Bush's welcome in Albania
Updated on 10 June 2007
A rapturous welcome by adoring crowds as George Bush begins an official visit to Albania. But at what cost?
There aren't many rapturous welcomes left in the world for the President of the United States.
But then Albania is a special case -- George Bush's support for an independent Kosovo garners plenty of popularity on the streets. And he has even bigger fans in a government, desperately seeking NATO membership.
Tirana has already sent elite troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and it's performing other favours too.
They were captured on the Afghan/Pakistani border in 2001 - they tell of squalid conditions, beatings and punishments during their 4 1/2 years in captivity.
The US military decided that they weren't after all enemy combatants, but that they'd be persecuted if returned to their Chinese homeland.
Albania was the only country that could be persuaded to take them.
"How can a country like America - a well respected country of democracy and hope be able to do such things to us? Have we not had enough pressure from the Chinese for the last 60 years? And now they dump five of us here, where we can't have our voices heard, where we can't seek our future." - Abubekir
They can at least practice their Islamic faith. Abubekir says he left his home in the Chinese province of Xinjiang - or East Turkistan, as he prefers to call it - because of a crackdown on muslim separatists.
"How can a country like America - a well respected country of democracy and hope be able to do such things to us?"- Abubekir
But there were other reasons too - Adil for instance, says he was heading for Turkey, to try his hand as a market trader.
Whatever their motives, they ended up on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan at precisely the wrong time - Swept up in the aftermath of September the 11th - handed over to the Americans, their lawyer says, for bounty.
Throughout their captivity in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, the men say they insisted that they had no fight with America - and that their protestations were accepted early on.
Which made their continued detention, and they say, maltreatment, all the harder to bear.
"Since we have been in the hands of the Americans, we have not yet had anything good from them. They have found us not guilty, we were innocent, and we have not committed any crime. And they have declared innocent people as innocent, and put them in jail." - Abubekir
The US Department of Defense rejects the Uighurs' accusations of torture and told Channel Four News that the only reason it took so long to release them was that none of the dozens of countries approached wanted to accept people who had been associated with terrorist groups and terrorist training camps.
17 other Uighur men - cleared for release - remain in Guantanamo, for the same reason
"In Albania, there are no other Uighurs apart from us, and there is no chance to bring our family here. Our future is chaos."- Adil
The men's arrival here, a year ago, was big news - leading to a straining of long-standing ties with China, which demanded their extradition.
A senior government figure told us simply, it was a political decision -- Albania, it seems judging another relationship more important -- certainly if the language today's press conference is a measure.
For the past year, this has been the Uighurs' home - along with two other Guantanamo alumni - a run-down refugee centre on Tiranas outskirts.
They've been granted residency, and have been told they'll have their own flats soon as a result - but without citizenship, and passports, they have no hope of ever leaving Albania.
"We have no chance to see our parents, we can't be reunited with our wives and children. In Albania, there are no other Uighurs apart from us, and there is no chance to bring our family here. Our future is chaos." - Adil
They talk sometimes of finding work, meeting women, starting new families - but they're outsiders in a country with its own problems - and they're far from hopeful.
