This past week, the Obama administration announced the transfer of four ethnic Uighurs from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to Bermuda. The South Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to take a number of the remaining Uighurs, possibly all of them, as well. Thus, all seventeen of the Uighurs who were detained at Gitmo at the start of the Obama administration could soon be freed.

The agreements with Bermuda and Palau represent the end of a months-long problem for the administration. When the president announced that Gitmo would be closed within one year of his taking office, he and his administration clearly anticipated the Uighurs’ cases would be among the easiest to settle.