Wapo and LA Times reports.
Obama did find four Chinese Uighurs that have been released, a home... in Bermuda.
The problem there is Bermuda is a Britain dependency and it seems they didn't check with the proper authorities before accepting the four, which has caused more tension with the British Government.
The British Government responded with ill-disguised fury tonight to the news that four Chinese Uighurs freed from Guantanamo Bay had been flown for resettlement on the Atlantic tourist paradise of Bermuda.
The four arrived on Bermuda in the early hours, celebrating the end of seven years of detention after learning that they were to be accepted as guest workers.
But it appears that the Government of Bermuda failed to consult with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the decision to take in the Uighurs – whose return is demanded by Beijing – and it could now be forced to send them back to Cuba or risk a grave diplomatic crisis.
Bermuda, Britain's oldest remaining dependency, is one of 14 overseas territories that come under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, which retains direct responsibility for such matters as foreign policy and security.
Can you say ...oooops?
Oh, and another little tidbit of interest:
It was reported yesterday that all 17 Guantanamo Uighurs were to be temporarily rehoused on the South Pacific island paradise of Palau as President Obama moves to close down the hated detention camp.
That was just the leadin to the interesting part, which is that the Obama administration offered Palau $200 million in "development and budget aid", to take them.
Anybody thinking right now about who is paying the $200 million to relocate these men, who (via Weekly Standard) admitted to being trained as terrorists in Tora Bora?
The four Uighurs attempted to deny any relationship with the ETIM/TIP, the Taliban, and al Qaeda during their CSRTs. But their denials are not credible. In the context of their denials they made important admissions.
For example, all four of the Uighurs admitted during their combatant status review tribunals (CSRTs) at Gitmo that they received training in the Taliban’s Afghanistan. And all four of them received this training at an ETIM/TIP terrorist training facility in Tora Bora, a key area once controlled by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Three of the four Uighurs transferred to Bermuda also admitted that they had firsthand ties to senior terrorists such as Hassan Mahsum and Abdul Haq – the leaders of the ETIM/TIP. Haq was recently designated an al Qaeda terrorist by the Obama administration’s Treasury Department, which noted that he is also a member of al Qaeda’s elite Shura council. Mahsum was killed in a Taliban and al Qaeda stronghold in northern Pakistan in 2003.
Weekly Standard has partial transcripts published at their site, go read.
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