The US may have to con-sider sending Muslim Chinese prisoners at Guantánamo Bay to China, following failed efforts to persuade European countries to accept them as political refugees, according to a senior administration official.

The Pentagon determined last year that half of the two dozen Uighur Chinese captured in the war on terrorism have no intelligence value and should be released. The US has so far resisted Beijing's demands for repatriation out of concern that they may be tortured once back in China.