From Gitmo cell to 'freedom' in Albania
Abu Muhammad, an Algerian doctor, is one of eight former Guantánamo detainees who were granted asylum in Albania.
By Nicole Itanofrom the June 11, 2007 edition
Page 1 of 2
TIRANA, Albania - Abu Muhammad arrived in Albania tied to his seat and guarded by armed American soldiers. The choice when he arrived, he says, was stark: accept asylum in Albania – one of the Europe's poorest nations – or return to Guantánamo Bay, where he spent more than four years as a detainee.
"There's nothing here. You cannot find a job. You cannot find something for your family," he says, speaking at a Tirana restaurant.
Mr. Muhammad's strange, five-year odyssey has taken him from Pakistan, where he had been granted refugee status by the United Nations refugee agency, to Guantánamo, and finally here to a refugee center on the outskirts of Tirana.
One of eight former Guantánamo detainees cleared by the US military and granted asylum by the Albanian government at the request of the US, Muhammad – who uses a pseudonym because he fears retribution against his family in Algeria – is now trapped in a country where he doesn't speak the language and there is little infrastructure for helping refugees resettle.
But while Albania may hardly be the ideal destination for the eight people released, 30 to 40 other detainees remain cleared to leave but stuck in Guantánamo.
"There are several dozen other people like the men in Albania – refugees who fled persecution in their own countries yet ended up in Guantánamo because they were picked up in the chaos of war," says Emi MacLean, a legal fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing Muhammad in a lawsuit against former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other military personnel. "Now, they're trapped in Guantánamo because they can't go home and no other country will accept them."
RSS feed
