Arkin Mahmud is a Uyghur refugee best known for the seven and a half years he spent in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba.
[1] Joint Task Force Guantanamo counter-terrorism analysts reports Mahmud was born on July 1, 1964, in Ghulja, Xinjiang, China.
Judge Ricardo Urbina declared his detention as unlawful and ordered to set him free in the United States.
[5][6][7] In July 2009, the Pacific Ocean country of Palau offered sanctuary to all the remaining Uyghur captives in Guantanamo, except Arkin.
Historian Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files commented that Switzerland's grant of Asylum preserved the Obama Presidency from political embarrassment, because all the Uyghurs had been offered a new home, except for Arkin Mahmud, and that the Swiss offer of asylum would complicate the habeas petitions of the four remaining Uyghur captives who had declined to agree to accept refugee status in Palau.