enemy combatants, and were transferred from the main detention camp to Camp Iguana.This conclusion was remarked on by the first Denbeaux study, that pointed out that many of the detainees who remained incarcerated had faced much less serious allegations than the Uyghurs had faced.
On May 10, 2006, Radio Free Asia reported that the five Uyghurs transported to Albania were the only Uyghurs who had been moved to Camp Iguana.
In September 2007, the Department of Defense published dossiers prepared from the unclassified documents arising from the captives' Combatant Status Review Tribunals.
Information paper: Uighur Detainee Population at JTF-GTMO
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". In April 2007, Sabin Willett, a lawyer for the Uyghurs, described their situation as:
Asylum in Albania
None of the Uyghurs wanted to be returned to China. The United States declined to grant the Uyghurs political asylum, or to allow them parole, or even freedom on the naval base.Some of the Uyghurs had lawyers who volunteered to help them pursue a writ of habeas corpus, which would have been one step in getting them freed from U.S. detention.
In the case of Qassim v. Bush, those Uyghurs argued for their writ of habeas corpus in United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was scheduled to hear arguments on Monday May 8, 2006. Five of the Uyghurs were transported to Albania, on Friday May 5, 2006; the United States officials filed an emergency motion to dismiss later that day. The court dismissed the case as moot.
Barbara Olshansky, one of the Uyghur's lawyers, characterized the sudden transfer as an attempt to: "... avoid having to answer in court for keeping innocent men in jail,"
Some press reports state that the Uyghurs have been granted political asylum in Albania. But the U.S. government press release merely states that they are applying for asylum in Albania.
On May 9, 2006, the Associated Press reported that the People's Republic of China denounced the transfer of custody.
The PRC called the transfer of the Uyghurs to Albania a violation of international law. Albania agreed to examine the evidence against the men.
Radio Free Asia reports that the five were staying at a National Center for Refugees in a Tirana suburb.
On May 24, 2006, Abu Bakr Qasim told interviewers that he and his compatriots felt isolated in Albania. Qasim described his disappointment with the United States, who the Uyghurs had been hoping would support the Uyghurs quest for Uyghur autonomy. To the BBC he said that "Guantanamo was a five-year nightmare. We're trying to forget it".
In an interview with ABC News Qasim said that members of the American-Uyghur community had come forward and assured the U.S. government that they would help him and his compatriots adapt to life in the United States, if they were given asylum there.
On June 19, 2008, the Associated Press reported that Adel Abdu Al-Hakim had been denied political asylum in Sweden.
Sten De Geer, his Swedish lawyer, plans to appeal the ruling, because Albania will not allow his wife and children to join him.
On February 9, 2009, Reuters reported that the five Uyghurs in Albania had heard from the seventeen Uyghurs left behind in Guantanamo, and that their conditions had improved.
Allegations of collusion with the Chinese government
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 who remained in detention in Guantanamo. According to their lawyers, the evidence against them were essentially identical to that against the five Uyghurs who were released and that the process by which their "enemy combatant" status had been determined and reviewed was flawed. The article went on to quote current and former officials in Washington who said the group that the Uyghurs were accused of belonging to had been was added to the State Department's list of Terrorist organizations in return for securing approval from the PRC to the then imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq. In response to the appeal, Guantanamo spokesman, Commander Jeffrey Gordon said: "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 that "the seven had 'multiple' reviews and were properly classified as enemy combatants."A May 2008 report by the Inspector General of the United States Department of Justice claimed that American military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guantánamo Bay to enact sleep deprivation of the Uyghur detainees. A bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report, released in part in December 2008 and in full in April 2009, concluded that the legal authorization of enhanced interrogation techniques led directly to the abuse and killings of prisoners in US military facilities. Brutal prisoner abuse practices which were believed to have originated in Chinese torture techniques to extract false confessions from American POWs migrated from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan, then to Iraq and Abu Ghraib.
Confinement in Camp Six
On March 11, 2007, the Boston Globe reported that the 17 remaining Uyghur captives had been transferred to the newly built Camp Six, in Guantanamo.The Globe reports that the Uyghurs are held for 22 hours a day in cells without natural light.
The Globe points out that prior to their detention in Camp Six, they were able to socialize with one another, but that they couldn't speak to the prisoners in neighboring cells because none of them speak Arabic or Pashto. The Globe quotes Sabin Willett, the Uyghur's lawyer, who reports that, consequently, there has been a serious decline in the Uyghur's mental health.
According to the Globe: "The military says the Uighurs were put there either because they attacked guards or trashed their quarters during the riot last May."
The Globe quotes Sabin Willett's explanation for the Uyghur's new harsher detention. Willett: "... links their assignment to Camp Six to a filing he made seeking their release."
Passage of the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act
In the Summer of 2006, the habeas corpus submissions known as Hamdan v. Rumsfeld reached the United States Supreme Court.The Supreme Court ruled the Executive Branch lacked the Constitutional authority to initiate military commissions to try Guantanamo captives.
However, it also ruled that the United States Congress did have the authority to set up military commissions. In the fall of 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, setting up military commissions similar to those initially set up by the Executive Branch.
The Act also stripped captives of the right to file habeas corpus submissions in the US Court system. The earlier Detainee Treatment Act, passed on December 31, 2005, had stripped captives of the right to initiate new habeas corpus submissions, while leaving existing habeas corpus motions in progress.
The Detainee Treatment Act had explicitly authorized an appeal process for Combatant Status Review Tribunals which failed to follow the military's own rules.
And Sabin Willet, the Uyghur's lawyer, has chosen to initiate appeals of the Uyghur's Combatant Status Review Tribunals.
However, Willet argues, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals failed to consider the interrogator's conclusions that the Uyghurs were not enemies, had not supported the Taliban, and had not engaged in hostilities.
Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler led the response team. Keisler's team accused Willet of trying to:
They said the argument boiled down to: