Uyghur guest houses suspected of ties to Islamist militancy

Pakistan

S. Frederick Starr, the author of Xinjiang: China's Muslim Borderland wrote that Chinese security officials viewed Pakistan as a haven for Uyghurs who were recruited to militancy in the 1990s. Starr identified Kashgarabad and the Anwar ul-Ulum Abu Hanifa Madrassah as Uyghur guest houses that were suspected of ties to Islamic militancy, which had operated since the early 1990s. The Daily Times identified another Uyghur guest houses, named Hotanabad.

Kashgarabad

Kashgarabad was run by Uyghur traders in Islamabad. It has been described as a guest house, a community center, and a training camp. According to Zaid Haider, writing in Asian Surveys, when the Pakistani government first closed the facility in 2000 "hundreds of Uighurs becamse homeless."

According to a report prepared for the Red Cross a 21-year-old Uyghur expatriate named Abdul Jalil was interviewed by them in Panjshir prison in 1999, after being captured by the Afghan Northern Alliance. He was alleged to have been recruited to fight with the Taliban during a two-month stay in Kashgarabad.

The Pakistani government closed Kashgarabad and Hotanabad in 2000, and again in 2006.

Anwar ul-Ulum Abud Hanifa

According to Starr, the Anwar ul-Ulum Abu Hanifa Madrassah was run by a Sheikh Serajuddin in Rawalpindi. According to the Red Cross report a second Uyghur expatriate, 24-year-old Nur Ahmed, was recruited to join the Taliban while at Anwar ul-Ulum Abud Hanifa. He was captured at the same time as Abdul Jalil, and was also held in the Panjshir prison.

Hotanabad

Like Kashgarabad, Hotanabad was shut down in both 2000 and 2006 based on Chinese concerns the facilities were serving to radicalize Uyghur expatriates and inspire them to mount militant attacks back home in Xinjiang.

Afghanistan

When the United States commenced hostilities against Afghanistan, in retaliation for the Taliban hosting al Qaeda, the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, they bombed a compound of Uyghurs in Nangarhar Province. American intelligence analysts initially claimed the compound was an "ETIM training camp".

Benjamin Wittes and his colleagues at the Brookings Institution published several papers analyzing the justifications offered for holding captives in Guantanamo. One of the papers, entitled "The Current Detainee Population of Guantánamo: An Empirical Study" pointed out that the authors of the memos that offered justifications for holding captives treated a stay in a suspicious guest house just as seriously as if they were al Qaeda or Taliban safehouse. The paper listed 130 captives whose continued detention had been justified by a stay in a suspicious guest house, or a Taliban or al Qaeda guesthouse. That list included five Uyghurs who faced the allegation that they had stayed in Uyghur guesthouses. The Uyghurs Wittes and his colleagues listed included Ahmad Tourson, Bahtiyar Mahnut, Abdul Ghappar Abdul Rahman, Emam Abdulahat and Ahmad Muhamman Yaqub. Bahtiyar Mahnut, Emam Abdulahat and Ahmad Muhamman Yaqub faced allegations they each stayed at a Uyghur guest house in Jalalabad. Ahmad Tourson faced the allegation that he stayed at a guest house in Kabul run by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a Uyghur separatist group. An additional Uyghur captive, Abdal Razak Qadir, faced the allegation that he was given a gun in order to guard the East Turkistan Organization safe house in Jalalbat [sic], but was not named on the list compiled by Wittes and his colleagues.

The United States Supreme Court's June 12, 2008 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush restored the Guantanamo captives' access to traditional habeas corpus's petitions. In September 2008 the executive branch filed a motion on the Uyghur captives' combined habeas petition stating that they would no longer try to defend the allegations they had offered to justify the Uyghurs' continued detention.