From The Financial Times
By Demetri Sevastopulo

The Pentagon will not have to release a group of Chinese Uighurs from Guantanámo Bay on Friday after an appeals court blocked an order to bring the men to the US.

The appeals court halted the potentially dramatic scene of Guantanámo detainees arriving on American soil for the first time since the start of the ”war on terror”. The decision followed an emergency US government appeal after a district court on Tuesday ordered the Pentagon to bring 17 Uighurs before the court on Friday.

In the landmark district court ruling on Tuesday, Judge Ricardo Urbina said the men – members of the Uighur ethnic group from China’s far-western region of Xinjiang – did not pose a security risk. He said the US constitution barred the indefinite detention of the men, who have languished in the Cuba-based detention camp since 2002.

Pakistan handed the Uighurs over to US forces in 2002 after they fled a camp in Afghanistan following the US invasion of that country. The Pentagon cleared them for release in 2004, but the US has refused to return them to China out of concern they might be tortured.

China on Thursday repeated its demand that they be repatriated to be dealt with ”according to law” as members of terrorist organisations.

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