AGL 41.60 Increased By ▲ 0.10 (0.24%)
AIRLINK 127.50 Decreased By ▼ -0.50 (-0.39%)
BOP 6.59 Increased By ▲ 0.33 (5.27%)
CNERGY 4.16 Increased By ▲ 0.03 (0.73%)
DCL 8.60 Increased By ▲ 0.16 (1.9%)
DFML 40.82 Increased By ▲ 0.13 (0.32%)
DGKC 87.10 Decreased By ▼ -0.80 (-0.91%)
FCCL 33.70 Decreased By ▼ -0.40 (-1.17%)
FFBL 65.98 Decreased By ▼ -0.35 (-0.53%)
FFL 10.45 Decreased By ▼ -0.11 (-1.04%)
HUBC 109.31 Increased By ▲ 0.61 (0.56%)
HUMNL 14.90 Increased By ▲ 0.44 (3.04%)
KEL 4.90 Increased By ▲ 0.25 (5.38%)
KOSM 7.60 Increased By ▲ 0.27 (3.68%)
MLCF 42.32 Decreased By ▼ -0.40 (-0.94%)
NBP 61.08 Increased By ▲ 0.24 (0.39%)
OGDC 182.30 Increased By ▲ 3.33 (1.86%)
PAEL 25.20 Decreased By ▼ -0.50 (-1.95%)
PIBTL 6.21 Increased By ▲ 0.15 (2.48%)
PPL 148.24 Increased By ▲ 2.09 (1.43%)
PRL 24.84 Decreased By ▼ -0.07 (-0.28%)
PTC 16.19 Increased By ▲ 0.05 (0.31%)
SEARL 69.60 Decreased By ▼ -0.60 (-0.85%)
TELE 7.34 Increased By ▲ 0.12 (1.66%)
TOMCL 36.50 Increased By ▲ 0.30 (0.83%)
TPLP 7.83 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.13%)
TREET 15.40 Decreased By ▼ -0.19 (-1.22%)
TRG 52.40 Increased By ▲ 2.04 (4.05%)
UNITY 26.89 Decreased By ▼ -0.01 (-0.04%)
WTL 1.24 No Change ▼ 0.00 (0%)
BR100 9,847 Increased By 52 (0.53%)
BR30 29,989 Increased By 341.8 (1.15%)
KSE100 92,468 Increased By 446.7 (0.49%)
KSE30 28,789 Increased By 124.6 (0.43%)

A US federal judge on Tuesday ordered the release into the United States of a group of Chinese Muslims once suspected of terrorism who are being held in Guantanamo Bay prison, a court official told AFP. The US government declared the group of 17 Uighurs to no longer be "enemy combatants" this year but had maintained it could continue to hold them in Guantanamo if no other country accepted them.
China has urged the US to repatriate the "terrorist suspects," but Washington has resisted due to fears the group would be tortured upon return. For several years, the United States has attempted to persuade other countries to resettle the Uighurs, part of an ethnic group which populates much of western China that Beijing considers seditious. Only Albania has agreed to do so, offering to take five of them in 2006. Most of the Uighurs were turned over to the United States from Pakistan in late 2001 in exchange for bounties.
The group was living in a self-contained camp in Afghanistan when the US-led coalition bombing campaign began in October 2001. They fled to the mountains but were turned over to Pakistani authorities, who in turn handed them to the United States. Humans rights groups have campaigned against their continued detention.
"The Uighur detainees have been held at Guantanamo for nearly seven years, even though the government acknowledges they should be freed," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, on Monday. "Since Washington has failed to resettle the Uighurs elsewhere, it should parole them into the United States," she said. A lawyer for the detainees said in January that the Uighurs were being held in extremely brutal solitary confinement.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2008

Comments

Comments are closed.