Originally by AFP, published by google/hostednews, 15 Apr 2010

WASHINGTON — The last five Uighur Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp are to have a court hearing next week to ask for their release on US soil after nearly a decade of detention, judicial sources said Thursday.

After a two-year legal battle, a three-member panel of the US Court of Appeals in Washington ordered an April 22 hearing at which lawyers for each of the men will be allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes, court sources said.

The five men are part of an original group of 22 Uighurs arrested at the end of 2001 in the mountains of Afghanistan, and accused at the time of having Al-Qaeda ties following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The men were later cleared of allegations that they had terrorist connections, but US officials have faced a quandry in trying to figure out how, and where, to free them.

Seventeen have accepted to be transferred to third countries to end their detention at the Guantanamo prison camp, where 183 “war on terror” prisoners remain.

But the five remaining Uighurs have rejected an offer to be hosted by the Pacific island nation of Palau, where another six Uighurs were resettled in October.

Lawyers for five Uighurs petitioned the US Court of Appeals in Washington to consider their clients be initially released on US soil. A US federal judge had granted that right to the Uighurs in October 2008, but the ruling was overturned on appeal.

US lawmakers have also have blocked the Uighurs from being released in the United States.

Washington refused to send the men — members of a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority — back to China, fearing they would be persecuted.

In addition to the five Uighurs remaining at Guantanamo and the six in Palau, another two were resettled in Switzerland last month, while five were taken in by Albania in 2006 and another four by Bermuda.

The roughly eight million Uighurs, a Central Asian people who live in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang, have long accused China of political, cultural and religious repression.

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