China demands repatriation of five terrorist suspects

China demanded the return of five Chinese nationals released from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba yesterday, saying the US decision to allow them to seek asylum in Albania is in violation of international law.

"We have made representations to the related countries and urged them to send the five people to China as soon as possible," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a regularly scheduled press conference in Beijing.

Last week, Albania accepted the five Chinese members of the country's Uygur minority who are suspected of being members of a terrorist organization known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement after the United States concluded they posed no terrorist threat to it.

East Turkistan, upon which the UN Security Council imposed sanctions in 2002, is part of an international terrorist network and had close relations with terrorist groups such as al-Qaida.

The terrorist group had been seeking separation of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region from China.

"The act by the US and Albania strongly violates international law," Liu said.

The five Chinese could not be regarded as refugees; they were terrorist suspects and should be repatriated to China immediately, Chinese Ambassador to Albania Tian Changchun was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency as saying.

"They fought on the side of Taliban during the Afghan War, and this fact alone proves that they are nothing but terrorist suspects," Tian said in a news release on Monday.

The United States transported the five Chinese to Albania for settlement on Friday. They had been captured by US troops in 2001 in Pakistan and imprisoned in the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay ever since.

The United States had asked about 20 countries to offer settlements to the detainees. Among the countries that had declined were Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Turkey.

Source: China Daily