Uighurs

This is nice.
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 [...]

CQ Politics notes that a fight is brewing in Congress (finally) over the charge that the Defense Department allowed Chinese government agents to abusively interrogate the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Reports CQ:
Jay Alan Liotta, principal director of the Defense Department office responsible for detainee policy, told a House subcommittee on Thursday that he would [...]

Testifying recently before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder was asked what the Justice Department plans to do with Guantanamo Bay detainees who can’t be sent home, if no other country will take them.
Given that President Obama just signed a law sent to him by Congress that prohibits the release of any detainees [...]

On Thursday, the Supreme Court will meet to decide, among other things, whether to take up the case of Kiyemba v. Obama, in which the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., ruled that federal courts do not have the power to order any Guantanamo detainees released into the United States.
As Lyle Denniston at [...]

It’s not just residents of Alexandria, Va., who are uncomfortable with the prospect of hosting Guantanamo Bay detainees in their backyards. Some residents of the Pacific nation of Palau, where 13 Chinese Uighurs detained at Gitmo are set to be relocated, are expressing indignation over what they consider their government’s failure to consider the opinions [...]

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog reminds us that today is the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Boumediene v. Bush, which confirmed that Guantanamo Bay detainees have the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. Coincidentally, today the Washington Post also reported on its front page that the Obama administration has given up [...]

So I guess the island of Palau isn’t taking all 17 Uighurs after all.  The Justice Department today announced that four of them were actually sent to Bermuda instead.
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 [...]

Palau’s decision to accept the 17 Chinese Uighurs held at Guantanamo Bay, whom the United States and numerous other countries refused to take, may have been influenced by a generous foreign aid offer from the United States.
The Associated Press reports that “two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. was prepared [...]

And so ends a demagoguery-laced vignette from the Age of Terrorism, as Daphne and Weigel have been all over: the tiny Pacific archipelago of Palau has agreed to “resettl[e] and repatriat[e]” the 17 Uighur detainees housed at Guantanamo Bay whom the Bush administration no longer considered enemy combatants. Having no basis under which to detain [...]

While the Republicans in Congress are up in arms about the possibility that a handful of Uighurs will be released into the United States, it’s worth noting that these Chinese Muslims could have some disturbing stories to tell about their treatment at Guantanamo Bay.
Buried in a 2008 Justice Department inspector general report is the strange [...]