Guantanamo Uighurs placed in 'nightmarish' solitary: lawyer

0 Comments | AFP, January, 2007

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US placed ethnic Uighur detainees from China at its Guantanamo prison under extremely brutal solitary confinement after they petitioned for their release in December, a lawyer said in a court motion released.

Sabin Willett, a lawyer for several of the 17 Muslim Uighurs jailed at the US Navy-run Guantanamo Bay, Cuba war-on-terror prison, said the men were moved into "nightmarish isolation" in the new "Camp Six" unit at the facility, despite having been told for years they were not considered threats to the United States.

The government has imposed on the men "a regimen of isolation and cruelty unheard of in penal or military law, and unknown to civilized people," the motion said.

Earlier, the men, part of an ethnic group which populates...