It's been a harrowing journey: from repression in China to war in Afghanistan and four long years at Guantanamo Bay as a US captive in the war on terror.
Adel Abdu al-Hakim hopes it ends here, in his sister's apartment in a suburb of the Swedish capital.
"I was in prison for four-and-a-half years and during that time I thought to myself that maybe this is my life," al-Hakim, 33, said in an interview. "Now I just want to live the life of a normal person."
Last week he arrived in Sweden for a reunion with relatives he had thought he would never see again.
Al-Hakim was released last year from Guantanamo along with four other Uighurs, a minority group of Turkic-speaking Chinese Muslims, after the US admitted they were not terrorists. Authorities believed they might face persecution if returned to China, so they were sent instead to Albania, the only other country that would receive them.
But they found themselves isolated and jobless in a nation where no one spoke their language.
Al-Hakim accepted an invitation to attend a human rights conference in Sweden, where his sister sought shelter in 2002. He applied for asylum on Tuesday last week after arriving on a four-day visa.
The chances for approval were uncertain because the case is unique in Sweden. Al-Hakim will likely be allowed to stay in the country pending a decision, although authorities could deport him immediately if they determine his case has no merit.
"We have fought for a very long time and now we are very happy to be together," he said, surrounded by his sister Kavser and her daughters in the apartment just outside Stockholm.
Calmly, al-Hakim recalled the tumultuous decade that brought him here.
He left China in 1999, fed up with harassment and discrimination by Chinese authorities. Two years earlier, he said, he had been detained and beaten after attending a demonstration against the mistreatment of Uighurs in his hometown.
Critics accuse China of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment among Uighurs.
After spending his first year as a refugee in Kyrgyzstan, al-Hakim and fellow Uighur Abu Bakker Qassim decided to move to Turkey.
Their trip took them through Pakistan and Afghanistan -- clearly an unsafe destination in the fall of 2001 as the US launched its campaign against the Taliban.
As bombs fell on a small Afghan mountain village where they had joined other Uighurs, they fled to Pakistan -- only to be detained and handed over to US authorities for US$5,000 each, he said.
"It was all about money," al-Hakim said.
Shackled and hooded, they were transferred to a prison camp in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where they spent six months before being moved to Guantanamo. At that point, the US already knew they were not terrorists, al-Hakim said.
"In the last interrogation in Afghanistan, the Americans acknowledged that they had arrested us by mistake, but said they could not let us go so easily," he said.
The formal acknowledgment of this mistake came only after a lengthy legal battle when a military tribunal ruled al-Hakim and other Uighurs were not enemy combatants.
"Of course I was angry. I tried to hide my emotions but I still cried a lot," al-Hakim said.
Beijing wanted the Uighur detainees sent back to China, saying they were part of a violent Muslim separatist movement fighting for an independent state of "East Turkistan."
US authorities resisted, but declined to let them into the country. Appeals went out to third countries for shelter, but all were rejected before Albania, a small ex-communist country, said yes.
Lawyers in the US and Sweden as well as human rights groups helped al-Hakim obtain his four-day visa for Sweden.
As he waits for his asylum decision, the joy of being reunited with his sister and her family is tempered by the absence of his own wife and children, who still live in China.
"I don't have the possibility to get them from over there. The Chinese authorities won't allow it," he said. "My children keep asking when I will come back ... why I don't want to come and get them, why all children have fathers and they don't."
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese