The Go-Between: Interpreting Life in Bermuda for Freed Gitmo Prisoners

By PAULO PRADA

HAMILTON, Bermuda -- Rushan Abbas climbed the stone steps of Camden, the official residence of Bermuda's premier, earlier this summer and led three island newcomers into a stately receiving room where the Rev. Al Sharpton was waiting.

"Thank you for your valuable time," said Ms. Abbas, after interpreting Rev. Sharpton's greeting to the three men into Uighur, an obscure language of central Asia.

Being Uighur Muslims from western China -- and having spent the past seven years as prisoners at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- the men really had no idea who the American civil-rights activist is.

Rushan Abbas

The task of explaining many such mysteries to the freed Uighurs has fallen to Ms. Abbas, a 42-year-old former office worker and mother of three in Fresno, Calif. Since 2002, her rare combination of language skills, passports and Uighur activism has made Ms. Abbas the primary link between Guantanamo's Uighur detainees and a world far removed from the Afghan hamlets where they were living just before the U.S. military captured them early in its hunt for al Qaeda.

The men say they were passing through the region at the time after fleeing China, where Uighurs, a people of Turkic descent, have long been an oppressed minority. In early July, clashes between Uighurs and residents from China's Han majority led to 197 deaths in Xinjiang province, which is home to most Chinese Uighurs.

Ms. Abbas had never worked as an interpreter before Sept. 11, 2001. She has since gone from a sales job in California, through the barbed wire of Guantanamo, to the private jet that Bermuda chartered to retrieve the Uighurs after the U.S. government freed them June 11. In the process, Ms. Abbas, a native Uighur and a naturalized U.S. citizen, went from helping the Defense Department interrogate prisoners to working for their release.

"She got into this expecting vicious, throat-slitting terrorists," says Sabin Willett, a Boston lawyer who helped free the Uighurs. "Now she's helping to demythologize those men."

After the Uighurs were released, Ms. Abbas spent two weeks easing their transition. Now, after a recent move from Fresno to Washington, D.C., she is on standby to fly to Palau, in case a deal is finalized with the Pacific island nation to accept 13 remaining Guantanamo Uighurs.

"I have to explain almost everything," says Ms. Abbas. The visit from Rev. Sharpton, she explained to the men and to a fourth colleague who didn't make the meeting, was a show of support for Bermuda's government, which had caught political flak for accepting them.

In addition to interpreting, Ms. Abbas coordinated everything from meals to visits from Bermudan lawyers and government employees who are helping them find homes, English classes and work. On Monday, the Uighurs began jobs as landscapers at the state-owned Port Royal Golf Course.

As they settled in at the oceanside guesthouse where they first arrived, Ms. Abbas baked bread, fried flounder, and made halwa, a sweet confection. "She's our translator, our assistant, and our chef," says Abdullah Abdulqadir, 30, the most jovial of the four men.

Ms. Abbas was born in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province and the city where the recent violence erupted. Her father, a scientist, befriended an American researcher who invited Ms. Abbas to study in the U.S. once she had finished a biology degree at Xinjiang University. In 1989, she moved to Prosser, Wash., studied plant pathology at Washington State University, fell in love with a professor and married. Over the next seven years, Ms. Abbas had three children, became a U.S. citizen and grew active in Uighur-American circles.

In 1998, when U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia launched a Uighur language service, Ms. Abbas became the sole female voice on the channel, communicating world news to western China and other Uighur areas. In 2000, she quit radio to work in sales for an exporter of animal feed.

Then, as she recalls it, one Saturday morning a few months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the phone rang. "I've been looking for you for weeks," the voice on the line said.

It was an executive at Titan Corp., now owned by L-3 Communications Corp., which was providing interpreters for the U.S. military. The company needed her in Guantanamo, where a small group of captured Uighurs had recently been shipped.

Three weeks later, she was in Cuba, in fatigues, interpreting the interrogation of a Uighur detainee. After the interview, the detainee told interrogators he would like to speak with Ms. Abbas. "You are Rushan Abbas," the prisoner said. He and others recognized her voice from Radio Free Asia.

A U.S. government official said that some of the Uighurs before their capture lived at times in suspected terrorist training camps. Investigators, though, never had enough evidence to prove they were indeed "enemy combatants," the official said.

Frustrated with what she describes as fruitless and repetitive interviews, Ms. Abbas resigned from her Guantanamo post in 2002, and returned to another sales job in California.

In early 2003, the military transferred the Uighurs to a medium-security portion of Guantanamo. Since then, the U.S. has been unable to free most of them. They can't return to China, where the government considers them separatists. China has warned other countries not to accept them.

In 2005, a group of U.S. law firms launched a pro bono effort to free the Uighurs, but had trouble communicating with the detainees. "Get Rushan," one of the detainees told the lawyers.

Over the past three years, Ms. Abbas made more than 20 trips to Guantanamo. She left her job and $65,000 salary and now free-lances for the law firms.

Last October, a federal judge ruled that the U.S. must release the 17 Uighurs who remained at Guantanamo. The four in Bermuda were going to be sent in May to live in Virginia, but local and state officials protested.

Once Bermuda accepted them, Ms. Abbas helped the men understand that they would no longer be treated as prisoners. "I thought we would still be wearing shackles," says Salahidin Abdulahat, 32, recalling their surprise when they stepped into the chartered jet and saw couches, a phone and a microwave.

Before leaving Bermuda for home, Ms. Abbas made sure the Uighurs had some things they needed to adjust to a free life in the West. "I really liked the Wii," said Mr. Abdulahat, boasting how well he played a virtual bowling game the men had in their final week at Guantanamo. Ms. Abbas interpreted. Within seconds, a Bermuda government worker across the table was on the phone pricing gadgets.

Write to Paulo Prada at paulo.prada@wsj.com