Uyghur detainees at Guantanamo Bay

Starting in 2002, the American government detained 22 Uyghurs in the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp. The last 3 Uyghur detainees, Yusef Abbas, Hajiakbar Abdulghupur and Saidullah Khali, were released from Guantanamo on December 29, 2013, and later transferred to Slovakia.

Uyghurs are an ethnic group from Central Asia, native to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Western China. Since the People's Republic of China gained control of Xinjiang in 1949, Uyghurs have led a series of rebellions and uprisings against the Chinese, gaining intense coverage in the 90s and early 2000s, culminating in a series of protests, demonstrations, and terrorist attacks. Uyghurs have also frequently called for the international recognition of their own state through the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which the United States used to recognize as a terrorist group.

''The Washington Post'' reported on August 24, 2005, that fifteen Uyghurs had been determined to be "No longer enemy combatants" (NLECs). The ''Post'' reported that detainees who had been classified as NLEC were, not only still being incarcerated, but one was shackled to the floor for reasons not disclosed by his attorney. Five of these Uyghurs, who had filed for writs of ''habeas corpus'', were transported to Albania on May 5, 2006, just prior to a scheduled judicial review of their petitions. The other seventeen obtained writs of habeas corpus in 2008. Provided by Wikipedia