Palau welcomes ex-Guantanamo detainees

Saturday, November 21, 2009 5:23 PM

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Wednesday, November 04, 2009

KOROR, Palau (AP) - They've shaved off the long beards they wore at Guantanamo Bay, and they were angered at a local newspaper report that casually referred to them as terrorists.

The six Chinese Muslim men were also relieved and thankful to be out of the US prison and beginning new lives in Palau yesterday as they gave their first tentative media interview to The Associated Press.

KOROR, Palau - Jackson Henry (second from left), Palau's ambassador to Taiwan and Masaichi Etiterngel (third left), a Palauan traditional chief, presents four recently freed Guantanamo Bay detainee Uighurs with a bouquet of roses as a welcome gift to Palau in the capital, Koror, yesterday. Six former Guantanamo Bay detainees thanked the people of Palau for taking them in, but signalled the Pacific Island nation would be only a temporary home. (Photo: AP)

"We are extremely grateful to the president of Palau and the people of Palau who have graciously accepted us and given us this home," said Abdul Ghappar Abdul Rahman, who along with the other members of China's Uighur minority group spent some eight years in US custody before being released without charge this week.

"The US government told us this would be a temporary home," Abdul Rahman told the AP as they spent their first day out and about. "We will study English here, look for a job and establish our new lives in this beautiful country," he said, speaking through a US government-appointed interpreter.

The resettlement came after long negotiations, both with Palau to achieve the offer to house the Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs), and with the men themselves, who their lawyers said knew little about the Pacific island nation and were concerned they would be isolated from their people.

The six were among 22 Chinese Muslims picked up by American forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2001 on suspicion of terrorism. They were taken eventually to Guantanamo, where they were held as enemy combatants until a federal court ruled last year that they shoul be freed.

They spent months in legal limbo as US officials tried to find somewhere to send them, and help meet US President Barack Obama's plan to close Guantanamo. Congress moved to block any Guantanamo detainee from entering the United States. Beijing calls the Uighur men terrorists and has demanded they be returned to China, where activists say they would face persecution and possibly death.

Palau, a clutch of islands east of the Philippines that is home to some 20,000 people and still relies on funds from Washington, offered to take all but one of the Uighurs. Both sides denied the offer was linked to US aid. The one exception was a man Palau said it had mental health concerns about.

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