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The government of Bermuda has staunchly denied that they were compensated for accepting Uighur detainees from Guantanamo, but the local press is now seizing on an aside in the Times of London as a likely explanation: Colonel David Burch, Bermuda’s Home Affairs Minister, who flew to Guantánamo Bay to pick up the Uighurs, said that the idea for them to be resettled in Bermuda originated with the Government’s US lobbyists before the premier’s trip to the White House in mid-May and that Mr Brown had put the proposed to US officials. Bermuda is eager to avoid a crackdown by...

...The Rev Al Sharpton, the headline-grabbing US civil rights leader, has announced plans to visit the four Uighurs in Bermuda today to support Bermuda’s “humanitarian gesture”. The Uighurs say that they are tired and may not attend the meeting...

Guess who's going to meet the Uighurs? The Rev. Al Sharpton is Bermuda-bound, hoping to meet with the four former Gitmo prisoners. He'll also show some love for the island nation's embattled prime minister, who has caught heat for allowing them to be resettled in the Atlantic paradise. "I am going to Bermuda to show support for the humanitarian gesture extended to these four men by the nation of Bermuda when even the courts said they deserved to be released," Sharpton said in a statement Friday.

It did not come with the promise of 72 virgins, but newly released Guantanamo Bay detainees managed to make it to paradise after all. What the fawning media neglected to mention was that these supposedly friendly lads all trained at an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist camp in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Not that you’ll hear any such inconvenient facts from the mainstream media, of course. While many in the mainstream media are not-so-privately cheering Obama’s planned closure of Guantanamo Bay, does their fervor excuse them from meeting even minimal journalistic standards?/ ... Assuming that the facts are actually as they appear, though, paying...

A Muslim leader has handed over gifts to the Guantanamo Bay refugees saying: "they are just regular people." Saleem Talbot wanted to personally welcome the four Uighur men to our shores and to let them know that he was there to help. Mr. Talbot - who is an Iman and leads the recitation of prayer - visited the men and presented them with "what he thought they would need" - a prayer rug and a copy of the Qur'an. He said he was representing himself as a "concerned resident" and the Muslim community as it's "our faith to help others."...

The British Government responded with ill-disguised fury tonight to the news that four Chinese Uighurs freed from Guantanamo Bay had been flown for resettlement on the Atlantic tourist paradise of Bermuda. The four arrived on Bermuda in the early hours, celebrating the end of seven years of detention after learning that they were to be accepted as guest workers. But it appears that the Government of Bermuda failed to consult with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the decision to take in the Uighurs – whose return is demanded by Beijing – and it could now be forced to send...

Hundreds of protesters called for Bermudian Premier Ewert Brown to step down on Tuesday and accused him of acting like a dictator in allowing four Guantanamo prisoners from China to settle on the mid-Atlantic island. Some 600 people gathered outside Parliament in the island's capital Hamilton, waving banners and chanting "Brown must go" as they marched to the Cabinet office. Tuesday's protest was aimed not so much at the Uighurs as at Brown for his failure to consult the island's people or governor and his perceived snub of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, whom the governor represents. Bermuda, a banking centre and...

Hundreds of demonstrators protesting against the transfer of four Guantanamo Bay inmates to Bermdua branded their prime minister Ewert Brown a "dictator" and demanded he step down after negotiating a secret deal witht he United States. About 600 people gathered outside Parliament in Hamilton, the island's capital, chanting "Brown must go" and waving banners as they marched to the Cabinet office. But Mr Brown was defiant. "As some of you might know, I grew up in the protest era," he shouted at the booing crowd. "This is nothing new to me. I have seen them larger and longer," he said....

HAMILTON, Bermuda (AP) — Nearly 1,000 protesters demanded Tuesday that Bermuda's premier resign, saying he should have consulted with high-ranking officials before accepting four released Guantanamo inmates. . . . Britain has suggested that Bermuda accepted the Uighurs so the U.S. would go soft on their tax haven status, a charge local officials have denied. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband said he complained to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and feels the territory should not have agreed to the deal without consulting London.

Compare their story to that of John McCain as a prisoner of war who WAS tortured!"It Don't Gitmo Better Than This!"Four of the Uighur terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay have been released in Bermuda. All expenses paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Life in paradise as Guantanamo Four take a dip, eat ice cream, and plan first Uighur restaurant in British territory of Bermuda The Daily Mail 15th June 2009 ...[The four men] have traded drab prison jumpsuits for comfortable cotton pants and knit shirts, and razor wire-encircled jail compounds for beach cottages, where they are staying at U.S. taxpayers' expense....

