Palau Uighur takes relocation into his own hands

Adel Noori, one of the Uighurs released from Guantanamo Bay to the island of Palau in 2009, who was reported missing last week, has actually relocated to Turkey, say U.S. officials. McClatchy reports:

But U.S. officials had known since late last year that Noori had grown impatient with U.S. efforts to find him and his Turkish wife a permanent home and the couple had managed to relocate to her homeland.

"He’s not missing; he’s definitely not disappeared," said one of two U.S. government officials who discussed the episode on condition of anonymity because only the State Department was authorized to answer questions on the matter.

Noori’s relocation is particularly impressive given that he is technically stateless and has no travel documents. 

The $600,000 the Obama administration agreed to pay the Palauan government in 2009 to take care of the men has long run out and the country’s new government says it will step up it’s efforts to relocate them — though some of the men has reportedly married and begun raising families since arriving on the Pacific island. Noori had been working as a security guard at the Palau Community College.

The State Department shuttered the office that had been working on relocating Gitmo detainees in January.