Hand over Chinese Muslims: China to Albania

TIRANA, May 8: China asked Albania today to hand over five Chinese Muslims released from Guantanamo Bay prison and applying for asylum in Albania, saying they were members of a terrorist organization.

Albania is currently processing the request from the five ethnic Uighurs, who arrived on Friday. The United States, which held them in Guantanamo for almost four years without charge or trial, said it would not hand them back to China because they might face persecution there.

''We have contacted the Albanian side and want them to repatriate to China the five terrorists holding Chinese citizenship as soon as possible '' Chinese Ambassador Tian Changchun said in a statement.

''In accordance with international law, the defendants should return to China.'' The Chinese ambassador said the ''Eastern Turkistan terrorist organisation'' had ties to al Qaeda, had backed the Taliban in Afghanistan and had been named in a United Nations list of terrorist groups.

Ethnic Uighurs come from the Xinjiang province in western China. Many Muslim Uighurs seek greater autonomy and some want independence from China. Beijing has waged a relentless campaign against what it calls the violent separatist activities of the Uighurs.

Diplomatic sources said the United States asked more than 20 countries to take in the men before asking Albania, the only country to accept.

A U.S. embassy public affairs officer in Tirana said the decision to send the men to Albania ''was made after they were determined to be no longer a threat'' to the United States.

''The Uighurs' preference was a European country. Albania generously offered to take them,'' the officer told Reuters.

Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer for the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights representing two of the men, said on Friday that Washington moved them to Albania ''to avoid having to answer in court for keeping innocent men in jail.'' Albania, ruled by a communist government from 1945 until 1990, enjoyed very close political and economic ties with China during the 1960s, when both countries were at odds with the Soviet Union.

REUTERS