The United States said last night it had flown five Chinese Muslim men who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to resettle in Albania, declining to send them back to China because they might face persecution.
The State Department said Albania accepted the five ethnic Uighurs - including two whose quest for freedom went all the way to the US Supreme Court - for resettlement as refugees.
The Pentagon said 17 other Chinese Uighurs remained at the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because, unlike the five sent to Albania, they were still deemed "enemy combatants."
Ethnic Uighurs come from Xinjiang in far western China. Many Muslim Uighurs seek greater autonomy for the region and some want independence from China. Beijing has waged a relentless campaign against what it calls the violent separatist activities of the Uighurs.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Albania's resettlement of the men was an important humanitarian gesture, and expressed US appreciation.
The US Supreme Court declined on April 17th to consider whether a federal judge could free two of the five men even though the US government had determined that they were not enemy combatants. A federal judge had found their continued detention unlawful.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said last month the United States should "repatriate Chinese-nationality terror suspects held at Guantanamo as quickly as possible" to China.