Gitmo population reduced by four

Only 234 more to go.

The number of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp fell by four, US officials announced today, when four Chinese Muslims were released and resettled in, of all places, Bermuda, the British-administered island in the middle of the Atlantic.

They are among 17 Uighurs who were captured in Pakistan in 2001. The other 13 are to go to the South Pacific island of Palau, which will receive as much as $200 million in US aid. Officials determined the Uighurs were not anti-US terrorists, and would not return them to China, which says the Uighurs are an Islamic separatist movement.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been pushing for their release, congratulated the four men, who will be in the guest worker program: Huzaifa Parhat, Abdusemet, Abdulnasser, and Jalal Jalaldin.

"We also offer our thanks to the government and people of Bermuda for extending humanitarian protection to four of Guantanamo's refugees. These men want nothing more than their freedom and a chance to restart their lives. We welcome Bermuda’s willingness to look beyond the stigma of Guantanamo and see this reality," the center said in a statement.

"We hope that Bermuda’s humanitarian gesture will encourage Australia, Portugal, Ireland, Canada, Germany and other countries in Europe to open their doors to resettlement of the remaining men who need a place to restart their lives. Many of these countries have already said that they would be willing to take in victims of Guantanamo. It is time for other countries to step forward and help close Guantanamo. After more than seven years of imprisonment, action is needed more than words. This holds true for our congressional representatives at home as well. Congress should immediately support the President's pledge to close Guantánamo on schedule.

"Guantanamo is America's gulag. The long nightmare for four of these innocent men is finally coming to a close. They cannot recover the years that they lost, but we hope that they will be able to start their lives again in freedom. The reality, however, is that at least 60 prisoners will remain at Guantanamo until other countries agree to resettle them. The issue now is not what the law requires, or what the United States itself should do, it is a moral issue."

But for President Obama to keep his promise to close Guantanamo by January, the administration will have to persuade several other countries to take detainees.

On Tuesday, the first Guantanamo detainee arrived on US soil to stand trial in federal civilian court. Ahmed Ghailani, a Tanzanian who was captured in Pakistan in 2004, is facing charges in connection with 1998 Al Qaeda bombings at the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

Besides sending detainees elsewhere and putting detainees on trial then housing them in high-security US prisons if they're convicted, Obama also plans to use a revised form of military tribunals for those charged with violating the rules of war, and has proposed indefinite detention for those who the government does not have enough usable evidence against, but who the administration believes are too dangerous to release.

UPDATE: There's talk of a compromise in Congress that would allow Guantanamo detainees to face trial in the United States, but would not allow them to stay if they're convicted.

White House spokesman Bill Burton didn't directly confirm the possible deal, but told reporters today on Air Force One, "Well, we've obviously been talking to folks in the Democratic and Republican parties in both the House and the Senate to find the best possible solution to ensure the safety and security of Americans, and to make sure that justice is done here on the detainees who are going to be going to be prosecuted in criminal courts. And so I'm not going to get into the back and forth on what's happening in the negotiations other than to say that the President has obviously been talking to folks on both sides."

Asked where detainees would serve their sentences, Burton replied, "Well, I don't want to prejudge the conclusion of a result that hasn't come to pass just yet."