Trapped in Gitmo: nowhere to go.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: Citings - Brief article

IN APRIL The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon has cleared more than 20 percent of the inmates held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of all charges. So why are they still in prison? One problem: Many of the inmates come from countries with a history of human rights violations--Sudan, Yemen, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan, for example--and risk persecution upon their return. The United States has nowhere to send them.

Seventeen inmates are members of the Uighur Muslim separatist minority in China's Xinjiang province and face imprisonment or worse if returned to China. Five Uighurs were released in January 2007 after four years at Guantanamo because the U.S. was able to negotiate an asylum arrangement with Albania. But other countries won't offer the Uighurs asylum for fear of angering the Chinese government.

U.S. officials are having an increasingly difficult time finding countries willing to grant asylum to the other Guantanamo inmates cleared of charges. Nor will they release them to the United States, since many of the inmates have (or are suspected to have) some loose connection to a terrorist...