By OMAR EL AKKAD

OTTAWA, ONTARIO — Languishing behind prison walls somewhere in China, Huseyin Celil may never know how much impact he has had on the continuing plight of a group of his brethren held in a controversial prison on the other side of the planet.

The Globe and Mail has learned that the Canadian government came very close to accepting as refugees a group of Uyghur prisoners from Guantanamo Bay – men who were captured by bounty hunters in Pakistan six years ago, handed over to American soldiers, shipped off to Guantanamo and then almost immediately found to have done nothing wrong.

But Ottawa pulled back at the last minute, in large part, sources say, because of fears of what would happen to Mr. Celil, also a member of China’s Uyghur minority, if the transfer went ahead – Beijing has lobbied furiously to keep any nation from accepting the Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Interviews with government and legal sources, as well as documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, show the political negotiations that went on behind the scenes, as the U.S. desperately tried to get rid of men it now admits pose no threat.

Those men might well be Canadian residents today if it weren’t for another imprisoned Canadian whose release Ottawa is unable to secure.

POLITICAL FAVOURS

In 2002, a few months after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, bounty hunters across the region were rounding up anyone they could hand over to the American military, usually for a handsome sum – an arrangement the military frequently accepted.

Among those men were a group of almost two dozen Uyghur men captured in Pakistan. The Uyghurs are a Muslim minority group in northwest China. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Beijing has used the war on terrorism as leverage in its continuing crackdown on the Uyghurs, some of whom have fought fiercely for independence from China.

The men were handed over to the U.S. military for about $5,000 a head, and eventually flown to the newly established detention facility in Guantanamo Bay.

It quickly became clear to U.S. officials that, if the Uyghurs harboured hatred against any government, it was that of China, not the United States. The men denied allegations of wrongdoing, and it wasn’t long before then-secretary of state Colin Powell was looking for a country to take the prisoners.

“The U.S. recognized very early on that these men were captured by mistake,’ said J. Wells Dixon, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents some of the Uyghurs.

Although some of the detainees were cleared for release from Guantanamo Bay as early as 2003, it was not until 2006 that any of them actually left the naval base.

The timing of the men’s release was coincidental at best. Some of the prisoners, who had earlier been declared “no longer enemy combatants,” had filed court cases arguing the U.S. could no longer detain them. A U.S. court of appeal was set to hear arguments in the case on May 8, 2006. Three days before the hearing was scheduled, the five men were released from the base and flown to Albania. The court case was dismissed, and Washington avoided a ruling on whether what was happening in Guantanamo was legal.

Albania, which has no Uyghur community to speak of, was far from an ideal location for the men. Indeed, the U.S. had quietly (and unsuccessfully) lobbied about 100 countries to take the prisoners. Among those countries was Canada, a place the prisoners’ lawyers had hoped would agree to take them in. Albania was the lone outlier among those countries, and not for purely benevolent reasons.

“It appears to us that they were sent to Albania because Albania owed the U.S. a political favour,” said Mr. Dixon. “Albania wants very much to become a part of the European Union. … As soon as [the Uyghurs] were sent to Albania, it was shortly thereafter that the U.S. announced support for Albania’s efforts to join the European Union.”

It is also believed that the U.S. paid millions of dollars as part of the transfer agreement.

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