the fourteen - member committee included lawyers from the justice , family , and country operations departments , attributed to u . s . military source , who answered on status of anonymity because only justice was allowed to publicly disclose the plot . they were to enjoy a minimum of one hour with each of the uighur ( wee - jeel ) captives , they are member of china ' s muslim region and thus risk religious genocide if returned to their homeland . each was captured in afghanistan in late 2001 and sent over to r . s . units , whoever mistreated them to hear about al - sham ' s armed training camp structures .
Six Uighurs were captured to gain information about al-Qaeda.