U.S. Faces Obstacles To Freeing Detainees

Although Albania agreed to accept the five Chinese prisoners -- all ethnic Uighur Muslims -- the United States is still looking for a home for 17 Uighurs who remain at Guantanamo. Several European countries with small Uighur immigrant populations declined to give the prisoners asylum after receiving pressure from the Chinese government, which wants to extradite the Uighurs and try them on terrorism charges, according to U.S. and European officials.

Among those countries is Germany, which also balked for years at allowing a German native, Murat Kurnaz, to return even though U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement officials had largely concluded there was no information tying him to al-Qaeda or terrorist activities, U.S. and German documents show.

In 2002, U.S. officials indicated they were willing to release Kurnaz, who was born and raised in Germany but holds Turkish citizenship. But the German government barred him from returning.

The official explanation: Kurnaz had failed to renew his German residency permit while he was locked up at Guantanamo. But German diplomats acknowledged that they saw no reason to take Kurnaz back and that they considered him an American problem.

"It was a shame what happened," said one of his attorneys, Bernhard Docke. "It was a kind of excuse for being passive and just watching what was going on. If Germany had done something then, it would have kept him from having to spend another four years in Guantanamo."

European officials say the United States deserves the bulk of the blame for delaying the release of inmates who have been found not to be a threat.

In January, new German Chancellor Angela Merkel raised Kurnaz's case in visits to the White House and said her country had changed its mind. But it took until August to secure his release, largely because U.S. officials insisted he be indicted or placed under 24-hour surveillance. The Bush administration ultimately relented after Germany refused, according to German officials and Kurnaz's lawyers.

Some of the strongest resistance to helping Guantanamo inmates has come from Britain, America's closest ally on counterterrorism matters.

Despite the presence of British troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a longtime special relationship between U.S. and British intelligence agencies, British officials have become increasingly blunt in their calls for the closure of Guantanamo on moral and legal grounds.

Beckett, the foreign secretary, said Thursday that Guantanamo was "unacceptable in terms of human rights" and added that it was "ineffective in terms of counterterrorism."

In an interview last month with The Washington Post, Charles Falconer, one of the highest-ranking justice officials in Britain, accused the United States of a willingness "to do things beyond the law." He has also called Guantanamo "an affront to the principles of democracy."

While all British citizens in Guantanamo were freed starting in 2004, Britain has balked at allowing former legal residents of the country to return. British officials say they are under no legal obligation to intercede on their behalf because they lack citizenship.