WASHINGTON, March 30 - The United States has cleared 38 foreign nationals held at a naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, of their controversial status as enemy combatants'' and said they will be sent to their home countries soon. Navy Secretary Gordon England said today the decision had been reached following a 10-month-long review of the cases of 558 detainees captured in Afghanistan and other countries in the course of the war on terror and shipped to Guantanamo Bay for interrogation and possible prosecution. England said special tribunals have confirmed the status of 520 detainees and concluded an additional 38 detainees were found to no longer meet the criteria to be designated as enemy combatants’’.
Five of these inmates have been already returned to their home countries and the State Department, England pointed out, is working to coordinate the return of the remaining 33 as expeditiously as possible.'' But the secretary disclosed an unspecified number of Muslim activists belonging to China's Uighur minority have not been returned to their homeland, even though they had been removed from the enemy combatant’’ list.
He hinted the Pentagon feared the Uighurs, a persecuted religious group in China, would receive harsh treatment from authorities in Beijing, saying that concerns and issues about returning them to their country'' were behind the decision. US diplomats were working with other countries to find a place of residence for the Uighurs, the secretary said. England declined to discuss individual cases or disclose the nationality of any of the cleared detainees. But he vehemently denied the inmates had been brought to Guantanamo by mistake, pointing out that a determination a detainee no longer meets a criteria for classification as an enemy combatant does not necessarily mean that the prior classification as EC was wrong.’’
The announcement of the impending prisoner release followed a ruling by US District Judge Joyce Green in January, which declared the review tribunals unconstitutional and biased against the detainees.
England defended the tribunals, insisting they had made their decision on the preponderance of both classified and unclassified evidence.
But as the Pentagon was making its case, a US federal judge gave the Bush administration another rebuke by blocking the transfer of 13 Yemeni nationals from Guantanamo to their home country because of concerns they could be subject to torture or indefinite imprisonment there.
US District Judge Henry Kennedy upheld a restraining order issued earlier this month barring the government from shipping the detainees out until their future could be properly ascertained.
The 13 say they were arrested in Pakistan after they travelled there either for religious studies or looking for jobs.
Pakistani police handed them over to the US military and they ended up in Guantanamo Bay, classified as enemy combatants.'' Lawyers for the Yemenis claim the Pentagon is planning to transfer some of the detainees from Guantanamo to other countries for torture or indefinite imprisonment without due process of law.’’
In his ruling, Kennedy wrote that ``petitioners’ current designation as enemy combatants is not a foregone conclusion’’ and ordered the government to give the plaintiffs 30-day notice of any decision to move them.
A total of 211 inmates have been removed from Guantanamo for various reasons following the creation of a detention centre there in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, according to defence officials.
Of that number, 146 have been released while 62 have been handed over to their countries of origin, including Pakistan, Morocco, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Great Britain and others.