The men being considered are reportedly two Chinese Muslim Uighurs, an Uzbek and a Palestinian. The men the United States has been trying to relocate have all been deemed not to pose any security threat but cannot be returned to their native countries for fear of persecution and torture there.

Ireland, Portugal, France, Albania, the Pacific island nation of Palau and Bermuda have all already agreed to take about a dozen detainees since President Obama took office in January and promised to close the Guantanamo prison by January 2010.

The United States, however, has refused to accept any of the detainees cleared for release on its own soil, including those that U.S. federal judges have ruled were wrongly imprisoned by the United States for more than seven years.

Portugal is the third European Union country to accept Guantanamo prisoners from the United States, following on the heels of Ireland and France. Outside the EU, Albania and Bermuda have taken some detainees, and Britain has said it would consider accepting some if they have residency or citizenship connections. Silvio Berlusconi, meanwhile, recently told President Obama that Italy would accept three Guantanamo detainees, though the details haven’t been made public. Spain, too, is also reportedly considering the United States’ request to take four of the prisoners.

In all, 11 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred to foreign countries since Obama’s inauguration, said Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd.

Germany and Sweden are among the European Union countries that have so far refused to take any Gitmo inmates, saying they need a good reason to do so.

Given that the United States Congress has passed a law barring the expenditure of any funds to bring Guantanamo detainees to the United States, and that Obama has given no indication that he’ll defy that ban and release any here anyway, the reluctance of some European nations to help us deal with the problem is not surprising.

It doesn’t help that in U.S. federal court, the Department of Justice has been arguing in each of the detainees’ habeas corpus cases that the men are too dangerous to be released and deserve to remain in prison. At the same time, the State Department continues to work through diplomatic channels to try resettle some of them abroad.

Some of the men released abroad have won court determinations that the United States has no right to legally hold them, notwithstanding the Justice Department’s arguments.

Four Muslims from China once confined to small prison cells as suspected terrorists at Guantánamo are now sprucing up the wide-open spaces of an oceanside golf course for the PGA Grand Slam of Golf.

The Uighurs who moved to the British island territory in June have joined crews working toward the October tournament, said Wendall Brown, chairman of the board of trustees for Bermuda’s public golf courses. [...]

Steve Johnson, who oversees landscaping and land cultivation for the golf courses, said the new hires are doing “very well” in their jobs.

“They have only just started, but they are doing what everyone else does, starting at the bottom and fitting in,” he said Tuesday.

As Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog noted earlier this week, the appeal by lawyers for 13 Chinese Muslim Uighur prisoners still held at Guantanamo Bay years after being cleared for release, would test the scope of the court’s ruling in the landmark case of Boumediene v. Bush that Guantanamo detainees have a right to challenge their indefinite imprisonment.

The real question is: Does the right to habeas corpus have any meaning if the courts can’t order the prisoners released?

Meanwhile, as Denniston also points out, Congress has already taken significant measures to take that power over Gitmo detainees into its own hands. The new defense budget sent to President Obama last week specifically bars any spending towards the release of any Guantanamo prisoners into the United States. It also restricts the president’s ability to release prisoners  to any other country and he must send Congress a secret report on his plans 15 days before transfer.

The effect of these budgetary constraints on the president is, writes SCOTUSblog, “to restrict in major ways the President’s use of his powers under Article II” and also to restrict the power of the federal courts – the power at issue in Kiyemba. It could even control what happens to the rest of the Uighurs involved in that case. (Four, as we know, were recently transferred to Bermuda.)

The Obama administration is expected to notify the Supreme Court before Thursday that it will sign the new spending bill, “perhaps to reinforce its earlier argument that the Court should deny review” of Kiyemba, speculates SCOTUSblog.

The odd thing is, while Kiyemba left complete power over the detainees to the president — which is why he doesn’t want the Supreme Court to consider reversing it — the spending bill hands that power to Congress.

If the Supreme Court does agree to hear and decide the Kiyemba case, it could reverse the decision and confirm that judges have the authority to order prisoners released, thereby affirming the role of the federal courts. But if it denies review and lets the decision stand, the effect, oddly, may be to hand to Congress virtually unlimited authority over the fate of the more than 200 remaining Guantanamo prisoners.

“It’s good to be humanitarian and all, but still these people … to me are scary,” remarks one Palauan.

The government of Bermuda, where four of the 17 Uighur detainees are now residing, is receiving a mixed response for its decision to take in the detainees. Bermuda, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, has been criticized by the United Kingdom for unilaterally deciding to accept the detainees without regard for Britain’s concerns on the matter. In a statement issued by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Bermudan government was chided for potentially overstepping its bounds:

We have underlined to the Bermuda Government that it should have consulted the UK on whether this falls within their competence or is a foreign affairs or security issue for which the Bermuda Government do not have delegated responsibility.

The Bermuda Sun reports that although that country’s Muslim community welcomes the detainees and the Human Rights Commission applauds the decision to host them, one member of Parliament is expressing outrage that he claims is shared by the overwhelming sentiment of the Bermudan people.

But China, the original home of the Uighur detainees, only has a bone to pick with the United States.  According to The New York Times, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang claims that America is ignoring international law by refusing to return the detainees to their home country. The U.S. government declined to return the Uighurs to China out of fear they would face persecution and torture.

Despite the controversy, one relocated Uighur has thanked the Bermudan government for “let[ting] freedom ring.”

Less than a month ago these Chinese Muslim prisoners were the subject of intense debate in Congress and had no place to go, as Republicans vehemently opposed their release into the United States. Now, the Obama administration has apparently located two island paradises willing to take them.

“By helping accomplish the president’s objective of closing Guantanamo, the transfer of these detainees will make America safer,” said Attorney General Eric Holder in a statement today. “We are extremely grateful to the government of Bermuda.”

The Uighur prisoners have all been cleared for release for more than three years, after the government determined that none of them were “enemy combatants” as it had initially charged.