Palau is already preparing the accommodations for the six Uighurs who agreed to be resettled here “temporarily.”
A translator from the Uighur community in Australia will be arriving with the detainees who will attend an English language course at Palau Community College, Toribiong said.
The resettlement of the detainees is an agreement among the U.S., Palau and the Uighurs, who are represented by lawyers.
Uighurs are an ethnic group from Central Asia and the Xinjiang province in western China.
The detainees were among the 22 Uighurs captured by U.S. forces during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
They were believed to have completed military training under the Taliban or al Qaeda.
Four years later, the U.S. determined that 15 of the detainees were no longer enemy combatants.
The detainees do not want to return to China, which considers them as terrorists, and five of them were later transported to Albania.
Last June, four were resettled in the British territory of Bermuda.
The U.S. cannot repatriate the rest of the Uighurs to China because federal law bars deporting individuals to countries where they are likely to be abused.
Palau is willing to accept the Uighurs still in Guantanamo but only six wanted to be resettled in this island nation.
