Three Uighurs Cleared to Leave Gitmo Seek Asylum in Canada

[Journeyman]

Shared in accordance with relevant copyright laws

Six detainees look to Canada for asylum
Guantanamo prisoners cleared by U.S. seeking refugee status

By Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News ServiceFebruary 3, 2009
Link to article

Note: Highlighted points are my emphasis, and are tied to my comments following the article

Six Guantanamo Bay detainees, backed by Canadian sponsors, are seeking refugee status in Canada with the pending closing of the U.S. detention centre in Cuba, including three Chinese Muslims who have been cleared of posing a threat to American security.

Human rights lawyers and other supporters have filed a formal application for Anvar (Ali) Hassan, an ethnic Uyghur who says he will be tortured or even executed if he is forced to return to China.

The 34-year-old prisoner, one of 17 Chinese Muslims sent to Guantanamo after being captured in Pakistan in 2002, is a "test case" of sorts in an international bid to find them safe homes, George Clarke, Mr. Hassan's Washington-based lawyer, told Canwest News Service.

"We're looking to find him a way out of Guantanamo and obviously Canada is on anybody's short list," Mr. Clarke said.

"If they got comfortable in taking one or two guys, why wouldn't they be comfortable in taking 17?"

Many other countries have been approached in the last couple of years to take the Guantanamo Uyghurs after they were cleared almost three years ago of being a terrorist threat to the U.S.

A judge ordered their release last September, but no country has been willing to offer them asylum.

China has unsuccessfully pressed the U.S. to return them to their homeland, saying that they are terrorists who are seeking an independent Muslim homeland in northwestern China.

Mr. Hassan, a dissident who fled China to live and train in a camp in Afghanistan in 2001, was among about two dozen Uyghurs who fled after the U.S. moved against the Taliban and were later caught in the hills of Pakistan.

The Chinese authorities have asserted that the Uyghur detainees were fighting with the Taliban forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr. Hassan's sponsor is the Don Valley Refugee Resettlement Organization, a group of eight churches in the Toronto area.

A summary of his case, supplied by his lawyers, says that he admitted to military training in Afghanistan, but that his motivation was "to fight to oppressive Chinese government."

He says that he was tortured and beaten in prison in China in 1999, where he was held for one month for "being Uyghur."

Mehmet Tohti of the Uyghur Canadian Society said that Canada came close to accepting Guantanamo Uyghurs in 2006, but backed off for fear of reprisal from China at a time when Canadian officials were trying to negotiate with authorities over the fate of Huseyin Celil, a Canadian citizen and ethnic Uyghur being held in China on terrorism charges.

Canada's efforts failed and Mr. Celil was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007.

Mr. Tohti said that bid to bring the detainees to Canada has been revived, in part, because there is a feeling that Canada has nothing to lose now that it has been snubbed by Beijing in the Celil appeal.

Mr. Tohti said Canada should "get the score equal" with China by ignoring the country's international plea to reject the Guantanamo Uyghurs.

Moreover, permitting them to come to Canada would send a signal of Canada's willingness to co-operate with the Obama administration, which is seeking countries to accept Guantanamo detainees in light of the planned closing, Mr. Tohti said.

Last October, the Anglican Diocese of Montreal sponsored a refugee application for Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian detained at Guantanamo since 2002. Like the Uyghurs, he has not been charged with anything.

Janet Dench, executive director of the Canadian Council for Refugees, said there has been no word from the Immigration Department on the fate of Mr. Ameziane, who lived in Montreal for five years during the 1990s.

Mr. Hassan's bid to come to Canada is expected to be followed by five other attempts from Guantanamo detainees in the next few months, accompanied by sponsors who have come forward to support them, said Ms. Dench.

Three prospective refugees are Uyghurs, the others are from undisclosed countries, she said.

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

"Canada is on anybody's short list," because everyone knows this is the land of milk & honey, where we will change if the ungrateful refugees or immigrants object to our national anthem or the fact that we have constitutional, rather than shuria, law. The arrogance of saying "If they got comfortable in taking one or two guys, why wouldn't they be comfortable in taking 17?"......or why not 50 or 100. Clearly our immigration policies are a joke to these people.

As for the Chinese assertion that the "detainees were fighting with the Taliban forces in Afghanistan," I think the detainees lawyer pretty much cleared up that issue by saying "that he admitted to military training in Afghanistan." The mitigating factor is supposedly that these skills were meant to kill someone else, so it's OK?? 'Yes, your Honour, I did indeed make anthrax in my basement, but it's OK because I only intended to inflict a horrifying death on people with......oh, green eyes......no harm, no foul, right?'


Djamel Ameziane: :  Not sure why the two paragraphs (actually, two sentences masquerading as paragraphs, but that's a separate issue) were thrown into the article. It certainly doesn't add to the credibility of these 'merely misunderstood' claimants.

