Detainees May Move to Palau (NYT)

By MARK LANDLER
Published: June 9, 2009

WASHINGTON — The United States is in the late stages of negotiations to move a group of Chinese Muslims from the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Palau, a sparsely populated archipelago in the South Pacific, three senior administration officials said Tuesday.

The agreement, if completed, could be the largest single transfer of detainees from Guantánamo and the first major deal on detainees since President Obama pledged to close the prison by early next year.

It would also provide Mr. Obama some relief on an issue that has become a political hot button among Congressional Republicans and even some Democrats, who have noisily protested against the idea of releasing what they call potentially dangerous extremists on American soil or transferring them to prisons in the United States.

The 17 Chinese Muslims, known as Uighurs, have been in a state of limbo since last fall when a federal district court ordered that they be released in the United States, and an appeals court later overturned the ruling. The Bush administration eventually said that it did not classify the men as enemy combatants ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/world/10palau.html?hp

Isn't Palau one of the places that is going to get permanently waterboarded by global warming?