TIRANA, Albania — Accused by the United States military of being a terrorist in league with the Taliban, a devout Muslim man from western China spent four years imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay before being cleared and then dumped in Albania 15 years ago.
Still stranded in a country he did not know existed until he was sent there, the man, Abu Bakker Qassim, 51, has a word of warning for the hundreds of Afghans who have fled their country over the past month and followed his path to one of Europe’s poorest but most welcoming nations as they wait for admission to the United States.
“The Americans,” he said, recalling how he and four other wrongly imprisoned Uyghurs had been flown to Albania from Guantánamo, Cuba, and assured they would not be staying long, “quickly lose interest — they just threw us away.”
Mr. Qassim has been granted “humanitarian protection” in Albania, the one country that was willing to take him in out of scores asked by the State Department, despite protests from China. He gets a monthly stipend of nearly $400, but he has not managed to get a visa or a passport, which makes travel anywhere difficult. The only country that really wants him is China, which considers him a terrorist because of his advocacy of independence for his home region of Xinjiang, which he calls Turkestan.
China would certainly arrest him if he ever returned.
I first met Mr. Qassim days after his arrival in 2006 in Tirana, the Albanian capital. At the time, he was despondent. China was...
Read Full Story: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/world/europe/uyghurs-guantanamo-albania-china.html
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