EU officials hold US talks on Guantanamo inmates

EU officials hold US talks on Guantanamo inmates


WASHINGTON (AFP) — Two top EU officials opened talks here Monday on eventually taking in scores of inmates from the Guantanamo Bay military jail which the US administration aims to close in the coming months.

EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot and Czech Interior Minister Ivan Langer, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, were meeting with top officials including Attorney General Eric Holder.

Holder heads a task force charged by President Barack Obama with closing the remote jail in southern Cuba which still holds some 245 prisoners rounded up in the controversial "war on terror" launched by the previous administration.

Some 60 prisoners have already been cleared for release, and the talks here were set to focus on how the 27-nation EU bloc could welcome some of them.

A minority of EU countries -- France, Italy, Portugal and Spain -- have said they might be ready to host Guantanamo prisoners under strict conditions.

Few if any of the detainees cleared for release are EU citizens, and Brussels wants to know exactly why they cannot be hosted by the United States.

"There is a very deep wariness on the part of EU interior ministers, who are concerned about the difficulties of hosting one or another inmate. To do that, we need to know a lot about the candidates," Barrot told AFP last week.

The case of 17 Chinese Uighurs has become emblematic of the problem of rehousing the prisoners, many of whom cannot be returned to their home countries as they face repression there.

The Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority who were arrested in Afghanistan in October 2001, have been held at Guantanamo for six years, even though they were cleared in 2003 of any charges.

Washington is refusing to return them to China fearing they would be persecuted by the Chinese authorities, but no other country wants to take them in for fear of angering Beijing.

The Justice Department did not want to comment ahead of the discussions early Monday, but Barrot was due to give a press conference later in the day.

The two EU officials were also to meet with Senator Joe Lieberman, the independent who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

And on Tuesday, they will meet with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and other Obama advisors at the White House.

"We have questions and we are going to test the level of cooperation from the US authorities. We will verify all the information obtained, particularly about the exact nature of the US request" for the EU to host detainees, Barrot told AFP last week.

EU nations regularly called for the closure of the notorious jail, where "war on terror" prisoners have been held often without charge or trial, and have welcomed Obama's decision to finally shut it down.

But national laws differ widely among the EU countries and they are struggling to define a common position on how best to help. In the past, US authorities have routinely proved reluctant to hand over intelligence data.

Barrot and Langer were also to raise the issue of visa policy, as citizens from five European countries -- Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland and Cyprus -- are still required to obtain a visa before traveling to the United States.

Also at issue was a potential agreement with Washington on protecting personal data, which Barrot considered a "condition to any cooperation in the fight against terror and organized crime."

Obama Should Be Gutsier on Guantanamo

Obama Should Be Gutsier on Guantanamo

By Eva Rodriguez

The time has come for President Obama to be truly gutsy. A high-level delegation from the European Union met today with members of the Obama administration to discuss the future shuttering of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The White House should now prove that its rhetorical support for closing the camp is more than mere propaganda by declaring its intention to accept at least a few detainees into the United States.

Some European allies are said to be getting antsy about helping the administration on Guantanamo. It is unclear, for example, what level of oversight American authorities will ask host countries to provide for any detainees they accept. And how can these countries be asked -- or even pushed -- to take in former detainees when the United States has thus far failed to make the same commitment? If the United States is too wary of former detainees to allow them in why should friendly countries take on the risk? This is where the gutsy part comes in.

Even before Obama took office, the Bush administration concluded that 17 Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, detained at Guantanamo should not continue to be held as enemy combatants. China has an ugly tradition of abusing the Uighur community, which has long fought for independence. So the Bush administration could not send the men back for fear that they'd be persecuted.

The International Uighur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation, a reputable organization based in the Washington area, has said it would help those allowed into the U.S. Obama should take advantage of this ready support system and order that one or two of the 17 detainees be given asylum. Such a move would not only help this country right some of the wrongs inflicted on these men, but it could help legitimately squeamish allies once again enthusiastically rally around the cause of closing Guantanamo.

So far, the administration has made grand verbal pronouncements that have amounted to little practical change. Just days after his inauguration, Obama declared that he would close Guantanamo. But contrary to the impression he left during the campaign, the dismantling of the camp would not come swiftly. The Justice Department just last week dropped what could have been mistaken for a legal bombshell when it announced in court documents that it would no longer label those held at Guantanamo as "enemy combatants" and that the administration had changed some of the terms for holding detainees. Obama now requires that only those who "substantially supported" al Qaeda or the Taliban or who "directly supported" armed hostilities against the United States be held -- just a slight toughening of the standards in place during the Bush administration. Obama has also stuck to Bush-era policies concerning state secrets doctrine and opposing federal court review of the cases of those held at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan.

While some have criticized the administration's refusal to toss all Bush-era terrorism policies out the window, Obama's caution has come as a relief to me. Policies should be discarded only after careful and thoughtful review. And there's little doubt that President Obama has access to a heck of a lot more national security information -- and thus a more realistic view of actual threats -- than did candidate Obama. The president is right to move slowly. But there is no such justification for dragging out the Uighur case, where even the Bush administration conceded the time has long past to give these men back their freedom.

Gitmo Special Envoy Highlights Obama’s Prisoner Problem

Gitmo Special Envoy Highlights Obama’s Prisoner Problem
By Daphne Eviatar 3/12/09 10:47 AM

Reports that the Obama administration will appoint the assistant secretary of state for European affairs under the Bush administration, Daniel Fried, as a special envoy on the Guantanamo Bay prison suggest the Obama administration is at least trying to deal with the question of what to do with many of the detainees who are not dangerous but can’t go home. But while the news is being portrayed in the mainstream media as a sign of President Obama’s serious approach to the problem, lawyers for some of the detainees say the administration’s handling of their client’s habeas corpus cases actually suggests a disturbing reluctance to break from past policies.

The kind of prisoners Fried (who DailyKos notes defended the Bush rendition policy to European allies) will probably be trying to resettle are those like the 17 Uighurs — the Chinese Muslims who’ve been cleared for release but can’t return home to China, where they’d likely be persecuted. But they aren’t being allowed into the United States, either. This is despite a federal judge’s recent order that the Uighurs be released into the United States, because the U.S. government had offered no evidence to justify their continued detentions.

But a federal appeals court reversed that ruling, finding that the federal courts don’t have the authority to release a prisoner into the United States — only the president and the Department of Homeland Security can do that. (The reasoning is that now they’re illegal aliens without immigration clearance.) So, why isn’t Obama letting them go?

The fact that congressional Republicans from Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida have introduced legislation to prevent detainees from even being transferred to prisons in their states offers some clue.

Back when President Bush was in charge, the Uighurs had become a global embarrassment and a cause celebre — even prominent conservatives were pleading with the Bush administration to release them into the United States, where Uighur families in the Washington, D.C. area were willing to take them in.

Now that the Obama administration has pledged to close down Gitmo and move the prisoners to appropriate places, he’s still not letting the Uighurs — or anyone else for that matter — into the United States. The Obama Justice Department is now even trying to stop their habeas corpus petitions from moving forward.

In the administration’s most recent move earlier this week, it asked the federal district court handling Guantanamo prisoner cases to halt all the habeas corpus cases of prisoners cleared for release, telling the judge it’s really up to the president, not the court, to decide what to do with them. After all, that recent appeals court decision said the judge doesn’t have the power to order them released anyway.

Guantanamo detainee defense lawyer David Remes is dismayed by this latest move in his clients’ cases.

“We come full circle,” said Remes, executive director of Appeal for Justice, a nonprofit legal organization focusing on the detainee cases, in an email yesterday. “First, the government argued that the courts have no jurisdiction to entertain the prisoners’ habeas cases,” he said, referring to the Bush administration’s early arguments about Guantanamo prisoners. “The Supreme Court shot that argument down in Rasul,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court case, Rasul v. Bush.

“Then, the government argued that even if the courts have jurisdiction, the prisoners have no rights. The Court shot that argument down in Boumediene,” another landmark Supreme Court case. “Now, the Obama DOJ, like the Bush DOJ before it, is arguing that even if the court has jurisdiction, and the prisoner has rights, there’s nothing a court can do to enforce those rights, because the president alone controls whether a prisoner shall be released. Of course, a right without a remedy is not a right.”

For some 60 Gitmo prisoners who’ve been cleared for release, all this just means they have to wait longer before they’ll be let go — and it’s still not clear to where.

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder also named two longtime government lawyers to direct task forces to analyze detention issues: J. Douglas Wilson, a senior federal prosecutor in California, and Brad Wiegmann, a senior Justice Department national security lawyer. The fact that Wiegmann was a national security lawyer in the Bush administration might not bode well for those looking for big policy changes.

Here’s more background on Wilson and Wiegmann from Daily Kos.

Clinton 'very encouraged' by EU stance on Guantanamo inmates

Clinton 'very encouraged' by EU stance on Guantanamo inmates



Wed Mar 4, 6:08 pm ET


Clinton 'very encouraged' by EU stance on Guantanamo inmates AFP – Belgium Foreign Minister Karel de Gucht (L) welcomes US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before a 'transatlantic' …

BRUSSELS (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that she was very encouraged by the position of European nations on hosting inmates from Guantanamo prison, which Washington has moved to close.

"I am very encouraged by what I have heard," she told reporters travelling with her to Brussels on a two-day visit for talks with EU and NATO officials.

"It is something that we may well come back to them about, once we finish our own internal work on this issue," she said.

EU nations have welcomed President Barack Obama's decision to close the detention centre at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and are keen to help Washington do so.

However, due to widely differing laws among the 27 EU countries, they are struggling to define a common position on how best to help, as they await an official request to accept former inmates.

A high-level EU delegation will travel to Washington on March 16-17 to find out exactly how US authorities decided that around 60 of the more than 240 prisoners could be released and why they cannot be hosted by the United States.

"We have been quite encouraged at the positive, receptive responses we have been getting, but we are not ready to go yet and actually make specific requests," Clinton said.

The former prisoners might have to be transferred elsewhere because they could face the death penalty at home, while others could be tried in US courts. Some may prove impossible to try, transfer or release.

A minority of EU countries -- France, Italy, Portugal and Spain -- have said they might be ready to accept former prisoners under strict conditions.

The bloc is also examining other options, like providing funds to other nations which might be prepared to host them.

Almost none of the remaining detainees are European citizens, and member countries could demand to conduct an independent assessment of the security risk they might pose, using US intelligence.

Should they be accepted, the former prisoners could be granted restricted residency status, possibly limiting their movement within the Schengen no borders area or imposing surveillance measures.

Those could also be granted refugee or protection status for one to three years, and steps could be taken to help them integrate.

The EU also wants reassurance that other inmates would not be transferred to another, possibly similar and equally contentious facility, like the Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090304/pl_afp/usattacksguantanamoeu

Alienated in Xinjiang

Alienated in Xinjiang

Joshua Kurlantzick, National Post Published: Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Related Topics

Uighur Muslim worshipers attend an early afternoon prayer session at the Kashgar Idgah mosque in Xinjiang province.

Nir Elias, ReutersUighur Muslim worshipers attend an early afternoon prayer session

at the Kashgar Idgah mosque in Xinjiang province.


In October, in a landmark decision, a U. S. federal judge ordered the White House to release 17 men, Muslim Uighurs from China, from Guantanamo Bay into the U. S. For six years, after they were swept up while studying in Afghanistan, the U. S. had held them at Guantanamo, though they'd long ago been cleared of being "enemy combatants." If released to China, they could be treated as dissidents and tortured or killed, and Washington had thus far failed to find another nation to take them.

The decision quickly met both cheers and fears. Among human rights advocates, the release proved a great victory, since the men clearly were not terrorists yet were suffering in prison camp. For its part, the Bush administration quickly warned the decision could allow actual hardcore militants at Guantanamo to also demand to be freed to the U. S. The White House obtained an emergency stay of the Uighurs' release and appealed the decision, though it remains unclear what President Obama, who has vowed to close Guantanamo Bay, plans to do with them.


But inside Xinjiang itself, the vast western region of China home to most Uighurs, a Muslim people ethnically close to the Turkic nations of Central Asia, virtually no one would have heard this news anyway. For while eastern China develops into a land of factories, fast cars and five-dollar lattes, far-western Xinjiang, a land more reminiscent of the Middle East than the Middle Kingdom, remains stuck in the totalitarian China of the past. While China becomes freer, in Xinjiang the heavy hand of the Chinese state still dominates people's lives, even controlling their personal religious beliefs -- and actually sparking local anger and, potentially, terrorism China long has feared.


In many ways, Xinjiang towns like Kashgar, a historic trading post near the border with Central Asia, barely resemble China. For centuries, Xinjiang, a landmass larger than much of Western Europe, was more closely tied to Central Asia. The Uighurs even had an independent state in the early 20th century. Today, in the historic central square of Kashgar, Uighur men still look West, rather than East to Beijing, for their cues; as the call of the mosque rings out, they congregate in back alleys, chewing over Iranian-style nan flat breads and haggling over hand-woven rugs.


Most Uighurs also have little interaction with their Chinese peers -- Kashgar itself is essentially divided into Uighur and Chinese areas. "I didn't really know any Chinese [students] in high school," one Uighur girl told me in Kashgar, though her classes were nearly half Chinese. "The only time the boys would meet them was when they fought."

These fights are hardly unique. For years, Uighurs have simmered against rule by Beijing. In the early-1990s, this anger exploded into large-scale street protests in several Uighur cities. Worried, China launched new policies in an attempt to better integrate Xinjiang into the rest of the country.


But Beijing's policies designed to pacify Xinjiang have backfired. In the past decade, as part of a multi-billion-dollar campaign called "Develop the West," China has encouraged vast domestic and foreign investment in Xinjiang and other western provinces, while building a modern rail and road network through the province.


Today, the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi looks like a bizarre combination of modern-day Denver and a medieval town. Against the backdrop of vast plains, new hotels and neon-lit skyscrapers now dominate Urumqi's downtown. In another part of the city, next to a new supermarket selling imported cheese and coffee, Uighurs trade handmade pots and sheep's head soup off the back of donkey carts.


