Club Gitmo Guests Get Laptops, Email Lessons

This harsh detention just has to stop. What kind of monsters have we become?

These captives already get to order fast-food takeout from the base and have access to a phone booth for weekly calls. Now some 17 Uighur Muslims awaiting a nation to grant them asylum are about to go high-tech, with laptops and web training.

While awaiting details of President Barack Obama's order to close the prison camps by Jan. 22, commanders here have ordered 20 laptops for the captives of Camp Iguana.

''As you know, detainees are leaving this place,'' said Army Lt. Col. Miguel Mendez, who oversees detainee classes, a multilingual library and now-emerging virtual computer lab. ``We're getting them computer classes to prepare for their return.''

E-MAIL LESSONS

The Uighur detainees won't be sending electronic mail to their lawyers or family members back in communist China anytime soon.

Instead, the military is setting up an internal intranet web at the half-acre compound ''to teach them how to e-mail,'' Mendez said.

A federal judge last year ordered that the men be set free after reviewing the American military's reasons for holding them in habeas corpus petitions that reached the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. by order of the Supreme Court.

But the Chinese citizens in exile have no place to go.

As devout Muslims, they fear religious persecution in their homeland, in part because of the stigma of having been held at Guantánamo for allegedly getting paramilitary training in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001.

Attorney General Eric Holder said some could come to the United States for resettlement, triggering protests from members of Congress around Virginia, where other Uighurs live and have offered to settle them.

Nury Turkel, a Washington, D.C.-based Uighur rights activist, hailed the computer training development. Internet access could allow the men to listen to Uighur broadcasts of Radio Free Asia, he said.

Moreover, laptops would help the men ''be reintroduced into a modern society,'' said Turkel, who noted that after eight years in U.S. custody the computer training ``also would give hope to the men that their freedom is nearing.''

What, like we didn't have email eight years ago?

WTF?

Appeals Court Blocks Release of Club Gitmo Guests Into U.S.

The folks at ACORN must be heartbroken there are 17 fewer voters to register for Barack Obama.

A federal appeals court Monday blocked the release of 17 Chinese Muslims into the United States from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until it can hear further legal arguments in the case.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stayed a federal judge's order releasing the men, and it ordered oral arguments in the government's appeal, to be heard Nov. 24.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ordered the government Oct. 7 to release the men, all Uighurs, who have been held at Guantanamo Bay for nearly seven years. The same panel temporarily stayed Urbina's order a day later.

The government has been trying to find new homes for the Uighurs for years. It no longer considers them enemy combatants and provided no evidence in court that they posed a security risk. The men cannot be returned to their homeland because they face the prospect of being tortured and killed. China considers the men terrorists.

Send them back to China.

Unfortunately, they'll probably be honored guests at the White House before long.

Judge Orders Club Gitmo Guests Released ... In the United States

Words escape me.

In a stinging rebuke to the Bush administration, a federal judge Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to immediately release a small group of Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay into the United States.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said in a landmark ruling that it would be wrong for the Bush administration to continue holding the 17 detainees, known as Uighurs, since they are no longer considered enemy combatants.

The Uighurs have been in custody for almost seven years and have been cleared for release since 2004, but the government has not been able to find a country willing to take them in. Bush administration lawyers argued Tuesday that Urbina did not have the authority to order the Uighurs released into the United States.

More here. The Chinese want them back, but there are "fears" they'd be tortured. Ironic how that is. Everyone screamed about inmates at Club Gitmo being tortured, but the Bush administration doesn't want them sent back to China.

Although the Chinese government has demanded custody of the Uighurs, supporters and the Bush administration fear they would be tortured if turned over to Beijing.

Need you even ask who appointed Urbina?

Judge Urbina was appointed to the United States District Court in July 1994.

Just in case anyone has a faulty memory like, say, the media, Urbina was a Clinton appointee. Naturally, another group of inmates are thrilled with this outrageous decision.

China faces Muslim resentment in the west

As if the problems in the Tibet region and all of the problems it is causing for their hosting of the Olympics wasn't enough there is a growing discontent among the Muslim population inside of China. So far no reports of burning cars.

"The Chinese are too bad, really bad," said Hama, who added that the Chinese had broken up a protest of about 200 people last month. He put his wrists together as if handcuffed. "I can't say more or I'll get arrested."

The Muslims also live in the western part of the country. The area borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and Russia.

Such clashes are growing as the Olympic Games approach, with the world's spotlight on China and its human rights record. However, the situation with the Muslim minority Uighurs (pronounced "Wee-gers") is even more complicated because China worries about separatist sentiment and brands more militant Uighurs terrorists.

You have to love this part. They adopt western names rather then using Chinese or even more common Muslim names.

But the Uighurs often show the same disinterest in the Chinese. One Uighur university student who would only give his English name, Steve, said he didn't have to go to class last Friday because it was a national holiday — Ching Ming, a day when Chinese clean their ancestors' graves.

"I don't know what the holiday is called or what it's about," the 20-year-old student said. "It's a Chinese holiday. It has nothing to do with me."

But most Chinese are less then impressed with them.

"They have no culture and they don't try to study and improve themselves," said a Chinese delivery driver who would only give his surname, Wang, because he said the government didn't want him to speak ill of the Uighurs. "Most businesses don't want to hire them. That's why they hire Han Chinese. Their religion, Islam, it's no good. It fills their heads with nonsense."