Canada balked at request to give detainees asylum

TORONTO (AP) — Canada balked at several requests from Washington to provide asylum to men cleared for release from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, government documents released Wednesday show.

Notes prepared for former Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay in February this year, obtained by The Canadian Press news agency under Canada’s Access to Information Act, indicate the Bush administration asked Canada to accept detainees of Uighur decent from China’s Xinjiang region who were deemed to be no threat to national security.

The U.S. was not prepared to resettle the men in its own territory but could not send them back to China for fear they would face persecution.

Canada — like other countries — seemed ill at ease with taking on refugees to remedy a massive public-relations headache for its southern neighbor. Today, 17 of the men are still being held and live in isolation for 22 hours a day.

“Canadian officials indicated to the U.S. delegation that the men would likely also be inadmissible under Canadian immigration law,” says a Foreign Affairs briefing note prepared about a meeting in May.