Develop the West, unfortunately, has not benefited many Uighurs. As part of the program, the government has used a range of incentives to encourage westward migration by Han Chinese, who staff the new construction projects sprawling across the arid moonscape of Xinjiang's vast deserts. While Uighurs once made up over 90% of the province's population, today they comprise less than half, according to several estimates.


Now, Chinese traders and migrant workers dominate much of the economy of cities like Urumqi, even dressing up like Uighurs to appeal to Chinese tourists, who come for a glimpse of their "Old West" like Americans visiting the frontier in the 19th century. On the dusty ring roads surrounding the city, Uighur beggars sleep in alleys or stop motorists for tiny bills. According to one study by the Asian Development Bank, Xinjiang has the worst income inequality of any province in China -- a significant feat, given that supposedly "communist" China now boasts income inequality rivaling some of the most stratified Latin American nations.


Westward migration and construction also has damaged Xinjiang's fragile, arid environment, making life even tougher for local farmers trying to grow grapes and the sweet local Hami melons famed across China. Indeed, a study of Xinjiang's environmental woes by the NGO Human Rights in China found drying-up lakes, destroyed water reservoirs and other catastrophes. A recent petroleum boom in Xinjiang -- local gas production has more than doubled since 2000 -- will probably make these pollution problems far worse.

The local government also practices a subtle form of discrimination. Though Beijing reserves some government-linked jobs for Uighurs, people throughout Xinjiang told me that, at higher levels, all major positions are given only to ethnic Chinese. One study, by the Washington-based Congressional-Executive Commission on China, found that one of the organs of the local government in Xinjiang reserved 800 out of 840 positions for ethnic Chinese.


Unlike in other parts of China, where rules on personal freedom became relaxed over the past decade, in Xinjiang Beijing has retained draconian Mao-era controls. Fearing that Uighur anger will turn into radical Islam, despite no history of radicalism in the region -- many Uighurs I met downed cheap local alcohol, mixing it with soda or ice -- Beijing tightly monitors and restricts prayer. At mosques in the province, Uighurs told me, Beijing closely watches and often handpicks imams. Unlike in other parts of China, government workers in Xinjiang are not allowed to practise their religion.


According to one comprehensive report on Xinjiang by Human Rights Watch, Chinese security forces often arrest Uighur activists -- even though they have no extremist religious links -- torture them and even kill them, sometimes in public executions more reminiscent of the Taliban than modern Chinese cities like Beijing. In recent months, Beijing even has enacted new laws limiting Uighurs' ability to teach Islam to children.


China's strategy has only made the Uighurs more alienated. With the influx of Chinese migrants, Uighur small businesses in Xinjiang cities are failing, and the petroleum boom has resulted in few local hires and little revenue sent back to the province. New construction in towns like Kashgar has decimated old Uighur homes, mud-brick buildings with maze-like interior courtyards. On one visit to Kashgar, I wandered through the older, Uighur section of town, only to find many of the adobe-like homes marked for destruction. The next time I returned, most of the old courtyard homes were gone.


In some ways, the White House under George W. Bush, while publicly expressing support for the Uighurs' rights, actually helped Beijing repress them. To enlist China's support in the global war on terror, in 2002 the White House agreed to list an obscure Uighur organization, ETIM, on the State Department's roll of global terrorist networks, alongside such real threats as al-Qaeda. Beijing began using the U. S. action as pretext to enact even tighter controls in Xinjiang.


And when the Uighurs first arrived at Guantanamo, the Bush administration allowed Chinese intelligence officials to question them, according to transcripts of the Uighurs' military tribunals that I obtained--even though the State Department has repeatedly criticized Chinese intelligence for its harsh treatment of detainees. By locking them in Guantanamo, the administration essentially branded the men as terrorists, whether or not they were actually guilty --a decision that only made it harder to find any country to take them as refugees.

Ironically, after years of falsely seeing terrorism in every Uighur protest, today China may actually face a real terror threat. During the first week of the Beijing Olympics, militants launched a series of attacks in Xinjiang. In the most stunning demonstration, one group of militants allegedly rammed a bus into a police post in Kashgar and set off explosives before jumping out and stabbing the police, killing 16 people. Then, militants bombed areas of Kuqa, another town in Xinjiang.

Unfortunately, after failing to pacify Xinjiang when the region faced no terror threat, Beijing now has no idea how to combat real terror. Cracking skulls has not allowed Chinese forces to gain access to terror cells -- one reason why even Chinese officials admit they know little about Uighur militant organizations that may be forming. Indeed, Beijing's repression actually may be creating what it long has feared -- real, well-organized Uighur militant groups, which clearly did not exist in the past.

jkurlantzick@ceip.org - Joshua Kurlantzick is a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy and author of Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World.