Guantanamo detainees released to Bermuda

Uighur protest at Guantanamo Bay June 1, 2009.

Part of the issue regarding the closure of Guantanamo Bay revolved around where the released prisoners would go. After all, we’ve held them in captivity and denied them trial. We also might have tortured them. This depends not on your definition of "torture," but rather on whether or not Dick Cheney is entitled to the royal "we." It would seem that the detainees have plenty to be pissed about, and apparently we’re too scared to invite them to stay in the states – even the unquestionably innocent ones.

Recently four Chinese Muslims released from Guantanamo Bay have taken up residence in the one nation that would have them: Bermuda. So how are these battle-hardened terrorists planning to use the hospitality of Bermuda against the very Bermudians that naively welcomed them? In an unbelievably sinister plot against the tropical island, these men are reportedly planning to find employment.

In fact, we’ve picked up chatter suggesting that they may be laying plans for an operation that involves opening a restaurant serving their native Uighur cuisine (Uighur here denoting a Turkic-speaking Chinese nationality). Sounds pretty fishy to me. Oh my god! I just read further in the article, and they have been fishing! Something must be afoot.

Reading the article, it turns out that these guys are pretty normal and are really just looking for somewhere where they will be allowed to set up a life for themselves after we thoroughly destroyed their reputations:

'When we didn't have any country to accept us, when everybody was afraid of us ... Bermuda had the courage and was brave enough to accept us,' said Abdulla Abdulgadir, who at 30 is the youngest of the four men who relished their first weekend of freedom in seven years.

'We are not moving anywhere,' he said.

And why would they? After being kidnapped and held for seven years in a military prison, they landed in Bermuda. As in the island from the Beach Boys song. Other Uighurs were sent to Albania, so I’d say they did all right. Even the tourism industry has taken a shine to their new neighbors:

The latest developments have sparked a rash of jokes with Bermuda's tourism slogan 'feel the love' satirically changed to 'Bermuda, it don't GITMO better than this'.

Everyone should be happy, right? Nope. Now the British are angry:

'We are deeply disappointed that they negotiated the movement of the four people here with the United States without consulting us because, to us, it pretty clearly cuts across foreign affairs and security issues,' said island Governor Sir Richard Gozney.

Come off it, Britain. I can’t tell if the redcoats are simply mad in a "but you didn’t ask me first" kind of way, or if they are worried that Uighur cuisine somehow involves C4. For god sakes, can we just leave these guys alone now?  They just want to lead normal lives.  In fact, the article states that they “also have immediate priorities, such as learning to drive, scuba dive and bowl.” Bowling?! I think I want to hang out with them.

Their freedom, however, might be short-lived. Having spent the past seven years being told what to wear, where to sleep, who to talk with, and constantly being blamed for things that they absolutely did not do, they apparently are keen to return to life under arbitrary tyrannical rule: They want to get married.