Keep Guantanamo on the DU radar

[Son Of Spy]

5 Men Leave Guantánamo for a Bleak, Uncertain Future
WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 — Early on May 5, five Asian men who had been detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for years as dangerous terrorists boarded a military transport plane at the United States naval base there.

The men had just exchanged their prison garb for jeans, T-shirts and slip-on sneakers but were still in handcuffs as they boarded the plane, where they were shackled to bolts in the floor and surrounded by more than 20 armed soldiers. About 14 hours later, the plane landed in Albania, a poor Balkan nation eager to please Washington.

Interviews with lawyers and several officials in the United States and abroad showed that the flight, to a freedom of sorts for the five men, involved intense behind-the-scenes diplomatic activity in Washington; Ottawa; Tirana, Albania; Beijing; and elsewhere.

It also held implications for a United States Appeals Court, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the relations of several European countries with China. And it underlined the Bush administration’s difficulties in reducing the population at the Guantánamo prison camp as international calls for it to be closed increased.

The five men were Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) captured in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. They had traveled there from their homeland in the Xinjiang province of China, where the Uighur people, most of whom are Muslims, have fought a low-level insurgency against Beijing’s rule for years.

For the Uighurs, the transfer to Albania meant exchanging a military prison camp on the southeastern tip of Cuba for a bleak and unpromising future in one of Europe’s poorest countries, where no one spoke their language. One of them, Abu Bakker Qassim, said in an interview, “I would rather be in a society where I can be with some of my countrymen, but where we are is better than Guantánamo.”
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Lawyer gets a hero's welcome

ANNE MATHER

August 19, 2006 12:00am
Article from: The Mercury

UNITED States military lawyer Major Michael Mori issued a strong warning about the plight of his client, David Hicks, to a crowded auditorium in Hobart last night.

"Until the Australian Government does something and takes a position of strength, David will rot in Guantanamo Bay," Major Mori said.

In keeping with his image as a tireless defender of justice -- and of Hicks -- Major Mori was greeted as a hero by the adoring crowd at the University of Tasmania.

The crowd at the Stanley Burbury Lecture Theatre had reached its capacity of 720 nearly 20 minutes before Major Mori was due to speak.

By the time he took to the lectern, people were sitting on the floor five rows deep.

And by the time the US marine finished his address, the crowd ignited in a thunderous standing ovation lasting about five minutes.

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