【NPR】Former Gitmo Uighurs Love Bermuda (Who Wouldn't?)

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Former Gitmo Uighurs Love Bermuda (Who Wouldn't?)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/06/former_gitmo_uighurs_love_berm.html

By Frank James 3:16 PM ET | 06-15-2009


Former Guantanamo detainees Khelil Mamut, left, and Salahidin Abdulahat, smile while taking a swim on the ocean near Hamilton, Bermuda, Sunday, June 14, 2009. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

After seven years at the Guatanamo prison facility, even after the U.S. determined they posed no terrorist threat to American interests, four Uighurs are apparently enjoying their new-found freedom in Bermuda where they were transported last week after the government there granted them entry as refugees.

From the available reporting, the men appear to be relishing Bermuda (who wouldn't?) and marveling at their good fortune to end up in such circumstances after many difficult years.

As the New York Times reported:

Almost exactly seven years after arriving at Guant??namo in chains as accused enemy combatants, and four days after their surprise predawn flight to Bermuda, four Uighur Muslim men basked in their new-found freedom here, grateful for the handshakes many residents had offered and marveling at the serene beauty of this tidy, postcard island.
In newly purchased polo shirts and chinos, the four husky men, members of a restive ethnic minority from western China, might blend in except for their scruffy beards. Smelling hibiscus flowers, luxuriating in the freedom to drift through scenic streets and harbors, they expressed wonder at their good fortune in landing here after a captivity that included more than a year in solitary confinement.

"I went swimming in the ocean for the first time ever yesterday, and it was the happiest day of my life," said Salahidin Abdulahat, 32.

Over a lunch of fish and chips on Sunday, they praised Bermuda for showing courage in the face of potential Chinese pressures that, in their view, powerful European countries had failed to muster.

The New York Tims failed to mention what the men had for dessert. Fear not, the Associated Press was on the case:

The four men in short-sleeve shirts looked like ordinary tourists, enjoying a Sunday lunch and butter pecan ice cream afterward as they observed the sparkling waters surrounding this Atlantic resort island.

For the four Uighurs, Bermuda is just the latest stop in what must, for them, be a fairly mind-blowing odyssey -- from China where they were part of a minority persecuted by the Chinese; to Afghanistan, where, according to their story, they fled from said Chinese; to Guantanamo and then to Bermuda where they're eating fish and chips and butter pecan ice cream.

It seems like the stuff of novels. But it has the virtue of actually happening.