Turnbull says no to Gitmo detainees

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has urged the federal government to reject a United States request for Australia to settle former detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

The government has confirmed it is considering an appeal from US President Barack Obama to settle Uighur detainees from China, who have been held in detention for more than six years, but have been cleared by the US of being enemy combatants.

The US does not want to return them to China for fear they could be tortured or executed.

The detainees in question are understood to be six Uighurs, who are Muslims from north-western China, Fairfax newspapers reports.

Australia refused in January to accept them after the previous Bush administration had made a similar request in December, amid reported pressure from Beijing which considers the minority detainees to be terrorists.

But the Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith has confirmed the prisoners were now being assessed individually in accordance with strict immigration and national security requirements.

Mr Turnbull said the Australian government should not take in inmates from Guantanamo Bay if they were not Australian citizens.

"We should not be accepting any other Guantanamo inmates. That's been our view consistently," he told reporters at Camden, south-west of Sydney.

Mr Turnbull said detainees released from Guantanamo Bay had gone on to re-establish links with al Qaeda.

"That's incontrovertible fact .. so there's always a risk."

Earlier, opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said the coalition had "grave concerns" about accepting any prisoners or detainees from Guantanamo Bay that the US was not prepared to take.

"If these people are no longer suspects, we would want to know why the United States doesn't release them into the United States if they cannot be returned to China," Ms Bishop told ABC Radio.

Conversely, Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has written to Immigration Minister Chris Evans asking the government to accept the Uighur detainees, who had been found guilty of "absolutely nothing".

"Their experience in Guantanamo Bay may not make them keen to be released in the US," Senator Brown told AAP.

"There's a small but loyal Australian community of Uighurs and they would undoubtedly help these men recover their lives and become a positive asset for the Australian community."

Asked if they would pose a security risk to Australia, Senator Brown said "quite the contrary".

Soon after his inauguration in January, Mr Obama signed an executive order to close down Guantanamo Bay within a year but many of the detainees cleared for release face persecution if they were returned to their home nations.