From Guantanamo to Paradise

On the June 11th, after seven years locked up on the island of Cuba, four Uyghur men were transferred from the living hell of Guantanamo to the wealthy paradise of Bermuda.

The story begins with them leaving their homeland in China before the 9/11 attacks.

Salahidin Abdulahad, Ablikim Turahun, Khalil Manut, and Abdulla Abdulqadir ended up in a small, rundown settlement in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains.

After September 11th, 2001 and the US bombing of Afghanistan, they fled to Pakistan.

It was here they were arrested and eventually taken to Guantanamo.

Despite being cleared of being 'enemy combatants' by the Bush administration, the US military and courts, they continued to be held.

No country was willing to take them apart from China, where the four men feared they would be tortured.

They were in no-man’s land but Bermuda opened its arms and welcomed them to a new home and a new life.

In this documentary, Nick Davis travels to their seaside cottage to meet them and to ask them what their hopes are for the future.

After solitary confinement and innumerable interrogations, they are free, but how will they cope?

He asks the men about their journey, why and how they ended up in Guantanamo.

First broadcast 13th July 2009

An All Out Productions programme for BBC World Service.