Guantanamo problem

Australia has told the US it will not resettle detainees freed from Guantanamo Bay. Acting Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the Australian Government told US President George W Bush's administration on Friday that a request made in early December to resettle an unspecified number of detainees had been rejected. She said the government had rejected a similar resettlement request in early 2008. The Bush administration made the latest request after US President-elect Barack Obama promised to close the prison in Cuba. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has called for proposals for transferring the remaining 250 or so detainees amid concerns that some could be persecuted if sent back to their home nations. Most come from Yemen, but others are from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China and Saudi Arabia. Some have been held without charge since the prison camp opened in 2002 to hold so-called "enemy combatants" accused of having links to the al-Qaeda terror network or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.

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ITN | January 3, 2009

Tags:. .unspecified. .azerbaijan. .ousted. .persecuted. .detainees