Malaysia has freed from detention 11 ethnic Uighur Muslims who fled to the Southeast Asian nation
after a Thai jailbreak last year, and sent them to Turkey, their lawyer said on Thursday, in disregard of
China’s request to hand them to Beijing, Reuters reports. The men escaped from an immigration
detention center in southern Thailand in November last year by boring through two small holes into a
wall and using blankets to climb out as heavy rains masked their flight, according to Agence-France
Presse. The United States previously urged the predominantly Muslim Southeast Asian country against
sending the Uighurs back to China. The Uighurs are a Muslim minority that rights and exile groups said
they faced repression in northwestern China.