Friday, January 9, 2009

China Linked To Kevin Rudd's Rebuff Of George Bush's Guantanamo Bay Plan

David Hicks has been held at Guantanamo Bay prison for more than five years.
(Reuters: Joe Skipper ) (Photo taken from ABC.net)

From The Australian:

THE Rudd Government denied a request from the Bush administration to resettle 17 Chinese locked up in Guantanamo Bay military prison after a number of warnings from Beijing not to take the former terror suspects.

Beijing heavily lobbied the federal Government against resettling the group of Muslims from northwestern China, known as Uyghurs, whom the US has cleared but refuses to send home for fear of their torture and possible execution.

The Canberra meeting - described as a mid-level diplomatic approach - took place about three weeks ago. It came as the Foreign Ministry in Beijing stressed publicly its opposition to any resettlement of the Uyghurs.

"We have said on many occasions that the 17 terrorist suspects detained at the US military base of Guantanamo are members of the Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is listed as a terrorist group by the UN Security Council," a spokesman said.

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