Abu Bakker Qassim - Press Reports

Press Reports

On May 24, 2006 Abu Bakr Qasim told interviewers that he and his compatriots felt isolated in Albania. Qasim described his disappointment with the United States, who the Uyghurs had been hoping would support the Uyghurs quest for Uyghur autonomy.

In an interview with ABC News in May, 2006, Qasim said that members of the American-Uyghur community had come forward and assured the American government that they would help him and his compatriots adapt to life in America, if they were given asylum in America.

To the BBC he said in January 2007 that "Guantanamo was a five-year nightmare, We're trying to forget it." "

On June 15, 2008 the McClatchy News Service published articles based on interviews with 66 former Guantanamo captives. McClatchy reporters interviewed Abu Baqr Qassim. According to the McClatchy reporters his translators encouraged him to hope, while the American guards treated him with brutality:

"America has always helped the Uighurs. The American translators told us not to worry, we were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. We weren't enemies. We were Uighurs."

According to the McClatchy report Sabin Willet told them that China:

"...argued to the United Nations that Uighurs should be branded a terrorist organization, in part because they'd been using "art and literature" to "distort historical facts."

Abu Baqr Qassim described realizing he had to learn Arabic if he was ever to get out of Guantanamo. And when he was transferred to lighter security in a dormitory shared with Arabic speakers and other Uyghurs they set about taking informal Arabic lessons. Abu Baqr Qassim told reporters the Uyghurs request for paper, to make notes, was denied—although the Guantanamo policy states that captives were to be issued a certain number of pages per month, for sending mail. He was punished by being sent to solitary confinement when guards found he had used napkins to take notes. When he got an attorney, and that attorney brought him books, so he could learn English, guards confiscated the books.

Now that he is in Albania, and his prospects of ever getting a passport or visa seem slim, he has started learning Albanian—but without enthusiasm.

On September 28, 2009 the Washington Post quoted Abu Bakker's reaction to the "difficult and sad" decision of fellow Uyghur captive Bahtiyar Mahnut to remain in Guantanamo, rather than accept an asylum offer from the government of Palau. His older brother Arkin Mahnut had traveled to Afghanistan because their family was worried about Bathiyar. Of the Uyghurs remaining in Guantanamo Arkin was the only one not offered asylum in Palau, because he became mentally ill in Guantanamo, and there were no facilities in Palau to treat his mental illness.

Abu Bakker said:

"This is just very difficult and sad. Bahtiyar is turning away freedom for his brother. His brother is only there because of Bahtiyar. I feel sorry for both of them."