Chinese Gitmo detainees' fates mulled

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- A U.S. judge says he's considering the release of a group of Chinese Muslims held for seven years at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp.

The U.S. government no longer considers the ethnic Uighurs to be "enemy combatants." But China considers them terrorists and any country accepting the detainees would suffer diplomatic fallout, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

If U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina does order their release, it's likely the Uighurs would seek to live in the Washington D.C. area, the newspaper said.

His anticipated ruling is drawing the attention of anti-Guantanamo activists. They say the Uighurs' dilemma illustrates how the Bush administration is allegedly using the reluctance of the detainees' home countries to take them back as a justification for continuing to hold Guantanamo detainees indefinitely on flimsy evidence.

"You can't hold people just because it's politically expedient," Susan Baker Manning, an attorney representing the Uighur detainees, told the Post.

The newspaper said Urbina is scheduled to hold a hearing Tuesday that will examine whether he has the authority to order the release of at least five of the Uighurs.