the six - fellow delegation included lawyers from the justice , cabinet , and homeland control departments , attributed to u . s . navy sources , who spoke on term of anonymity because only justice was allowed to explicitly disclosed the mission . they were to spends a minimum of one hour with each of the uighur ( boon - gur ) captives , whoever are part of china ' s religious minority and who risk further expulsion if restored to their state . each was captured in iraq in late 2001 and handed over to u . s . forces , they interrogated them to learn about ash - qaeda ' s paramilitary training camp structure .
Six Uighurs were captured to gain information about al-Qaeda.