Uighurs

Barack Obama, Gitmo, Guantanamo, Uighurs

Obama withholding intel about Gitmo Uighurs from Germany

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Update, May 15, 2009, and bumped to the top: Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com is now reporting that ‘Germany [is] balking at Gitmo list.’

Berlin is being asked to take in nine Guantanamo inmates. So far the development is perceived as a first test of trans-Atlantic relations under President Barack Obama. In Germany, there are legitimate questions about the Uighur Chinese it is being asked to take in –but the Interior Ministry also appears to be buying time in an election year. …

Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann — of the Christian Social Union, Bavaria’s sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats — called the request an “imposition” by the US. “We don’t need people like this in Germany,” he told the mass circulation tabloid Bild. “It would be extremely naive (of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier) to let these people into the country.” Steinmeier himself, though, has kept relatively quiet on the subject — though he has been consistent in his support of the Obama administration.

And we do not need 17 terrorists, who just happen to be Uighurs, running around loose on the streets of northern Virginia, Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tallahassee (all possible locations), or any other place in America.

Original post: 9:35 pm EDT, May 11, 2009:

The European edition of the Stars and Stripes reports Germany has some legal requirements to meet before allowing Uighurs to immigrate in from Gitmo to there:

Germany’s interior minister says the United States must answer some key legal questions before his country considers accepting detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

“The U.S. forwarded reports on detainees with the request to check if Germany would accept them,” Wolfgang Schäuble said in an interview Sunday with the Bild Zeitung, a major newspaper in Germany. “As the federal minister of interior, it is my job to look into every single case individually. But the information we have received from Washington is in any case insufficient for the legal-based decision we have to make.”

Schäuble cited questions that need to be answered. “First of all, can it definitely be ruled out that these people are not a security threat?” he asked. “Secondly, why can the U.S. not take on these people? And, thirdly, do these people have any relation to Germany at all?”

We sympathize with you, Herr Schäuble; Aufenthalt stark mein Freund. (Stay strong my friend.) President Obama has not shared all he knows about the Uighurs with the nation he has sworn to protect: America. Our law also says terrorists are inadmissible.

Barack Obama, East Turkistan Islamic Movement, Eric Holder, Gitmo, Guantanamo, jihadists, Uighurs

AG Holder dodges and double-talks Republican Senators’ questions about Uighur terrorists

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Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate today:

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., pressed Holder to say whether he believed he had the authority to release someone with terrorist training into the United States. The attorney general did not directly answer Shelby’s question, but said the government doesn’t have any plans to release terrorists.

“With regard to those who you would describe as terrorists, we would not bring them into this country and release them, anyone we would consider to be a terrorist,” Holder said. [emphasis added mine]

What does the law say? It says those who trained as terrorists or associated with terrorists are inadmissible into the United States. But Attorney General Eric Holder says it is a matter of judgment and we know his recommendation will have great influence on President Obama.

In 1999, then DAG Eric Holder released known terrorists free in the United States, by way of pardon recommendations for FALN terrorists that were approved by President Clinton. Many Members of Congress back then, from both sides of the aisle, indicated those pardons were motivated by politics, to help his boss help his wife get elected to the Senate. This January, AG-nominee Holder admitted he “had made some mistakes” yet he also said those pardons were “reasonable.” We have good reason to question his judgment and motivations.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has twice written Holder and not received an answer.

I again reiterate my questions from last month and ask that I be given the same courtesy and dialogue you provided foreign government officials in Europe last week. Just four years ago, Congress enacted into law a prohibition on the admission of foreign terrorists and trained militants into this country. Accordingly, Congress is entitled to know what legal authority, if any, you believe the administration has to admit into the United States Uighurs and/or any other detainee who participated in terrorist-related activities covered by Section 1182(a)(3)(B). [emphasis added mine]

As you know, the current administration, including President Obama, has repeatedly criticized the Bush administration for legal decisions and authorizations that were made in efforts to defend the national security of this country. It would be both reckless and hypocritical for this administration to follow this criticism by acting in derogation of the law to permit an action that could endanger national security.

Knowing what we know now, the 19 hijackers would not have been legally admitted into the United States on their way to 9/11.

That is the point about the Uighurs. They trained in the same place as al Qaeda for the same purpose and hold the same ideology: Afghanistan, terrorism, and violent jihadism. If Eric Holder will not measure the Uighurs by those facts and standards, there is good cause to question his authority under the law and personal judgment.