Let's see, Ameziane was an illegal immigrant in Canada, getting in on a fake Dutch passport. After four years (when our Immigration people were apparently unable to deport him), a Tunisian man paid him $1200-1500 to undergo training in Afghanistan -- he departs on his own, this time with a stolen French passport. He settles into an al-Qaida compound, acknowledging that all the other residents were Taliban fighters. Travelling through the Tora Bora mountains (where PPCLI were fighting alongside the Americans), he ended up in Pakistan where he as captured.1

From Ameziane's Administrative Review Board (25 March 2006), he claims to have decided while living in Montreal, that "he wanted to go to Afghanistan because he believed the Taliban had created the only country which was truly Islamic, and the detainee wanted to live somewhere with only Sharia Law."2

WHY ON EARTH WOULD WE WANT HIM HERE??


-----------------------
1. See Michelle Shephard, "Camp Six detainee pins hopes on Canada," Toronto Star, 9 June 2008.
----- "Algerian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay says he was waterboarded," Canadian Press. 22 October 2008.
----- "Montreal supporters offer haven to prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay". Toronto Star, 22 October 2008.

2. Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants, (25 March 2006). "Unclassified Summary of Evidence for Administrative Review Board in the case of Ameziane, Djamel Saiid Ali." United States Department of Defense, pp 67-79.

 

[The Bread Guy]

Link to some background below - shared in accordance with the "fair dealing" provisions, Section 29, of the Copyright Act.

3 Uighurs at Guantanamo ask Canada for asylum
Rob Gillies,Associated Press, 3 Feb 09
Article link

Three Chinese detainees cleared for release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay have applied for political asylum in Canada, lawyers for the men and a group sponsoring them said Tuesday.

The men are among 17 Chinese Muslims called Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurz) at Guantanamo. The U.S. has cleared them for release but fears they could be mistreated or even tortured if they are turned over to China, which alleges they are terrorists who belong to an outlawed separatist group.

Two of the inmates applied last week and one applied last October, said Mehmet Tohti, a member of the Uighur Canadian Association, a non-profit cultural organization that is part of the group sponsoring the men's request for asylum.

Tohti said there has been no government response so far to the Uighurs' request. But Canada has refused several requests from Washington in the past to provide asylum for Uighurs cleared for release from Guantanamo.

Danielle Norris, a spokeswoman for Canada's Citizenship and Immigration government agency, said without the consent of the men she could not speak to their specific cases because of privacy laws.

Norris said in an e-mail that the number one focus of the department is protecting the security of Canadians and that any applicant would face rejection if there were reasonable grounds to believe they have "engaged or will engage in acts of terrorism."....

More on link

More on this from "The Jurist"

From a previous Jurist:  "The US government has determined that the Uighurs are not unlawful enemy combatants [10 U.S.C. § 948a text; JURIST news archive, but it has linked them with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) [CFR backgrounder], a militant group that calls for separation from China and has been a US-designated terrorist group since 2002. China has renewed its demand [JURIST report] for the Uighurs to be repatriated, and in October, Chinese authorities called on other nations [Guardian report] to arrest and extradite eight alleged ETIM members whom they suspected of plotting to attack the Olympic Games this past summer in Beijing."

According to the latest version of Public Safety Canada's "Currently listed entities", the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is not on the list.  More on ETIM from globalsecurity.org, the Center for Defense Information and Wikipedia.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I damn well don`t want Djamel Ameziane here.  The Friggin Khadrs are enough trash in the country.  Who`s to say these others are any damn better. 

 

[geo]

While I would love to say YES...... the only answer I can come up with WRT their application to get Asylum here.... I say NO!!!

 

[abo]

Cant send them back to china. But I think the US is the one who should be giving them asylum.

 

[aesop081]

Cant send them back to china.

Why not ?

China wants them back......send them !

 

[abo]

Why not ?

China wants them back......send them !

Ummm I thought that was obvious?

 

[geo]

... I believe Germany has indicated they have a large Uighur comunity within their population... and that they are inclined to accept them.

http://www.uyghuramerican.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12159

The German government has signalled it is willing to help US President-Elect Obama make good on his promise to close the controversial terrorist prison camp Guantánamo Bay by taking in inmates.

Günther Nooke, human rights envoy for the German government, told the Frankfurter Rundschau on Friday that Germany would work together with other European states to take in innocent inmates.

“Guantánamo is an American problem, but its closure should not be hindered because no-one knows where to put the prisoners,” Nooke told the paper.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This from the Canadian Press:

The Canadian government says it has no intention of accepting some of the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay.  "Prisoners that have absolutely no connection to Canada will not be brought to Canada," Dmitri Soudas, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office, said Thursday.  A Canadian media source reported Thursday the Obama administration sent an envoy to Canada to ask the federal government to accept a number of Guantanamo detainees, but was turned down .... The U.S. is particularly anxious to find a place to send 17 Muslims from western China that the U.S. courts have ruled are being detained illegally ....