The Obama administration is reportedly set to announce the release onto U.S. soil of at least some of the 17 Uighur detainees currently being held at Gitmo. All 17 are members or associates of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party (ETIP), a designated terrorist organization with ties to al Qaeda. The pending release of the detainees has caused widespread debate and concern. According to Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA), Attorney General Eric Holder is preventing members of Congress from receiving a full briefing on the Uighurs and the threat they may pose. “I have asked for briefings from career employees at the FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security – and have been told by each agency that the Attorney General will not allow them to meet with me,” Wolf told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. “What is the Attorney General hiding? This is not the transparency and accountability the president promised, nor is it the open and constructive relationship he claims to want with Congress.” Most, if not all, of the Uighur detainees were trained at a camp in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, prior to the September 11 attacks. According to documents released by the Department of Defense, several of the Uighurs admitted that a terrorist named Abdul Haq ran the Tora Bora camp. Both the United States and the United Nations designated Abdul Haq an al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist last month. While the DOD’s unclassified files provide many details about the Uighur detainees and their ties to known terrorists, other documents in the U.S. government’s possession likely include more. In a letter to President Obama last week, Wolf said that information he received “indicates that the Uighurs may be more dangerous than the public has been led to believe.” Wolf did not specify what information he had received, but asked that President Obama “declassify all intelligence regarding their capture, detention, and your administration’s assessment of the threat they may pose to Americans.” The assessment cited by Wolf was completed by President Obama’s inter-agency review board, which is reexamining each of the Gitmo detainees’ cases. According to an account by Jed Babbin last month, the review board determined that the Uighurs were too dangerous to release in the United States, but the Obama administration is ignoring its own review board’s recommendation. The administration is pushing forward with the release of some of the Uighurs as part of a quid pro quo with European nations. Releasing some of the Uighurs in the United States is seen as a good faith accommodation of European demands that the risk posed by these detainees be spread across nations. In addition to the 17 Uighurs, an additional 13 detainees have been cleared for release by the Obama administration. It is not clear where these detainees will be sent. The Obama administration was, according to several sources, prepared to announce the release of the Uighurs late last week, but pressure from Congress may have played a role in the ongoing delay.
