The Uighurs: 4

by hilzoy

I'm continuing to try to track down the truth behind the various claims made about the Uighurs. (Previous posts: 1, 2, 3.) This time, I want to consider this one:

"President Obama’s own interagency review board found that at least some of the Uighurs are dangerous."

The original (and, to my knowledge, only) source for this claim is this Human Events article:

"White House lawyers are refusing to accept the findings of an inter-agency committee that the Uighur Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay are too dangerous to release inside the U.S., according to Pentagon sources familiar with the action."

Human Events is not what I normally think of as a credible source. They publish Ann Coulter pieces like "The [sic] Shot The Wrong Lincoln" (Abraham, not Chafee, apparently.) Jed Babbin, in particular, has compared Barack Obama to Madame DeFarge, and opened an interview with Rush Limbaugh by saying: "I’m just so excited talking to you Rush… I’m jumping out of my skin."

That said, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Jed Babbin might, for all I knew, be right on this one. So I decided to ask around. Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch was kind enough to reply. Here's his email (quoted with permission):

"There is no evidence that the panel has found them too dangerous to release; on the contrary, the administration has asked Germany and other European countries to resettle the Uighurs on their soil.  And it understands that to persuade other countries to take the Uighurs, it may have to release some in the US to show there is nothing to fear.  That doesn't mean the panel concluded that the Uighurs are all goatherds either -- just that they were not involved in terrorism or linked to Al Qaeda or the Taliban and pose no threat to the US or its allies.  If there is any real source for the Human Events story, my guess is that it's a Bush hold over at DOD or Justice who wants us to believe that the Bush positions are somehow being vindicated." 

If you would like to read a judge's assessment of the evidence against one of the Uighurs, it's here (pdf; start on p. 15.) This is the unclassified version of the decision; however, the judge in question saw the classified information that the Bush administration introduced to support its claim that this detainee was an enemy combatant, so I assume that had that information contained a convincing case, that fact would have been reflected in the opinion. It was not.

Comments

[Point]

I summed up how I saw the situation on Hlizoy's last Uighur post:

The US screwed up big time, imprisoning and torturing not just innocent people, but patently innocent people, and refusing to release them for years on end.

They can't go home (will be tortured and killed), but they could move to US. Thus, US has opportunity to make up for its crime in some small way, as a refuge for its victims. This small act could also go some way in repairing America's image.

So, naturally, since so small and safe an act can carry so much symbolic weight in America's favor, Newt Gingrich and the National Review are against it.

And somehow, that's now normal. Wow...

[Richard S]

Anyone giving any credit to Ann Coulter or Jabba the Limbaugh needs a lot of help!

[Nell]

Virginians: Please urge our Commonwealth's Senators to welcome the Uighurs, who would join an existing Uighur-American community in the Arlington and Alexandria area.

Accepting the lies being spread by fear-mongering Republicans would be shameful and cowardly behavior, unworthy of Sens. Webb and Warner. Let them know that Newt Gingrich and Andy McCarthy don't speak for us. Don't allow them to pretend that these men, imprisoned unjustly now for eight years, pose any kind of threat to us.

The 17 Uighurs were cleared of any charges long ago by the Bush administration. But the Chinese government has made it difficult for any other government to accept them. It's our country whose government decided to make them prisoners for most of a decade. We owe them a new start in life, and we are fortunate to have a community to welcome them.

This would also allow Virginia to make a contribution to closing Guantanamo, something that is in the national interest. If these prisoners are settled in Virginia, it will be significantly easier for the U.S. government to prevail on other countries to accept other long-cleared prisoners from Guantanamo.

Senator Mark Warner
459A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Attn: Mark Bruner

Phone: 202-224-2023
Fax: 202-224-6295
email (via web): http://warner.senate.gov

Senator Jim Webb
144 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Phone: 202-224-4024
Fax: 202-228-6363
email (via web): http://webb.senate.gov