Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Annie Berman -- Talk Radio News Service

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing Tuesday to determine whether or not the Uyghurs held at Guantanamo Bay were a part of a terrorist organization known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

Testifying in front of the committee, Bruce Fein, an attorney who specializes in international law argued that the United States needs to take responsibility for the Uyghurs.

Said Fein, “Give the Uyghurs permanent residence in the United States of America like we should have done all along, rather than making other countries take them.”

Susan Baker Manning, a primary defense attorney for a number of the Uygher detainees at Guantanamo, including the four men who were recently released to Bermuda, argued that the detainees have absolutely no relation to any terrorist organization.

“There is no evidence that we are seeing in four long years of vigorous litigation that the original justification for detaining any of the Uyghur men was in affiliation with ETIM or with any other ostensible Uyghur organization,” said Manning.

The question of whether or not ETIM ever existed was discussed as well.

“Chinese authorities continue to arrest Uyghur nationalists inside China over the last 8 years claiming that they are members of ETIM. These arrests have not generally been in response to acts of violence, but related most often to political descent,” said Sean R. Roberts, a Professor of International Affairs at George Washington University, who testified via web broadcast. The bulk of Roberts’ testimony seemed to imply that only the Chinese government believes that ETIM is a terrorist organization.

Said Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.), “It would appear that we have not heard anything about or from ETIM.”

Manning added, “Most of the Uyghurs had never even heard of the ETIM until they were questioned about it by U.S. interrogators. Nor had they heard of al-Qaida.”