Bermuda has bent over backwards to help the Uighurs from Guantánamo Bay settle here in their first six months, according to one of their US attorneys.

Jason Pinney told The Royal Gazette yesterday: "We have had other clients go to Palau and Albania. Bermuda has just been extraordinary in making things easy, in going out of their way to find a plan for these men."

He added: "It's clear that everything was well thought out. That makes their job of assimilating into the culture so much easier."

Mr. Pinney, who visited Bermuda with US Congressman Bill Delahunt after the Uighurs' arrival in June, described their detention at Guantánamo, along with other terror suspects from Chinese Turkestan, as "imprisonment without justification".

He said Bermuda deserved "tons of credit" for acknowledging that and offering four of the Uighurs asylum, when other countries were unwilling to take them.

"Bermuda, in our view, really stepped up when so many other countries said no," he said. "That says the world about the people and the culture."

Khalil Mamut, Abdulla Abdulqadir, Salahidin Abdulahad and Ablikim Turahun told The Royal Gazette this week that they loved Bermuda and wanted to stay here indefinitely.

Mr. Pinney said: "Everyone's view is that they are so successfully settled; everyone's happy. We are certainly indebted for that." He wouldn't comment on whether he believes Britain will agree to let the men become naturalised citizens.

But he said: "My hope is that Britain is gaining a better understanding of who these men are. If you study the records, the case history of their time at Guantánamo, you will come to the conclusion that the United States keeping the Uighurs at Guantánamo for eight years is a human rights disaster."

His law firm, Bingham, has represented 12 Uighurs at the camp — all of whom were held by the US on suspicion of terrorism and all of whom were ultimately cleared by the authorities as enemy combatants.

The company has just one client remaining at Gitmo, among seven Uighurs still there. Mr. Pinney said the US was still trying to find countries willing to take the men once the camp closes next year.

"Although we are very pleased that four of our clients were released to Bermuda, the job isn't done yet," he said. "Those folk are in exactly the same position as the men that were settled in Bermuda. Our job right now is to try and get them out."

He explained that the US Supreme Court recently agreed to consider the issue of whether district judges can order Uighurs from Guantánamo to be resettled in the US if no other country will take them.

Mr. Pinney said: "The one thing I would impress is that the Supreme Court only accepts a very, very small percentage of the cases they get to review. The fact that they willing to hear this case is quite significant.

"We'd like the district judge decision to be reinstated, which means that if the United States can't find a country to accept these men, it has to accept these men."

But he said the outcome of the case was not relevant to the Uighurs here. "I don't see this case and the decision in this case having any impact on the four men in Bermuda. I see them as happily settled in Bermuda."

He added: "From a legal perspective, I don't think any doors would be opened between Bermuda and the US."

He said the men's future was still a little uncertain until the UK made a decision. "But it doesn't seem to me that it's as critical an issue because they are so happy there," he said. They are intent on spending their time in Bermuda now. I view whatever doubt that's going on as secondary."