Among the 38 were five Uyghurs picked up in Afghanistan that the US said it suspected were members of the East Turkestan Independence Movement - a small militant group dedicated to independence for the Chinese region also known as Xinjiang. It was unsafe to send the men back to their home nation of China, where Uyghurs are persecuted by the state, so the US struck a deal with Albania to take them. They were finally released in 2006 and landed late at night in the Albanian capital Tirana. Their initial joy at being free subsided when they were taken straight to a squalid refugee camp on the outskirts of the city, where they would spend more than a year.