China: 5 alleged members of Radical Muslim sect killed in raid

Uighurs.

Chinese police shot dead five members of an alleged radical Muslim group during a raid in northwestern China, state-run media reported Wednesday.

The official Xinhua News Agency quoted police as saying they surrounded an apartment in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region on Tuesday after investigating the stabbing of an ethnic-Chinese woman in May.

The police said they opened fire when some of the 15 Muslim Uyghurs inside the building stormed out wielding knives and injured one officer, the report said.

The police claim suspects have admitted to belonging to a group trained to wage a "holy war," pledging to kill ethnic-Chinese and set up a Muslim state in Xinjiang.

Chinese security officials have previously said they have uncovered several terrorist plots in Xinjiang this year, including a plan to bring down an airliner flying from Urumqi to Beijing in March. Another alleged plot involved a scheme to kidnap athletes, journalists and visitors to the Beijing Olympics. Two alleged terrorists were also killed in a police raid in Urumqi in January.

Exiled Uyghur groups say the terrorist threat has been exaggerated by the Chinese government in the run-up to the Olympics to justify tighter security in Xinjiang, which -- like Tibet -- has its own distinctive religion, language and culture, plus a history of separatist sentiment.
A statement released last month by the exiled World Uyghur Congress, based in Germany, said,

"China is deceitfully playing the terrorism scare card...in order to justify its preemptive strike against any form of political activities by Uyghurs before and after the Olympic Games."

Unh-huh and Islam is a religion of peace. But I didn't realize this, did you? Man, I'm slipping.

About 22 ethnic Uyghurs were captured by the United States during the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and were then held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, although they all denied belonging to any terrorist organization.

FYI as of 6-30-2008, 16 Uighurs remained at Gitmo.

Why?

All of the Uighurs were determined to be eligible for release from Guantanamo more than four years ago but could not return to their home country and no other country would take them. Some knee jerk libs sound miffed that the US wouldn't take them. No surprise there. But hey, I have an idea. Let's just send them all over to the UK. They sure seem happy to have terrorists living there - they release enough of them and then refuse to deport them. Heck, they even subsidize them with welfare payments and housing allowances and lots of other stuff.

Hey, it's an idea.

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