Diplomacy:Should the U.S. scrap its special relationship with the U.K. to fulfill an ill-considered campaign vow? That's the trade-off the Obama administration made by secretly foisting terrorists onto Bermuda. It's wrong.The British Foreign Office had a right to be angry at the U.S. transfer of four Uighur terrorists from Guantanamo detention to the U.K. colony of Bermuda without its knowledge. After all, Britain is a sovereign state and, like any nation, has a right to know who's on its territory. Instead, it got treated like some banana republic. It didn't learn of the move until after the four Gitmo detainees...

Four Muslim Chinese Uighurs who spent more than seven years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp plan to open a restaurant serving their native cuisine in breezy Bermuda, where the United States deposited them this week, The Post has learned. The men said they were ecstatic to be restarting their lives and expressed deep gratitude to Bermuda for taking them in after the United States determined they were not "enemy combatants" -- even as the relocation set off diplomatic fury among allies. Café Kashkar in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn is a local Uighur spot and could show the budding restaurateurs a...

They look like ordinary tourists as they stroll along the seafront on the British territory of Bermuda, but these four men are far from regular sunseekers for they have spent the last seven years locked up in Guantanamo Bay. The former terror suspects are Uighurs - members of China's Muslim Turkic-speaking minority - and hail from a rugged province in the far west of the country.

ST. GEORGE'S, BERMUDA - It was time for a Uighur walkabout. After days of relaxing, the four released Guantanamo Bay detainees stepped into the Bermuda sunshine Sunday and started getting to know the locals. The Muslims from China spent their fourth day of freedom walking around historic St. George's with their two minders and a translator. There was no chance of going unnoticed. "We wish you all the best," shouted one passerby, giving them the thumbs up. The new arrivals walked around the main square and checked out the sailing boats floating on turquoise waters. "I imagined turbans, they look...

Freed From Guantánamo, Uighur Muslims Bask in Bermuda Justin Maxon/The New York Times "I went swimming in the ocean for the first time ever yesterday and it was the happiest day of my life," said Salahidin Abdulahat, left, swimming with another former prisoner, Khaleel Mamut. By ERIK ECKHOLM June 14, 2009 ST. GEORGE, Bermuda — Almost exactly seven years after arriving at Guantánamo in chains as accused enemy combatants, and four days after their surprise predawn flight to Bermuda, four Uighur Muslim men basked in their new-found freedom here, grateful for the handshakes many residents had offered and marveling at...

ST. GEORGE, Bermuda — Almost exactly seven years after arriving at Guantánamo in chains as accused enemy combatants, and four days after their surprise predawn flight to Bermuda, four Uighur Muslim men basked in their new-found freedom here, grateful for the handshakes many residents have offered and marveling at the serene beauty of this tidy, postcard island. In newly purchased polo shirts and chinos, the four husky men, members of a restive ethnic minority from western China, might blend in except for their scruffy beards. Smelling hibiscus flowers, luxuriating in the freedom to drift through scenic streets and harbors, they...

Guantánamo Uighurs hope to open restaurant in millionaires’ paradise James Bone in Hamilton Parish, Bermuda For seven long years in Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, the four Central Asian friends gazed longingly at the azure sea from their cells. They were never allowed through the razor wire to paddle in the water. Now, suddenly set free in Bermuda, the former terror suspects can watch the ocean at leisure from the pastel-pink clifftop holiday cottage where they are staying at US taxpayers’ expense. They have already taken a sunset swim and caught a fish at their first attempt at fishing....

FOX News spotted the newly freed detainees at a guest cottage complex on the island without security or electronic monitoring, but their attorney said they will have to periodically check in with local police The four of the Chinese Muslims, or Uighurs, released to Bermuda from the Guantanamo Bay prison told FOX News that they are innocent, glad to be free and hold no grudges against the United States for their captivity. "We are not terrorists," they told FOX News with the help of a translator. "We don't know what Al Qaeda is. We don't know Usama bin Laden. The...

    Perhaps the Bermuda parliament is “fear-gripped”, too — or maybe just angry that their Premier cut a deal to admit al-Qaeda trained Uighur separatists into their country without consulting them or the British.  Bermuda’s House of Assembly scheduled a no-confidence vote against Ewart Brown, which would result in immediate elections and throw the Bermuda government in disarray: The United Bermuda Party today moved for a motion of no confidence against the Government led by Premier Ewart Brown.Opposition leader Kim Swan proposed the motion in the House of Assembly this morning.He said it was necessary as the Island is...

How do we solve that problem? We pay Palau $200 million to take 13 of them and we dump four off in Bermuda. Oh, but there's a problem there, too. Our United States government LIED to Britain about that. We purposely deceived them for their own good. A senior U.S. official "told the BBC that Washington was attempting to shield the UK from Chinese anger." China considers the Uighurs terrorists and would like to have them back. We were just trying to help the UK by lying to them. Meanwhile, we're shipping the rest of the Uighurs, along with a...