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.
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