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And so ends a demagoguery-laced vignette from the Age of Terrorism, as Daphne and Weigel has 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 the Uighurs, and being prevented from sending them back to China where they’d likely be tortured, both the Bush and the Obama administrations had little idea what to do with the Uighurs. Some in the Uighur community in Northern Virginia initially agreed to take in the detainees, but that proposal met loud objections from Republican members of Congress — joined by fearful Virgina Democratic politicians like Sen. Jim Webb — who transmogrified the freeing of the Uighurs into an imaginary Obama administration plot to have Khalid Shaikh Mohammed rent the foreclosed house in your exurban cul-de-sac.
Daniel Fried, the State Department’s Guantanamo troubleshooter, worked out a deal with Palau earlier today, according to The New York Times, to take an unspecificed but substantial proportion of the 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo Bay, making other a-la-carte resettlement efforts easier:
One administration official said that if Palau agreed to take “a large chunk” of the 17, it would be easier to find homes for the rest, either in Australia, Germany or the United States. Australia and Germany already have Uighur populations, making those countries obvious candidates.
Australia recently agreed to review a request to accept some Uighurs, after twice rejecting from the United States. Germany has been reluctant to accept any detainees unless the United States takes some, too.
So there’s a silver lining for the demagogues: maybe one Uighur whom the Bush administration didn’t consider an enemy combatant will end up in Virginia. Keep some cash on hand for a quick ad buy. Maybe put Thomas Jocelyn on camera, since he finds a way to complain about a solution that will at the very least keep most of the Guantanamo Bay Uighurs out of America.
Crossposted to The Streak.
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Let me get this right:
1. Uighurs go from Cuba (island – prison) to Palau (island – in middle of the Pacific)
2. US pays Palau millions to take Uighurs
3. Can Uighurs leave Palau?? or must they stay there? away from home and families.
This is President Obama’s answer to releasing the Uighurs?
The NYT story says they’ll be monitored, but evidently not jailed, and the terms of the monitoring will be reviewed. I expect the State Department will release an official statement on the terms of the deal shortly so we’ll have clarity.
I would certainly like to know whether these Uighurs have families that need to be relocated with them or not. Not once have I heard any reference to their families in the press, with the possible exception of some extremely convincing writing by one of their attorney’s, Sabin Willett. I believe that he mentioned bringing his client the only picture of the client’s family he was able to see during his incarceration, and Sabin said he had to take that picture with him because apparently it was contraband (this even after the military tribunals that tried them found them not guilty of a damn thing.)
In the meanwhile, this is a statement regarding compensation to Palau that I found in Forbes.com and attributed to AP reporter Ray Lilley today:
So was Rachel right when she reported this last night? I have no reason to doubt her. I certainly hope that a good part of that money will be going to the Uighurs and their families in compensation for their poor treatment and for being held (and continuing to be chained to the floor of their cells) long after they were acquitted.