jrance@iacwds.com 716 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 Some Guantánamo detainees to get laptops To better prepare them for life in asylum, the U.S. military is setting up a virtual computer lab for some Guantánamo captives now cleared for release. GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- These captives already get to order fast-food takeout from the base and have access to a phone booth for weekly calls. Now some 17 Uighur Muslims awaiting a nation to grant them asylum are about to go high-tech, with laptops and web training. While awaiting details of President Barack Obama's order to close the prison camps by Jan. 22, commanders here have ordered 20 laptops for the captives of Camp Iguana. ''As you know, detainees are leaving this place,'' said Army Lt. Col. Miguel Mendez, who oversees detainee classes, a multilingual library and now-emerging virtual computer lab. "We're getting them computer classes to prepare for their return.'' E-MAIL LESSONS The Uighur detainees won't be sending electronic mail to their lawyers or family members back in communist China anytime soon. Instead their lessons will be limited to DVD driven training. A federal judge last year ordered that the men be set free after reviewing the American military's reasons for holding them in habeas corpus petitions that reached the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. by order of the Supreme Court. But the Chinese citizens in exile have no place to go. As devout Muslims, they fear religious persecution in their homeland, in part because of the stigma of having been held at Guantánamo for allegedly getting paramilitary training in Afghanistan before Sept. 11, 2001. Attorney General Eric Holder said some could come to the United States for resettlement, triggering protests from members of Congress around Virginia, where other Uighurs live and have offered to settle them. Nury Turkel, a Washington, D.C.-based Uighur rights activist, hailed the computer training development. Internet access could allow the men to listen to Uighur broadcasts of Radio Free Asia, he said. Moreover, laptops would help the men ''be reintroduced into a modern society,'' said Turkel, who noted that after eight years in U.S. custody the computer training "also would give hope to the men that their freedom is nearing.'' Some Uighurs sent from Guantánamo to asylum in Albania several years ago now e-mail with Turkel regularly, he said. Attorneys for the men did not respond to requests for comment. LANGUAGE SKILLS The computer training will offer DVD language training as well as a basic users skill-set to help in any future employment options, Mendez said. For example, detainees bound for Spain would get basic Spanish language classes. The virtual computer lab is part of an emerging administration effort to persuade both Americans and European allies that some detainees are safe enough to resettle in their communities. On the one hand, the Pentagon released a report last week that said 5 percent of detainees released by the Bush administration later turned to terrorism -- and that U.S. intelligence had their suspicions about another 9 percent who were freed. On the other, a State Department diplomat is peddling detainee portfolios to Europe in a bid to find some asylum in new nations. Rear Adm. David Thomas Jr., commander of the detention center, spent this week briefing the 2,000 sailor guards and other staff that operations would continue unchanged, with improvements until the prison camps are emptied. 'DRAMATIC' CHANGE ''Change is coming,'' he told 200 Navy guards at a town meeting at a military chapel. "It's coming a little slow, but when it does it's going to be dramatic.'' He provided no timetable for closure. Two detainees have departed the prison since Obama took office, both for Europe, and a third is to be transferred to New York City for trial in the 1998 twin suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/1073991.html Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SOPMOD 254 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 They have more rights than we do,LOL Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Cobra 76 two 2,677 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 Well shit! I need a laptop too! That mean all I gotta do is become a damned muslim terrorist and I can get a free one too? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
SOPMOD 254 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 (edited) Well shit! I need a laptop too! That mean all I gotta do is become a damned muslim terrorist and I can get a free one too? And travel without an RFID passport and get to walk scott free after plotting violent acts. If you or I did that we would be in the deepest federal dungeon FOREVER Something else they are not saying is that when they turn them loose they are giving them money and airfare anywhere in the world and some of them are still operating under false identities that they concocted while plotting acts of terror against the USA while an American is tagged like livestock and watched by camera an average of 9 times on his way too and from work everyday... I wish some awesome freedom respecting nation with free speech,religion and personal armament clauses in their national constitution would give me asylum... Edited June 8, 2009 by SOPMOD Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Azrial 1,091 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 Well shit! I need a laptop too! That mean all I gotta do is become a damned muslim terrorist and I can get a free one too? Yes, however as you may have already been branded as a right-wing extremist you may not be eligible. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
yakdung 2,926 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 President Hussein the terrorist appeaser. Yakdung Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Wotan1105 7 Posted June 8, 2009 Report Share Posted June 8, 2009 Just wait til they start giving em cash money and welfare when they start releasing some of them here. Should go back to China, and if China is going to do something bad to them than so be it. Should of thought about that before they joined the war on terror whenever they did what they did to get blacklisted by the chicomms. I forget why they can't go back to China but any prospects of any single one of these people coming here is too much for me. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
uzitiger 193 Posted June 14, 2009 Report Share Posted June 14, 2009 What did you expect when people said that he is an Arab and a Muslim and will side with Islam against humanity. He will take care of his relatives and will coddle them. Don't be surprised if they end up at a White House banquet for their false "Allah'. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
superA 289 Posted June 15, 2009 Report Share Posted June 15, 2009 No torture, no clear way to sort through the mess and actually arrest the people that need it but we still need ways to make sure the bad guys can't do anything and make sure the ones we lock up are truly the bad guys. Anybody else see where this is going? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.