In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for US payoffs. The others were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's government - not the US, according to Washington officials.

More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive.

They are men without a country. The Bush administration has chosen not to send them home for fear China will imprison, persecute or torture them - as the US charges has happened to other members of the Muslim minority. But the State Department has also been unable to find a country to take them.

Other detainees cleared of terrorism charges have also languished for years at Guantanamo Bay, but all have been sent home or are being transferred. For the Uygurs, there is no end in sight. About 20 countries have turned down US overtures to give them asylum.

The State Department says it is still working behind the scenes to find them a home. A senior official called their situation ``unfortunate.''

Lawyers and rights groups appealed to the US to take in the Uygurs. ``It's not like these people were once considered to be a threat and now are not,'' said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. ``These people need to be released, either in another country or the US. They're America's responsibility.'' But the Bush administration has balked at allowing them to enter the US - even under restricted supervision - or to appear in a court that is hearing two of the men's cases.

In the meantime, the men are still treated as prisoners. Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer who volunteered to take the cases of two Uygurs in March, finally met with them last month after his team obtained FBI clearances.

One of the Uygurs was ``chained to the floor'' in a ``box with no windows,'' said Willett at an August 1 court hearing.

``You're not talking about your client?'' asked Judge James Robertson of the US District Court in Washington.

``I'm talking about my client,'' Willett said.

``He was chained to a floor?'' Robertson asked again.

``He had a leg shackle that was chained to a bolt in the floor,'' Willett replied.

For more than three years, Willett's clients - Abu Bakker Qassim, 36, and Adel Abdu Hakim, 31 - were denied legal counsel. Then, in March, another detainee with an attorney asked his lawyer to help them find representation through a legal process called ``next friend authorization.''

Most facts in the Uygur cases are classified secrets. Lawyers are not allowed to provide information unless facts are revealed in court papers or hearings. But the basics are beginning to come to light - and Robertson is now pressing for action.

The judge has ordered the government to disclose the status of efforts to relocate the two men at a hearing Thursday. All 15 Uygurs have actually been cleared for release from Guantanamo Bay twice, once after a Pentagon review in late 2003 and again last March. Seven other Uygurs were ruled to be enemy combatants and will continue to be detained.

Even after the second decision, however, the government did not notify the 15 men for several months that they had been cleared.

``They were found not to be al-Qaeda and not to be Taleban,'' Willett said. ``But the government still refused to provide a transcript of the tribunal that acquitted them to the detainees, their new lawyers or a US court."

Through the next-friend process, Willett and his team have now taken on the cases of 10 other Uygur detainees, though they know only the first names of nine of their new clients.

Uygurs are a Turkic people who speak a language similar to others in neighboring Central Asian nations and have long sought autonomy in Xinjiang province - a region Uygurs refer to as East Turkistan. Dissidents have engaged in sporadic attacks against the Chinese government in Xinjiang province. Authorities accuse Uygur separatists of a committing a series of bombings and assassinations since 1990.

Ironically, many view the US as a ``beacon of hope'' that ``will assist in the Uygurs' quest for fundamental freedom and human dignity,'' said Nury Turkel, an American-trained lawyer and president of the Uygur American Association in Washington.

Willett argued in court that his clients ``are not soldiers. They are not criminals. They are just Uygur people.''

According to him, ``there might not be a more pro-US Muslim group in the world. The Uygurs have traditionally suffered under religious and political oppression at the hands of the communist Chinese, and I can remember a time when that made a person someone we liked in this country.''

Information on how the Uygurs ended up at Guantanamo is vague and limited to US summations from interrogations.

Qassim and Hakim fled the city of Ghulja in China to Central Asia in 2001. They met in Kyrgyzstan and traveled to Pakistan, then to Afghanistan, where they received training in use of small arms, according to a court statement by Brigadier-General Jay Hood, commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo. After the US attacked Afghanistan in 2001, they fled to Pakistan, where they were captured by bounty hunters, according to lawyers and court papers.

Transcripts from the tribunals, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, indicate why the Uygurs ended up in Guantanamo Bay and what their intentions were.

``That is true, I went to Afghanistan,'' said one. ``The reason is number one: I am scared of the torture from my home country. Second: if I go there I will get some training to fight back against the [deleted] government."

``We have nothing to do with the Taleban or the Arabs,'' another testified. ``We have nothing to do with the US government or coalition forces. We never thought about fighting with the Americans.

``I want you to understand what our goal is: just to fight against the [deleted] government.

``If there is nothing happening in the future, we would like to stay wherever, abroad, to do our business.''

In court papers, the administration acknowledged the dangers facing Uygurs if they are returned to China. Still, Chinese officials were allowed to visit and question the Uygurs two years ago, according to their lawyers.

In recently declassified material, Hakim said that a Chinese interrogator was allowed to take a photo of him with the help of Guantanamo personnel and despite his efforts to resist.

The Justice Department has argued that it has no obligation to release the Uygurs because of ``wind-up power,'' which gives a government the time necessary at the end of a conflict to figure out what to do with detainees. As a precedent, it cited treatment of Italians held in the US after World War II.

Lawyers and human rights groups are concerned that incarceration has tainted the Uygurs forever.