Feb. 22, 2007: Huseyin Celil - Guler Dilaver

Caught in the grip of Beijing -- deserves careful reading -- lengthy, detailed, raises questions , Geoffrey York and Omar el Akkad, Feb. 18, 2007, Globe and Mail -- and Comments on this article

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In the paper copy of the G & M is a map with details of Celil / Dilaver's travels.

Note: the false passport, disabled child, a refugee to Canada with unusual skills in that he studied the Koran but not much else. What need had Canada for him and what evidence to corroborate his story? Maybe he was a genuine refugee but reading this leaves me with questions.

[....] After years of harassment from the police and a term in prison, Mr. Celil decided to flee the country. His family says he managed to leave China for the first time in 1995 to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Muslim holy city. A few months later, after a brief return to Kashgar, he fled to Central Asia, making his way eventually to Kyrgyzstan, China's neighbour to the northwest, where he continued in the clothing trade and served as an imam in a Uighur mosque. Both the trips to Mecca and Kyrgyzstan, according to family members in Canada, were made using fake passports. China, they say, never granted Mr. Celil a passport; the first and last legitimate one he held was Canadian.

His family and his lawyer say that's why, in the two years he spent in Kyrgyzstan, the last nine months of which were in a jail cell, Mr. Celil used the name Guler Dilaver.

It was 1998, and the bazaars in Kyrgyzstan were thriving.

Mr. Celil was living in the capital city of Bishkek at the time, selling silk and clothes in the sprawling markets alongside other Uighur traders. There was a sizable Uighur community in the country, but almost all of them were considered illegal, so a black market in passports evolved within the community. According to relatives and friends who knew him at the time, Mr. Celil purchased one. The name on the Turkish document was Guler Dilaver, born in 1955. Using this passport, Mr. Celil lived in Kyrgyzstan for two years, working as a trader but also preaching Islam on the side. [....]

Search: “He was educated,” Ms. Telendibaeva recalls. “He knew the Koran, he knew the hadith,” she said, referring to the Muslim holy book and the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Mohammed.

His wife recommends him.

[Sample comment: ....] The entire family can afford to fly internationally while Ontario welfare pays the rent??? The eldest child requires close and costly medical attention, but was this child given permission by his doctors to fly across the globe??? Has Canada developed a well-known international reputation for being played for a sucker over and over again? There are many needy Canadian families -- shouldn't the government assist those who really can't afford to globe-trot? If there is an Interpol bureau with information on the identity or identities of this man, then Immigration Canada and the RCMP could request the information to test its veracity. ....