Good thing our border is secure or this could be a problem

Via McClatchy:

Two former prisoners from Guantanamo who were transferred to El Salvador 17 months ago have quietly slipped out of this Central American nation.

When and how the two men, both ethnic Uighurs, left El Salvador is unknown, but their departure is sure to fuel worries that the United States has lost track of some Guantanamo detainees who have been released.

U.S. officials declined to say when they became aware that the former prisoners were no longer in El Salvador.

Uighurs familiar with the case said it is likely the two men headed to Turkey.

“We are aware that the two Uighurs who were resettled in El Salvador departed the country. However, we will not comment on the specifics of their decision to resettle elsewhere or their current whereabouts,” said Ian C. Moss, a spokesman for the State Department’s special envoy for Guantanamo closure.

Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority that inhabit far-western China. Many Uighurs oppose what they consider the Chinese occupation of their homeland, and some have engaged in armed resistance against Chinese control. Although Uighurs are considered Chinese nationals, most refuse to carry a Chinese passport, and mystery surrounds what travel documents the two men would have used to leave El Salvador.

The two men, Abdul Razak and Ahmad Muhamman, were among 22 ethnic Uighurs sent to the U.S. detention center at the Guantanamo Bay naval base since 2002. Three Uighurs remain at the prison camp.

The other 19 have been freed and transferred to receptive host countries or territories, beginning in 2006 when Albania accepted a group of five. Subsequently, six Uighur detainees were sent to the South Pacific island of Palau, two to Switzerland and four to Bermuda, a British overseas territory.

Razak and Muhamman were freed from Guantanamo on April 19, 2012, and flown to El Salvador, a largely Christian, Spanish-speaking nation with only a few thousand practicing Muslims.

Muhamman, a 35-year-old former farmer, was the only Uighur at Guantanamo considered a “high” risk detainee, said Thomas Joscelyn, a terrorism researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank in Washington concerned with counterterrorism.

At his combatant status review tribunal, a type of military court, Muhamman acknowledged that he’d been a weapons trainer at a camp under Abdul Haq, a fellow Uighur who was a top lieutenant to al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, Joscelyn said. Abdul Haq was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan’s North Waziristan in early 2010, he added.

http://weaselzippers.us/2013/09/27/goods...ng-el-salvador/