FRONTLINE/World: Italy: Taking on the Mafia
Air date: January 27th, 2009

ANNOUNCER:  Tonight on FRONTLINE/World, three Stories from a Small Planet.

First, in Italy— the police have battled the Mafia for years.

CAROLA MAMBERTO, Reporter:  [voice-over]  The man was under surveillance.

ANNOUNCER:  But then a restaurant owner made a stand that ignited a new generation, and nothing in Sicily would ever be the same.

Then a story about Gitmo.  The camp may be closing, but where will all the prisoners go?

SABIN WILLETT, Attorney:  They said, ``They're in Albania.''  And I said, ``Where are they really?''

ANNOUNCER:  Tonight, a look at one prisoner's odyssey, with the fate of his friends still to be decided.

VIJAY PADMANABHAN, Former State Department Lawyer:   What do you do with people that you pick up and they can't be returned home?  There are very few options.

ANNOUNCER:   And finally tonight, in Brazil—

WOMEN:  Barack Obama!

ANNOUNCER:  Barack Obama for mayor?

MAN:  Barack Obama.

WOMAN:  Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack Obama!

ANNOUNCER:  One man campaigns to break the color barrier in his town by adopting a popular name.

SUPPORTER:  Barack Obama!

 

Italy: Taking on the Mafia
Reported by Carola Mamberto

 

CAROLA MAMBERTO, Reporter:  [voice-over]  Here, along the ancient streets of Palermo, Sicily, the invisible hand of the Mafia is everywhere at work, but few dare to speak its name.

1st MAN:  [subtitles]  I thought, ``My God, if I report them, I'd be scared all the time.  What would happen to me?''  There are so many of them.  They always used to say ``We are many.''

2nd MAN:  I still wake up trembling.  In my most frequent nightmare, I get killed.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Palermo is the birthplace of the modern Mafia, where the old ways still rule, and mob bosses are often the highest authority.  At least until recently.

Here, in one of Palermo's most popular restaurants, a new chapter in the city's Mafia history would be written.  It all began when Vincenzo Conticello, the owner, was paid a visit.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO, Restaurant Owner:  [subtitles]  A man I didn't know came to see me.  He said he wanted to talk about work.  He said, ``We know you're not in compliance.  I'm your tax collector.  Pay me $800 a month and you'll have no more problems.''

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Little did Conticello know the man was on the radar of investigators, under surveillance.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  I looked at him.  I felt an intense fear.  Still to this day, when I think about it, my heart drops.  I lost my breath.  The Mafia was right there in front of me.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  The focacceria is the oldest restaurant in Palermo and has served many Mafiosi over the years, including renowned boss Lucky Luciano.  The Conticellos had never had to pay protection.  But one day, customers started complaining that their parked cars were being trashed.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  Broken windows, broken headlights, interiors trashed.  There was damage worth thousands of dollars, when the dinner itself hadn't cost more than $50 or $60.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  That's when Conticello's mysterious visitor showed up and said he could make the problems go away if Conticello agreed to pay protection money, which everyone here knows as the ``pizzo.''

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  ``Pizzo'' in Italian means the beak of a chicken.  It's the act of pecking here and there, eating everything you can find.

Capt. JACOPO MANNUCCI, Palermo Carabinieri:  [subtitles]  In Palermo, 80 percent of shop owners and businessmen pay the pizzo.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Captain Jacopo Mannucci leads the anti-Mafia squad of the Carabinieri police force in Palermo.  Mannucci says the pizzo is the pillar of Mafia power here.

Capt. JACOPO MANNUCCI:  [subtitles]  Even market stands pay protection money.  They pay $80 to $130 per month.  For larger companies, payments can be thousands of dollars, up to $15,000 per month.

LIRIO ABBATE, Journalist:  [subtitles]  The Mafia feeds itself as if it were Dracula, this vampire that bites into people and sucks the economy.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Investigative journalist Lirio Abbate knows the Mafia's grip firsthand.  After publishing a ground-breaking book on Cosa Nostra's ties to government, he narrowly escaped a bomb under his car.

LIRIO ABBATE:  [subtitles]  Shop owners and businessmen are scared, so they pay and don't report it.  Some are so terrified that they'll deny it in court, even if they are caught on film.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  But the police film anyway.

Capt. JACOPO MANNUCCI:  [subtitles]  In the case of the Focacceria San Francesco, we realized that some suspect people were gravitating around the restaurant.  This is why the Carabinieri began to focus on the focacceria, suspecting that something was wrong.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  So without Conticello's knowledge, the Carabinieri set up over 50 microphones and cameras at the focacceria as part of a major undercover operation.  They now identified the man who came to demand the pizzo that first day.  His name was Giovanni Di Salvo, a Mafia foot soldier they hoped would lead them higher up.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  An acquaintance asked me what was wrong.  He said I looked worried.  So I told him they had put my dead cat on my doorstep.  I had received an anonymous letter threatening to kill me and my family if I didn't pay $80,000.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Conticello again refused.  Then, as the police listened in, Conticello received a call.

MAN:  [subtitles]  If you want my advice as a friend, go and talk to him.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  Should I?

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  The man on the phone urged him to work something out with the neighborhood boss.

MAN:  [subtitles]  I'm telling you as your friend.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  But help me.  Tell me why!

MAN:  [subtitles]  We could do it.  We could do damage.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Conticello agreed to the meeting, and not long after, the boss showed up.  Again, the police were watching.  His name was Francolino Spadaro, one of Palermo's top Mafia leaders.  He told Conticello that his problems could be solved if he hired a man who would soon come to see him.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  I followed that advice.  Ten to fifteen days later, my ``mediator'' came to see me.  He said he'd successfully negotiated with the extortionists.  Now I owed $20,000 instead of $80,000.  If I didn't have the money, his boss would give me a loan.  The mediator told me I could repay the loan with interest every month.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  The police had heard enough.  On March 13th, 2006, before the Mafia could learn about the operation, Capt. Mannucci moved in with his men, arresting Di Salvo, his boss, Francolino Spadaro, and two others.

When Conticello arrived at work the next morning, he found Carabinieri all around the restaurant.  It was only now he learned the police had been watching the place for five months.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  I was surprised.  I never suspected so many bugs and cameras.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Now the whole case rested on Conticello making a daring move.  Would he press charges against the Mafia for extortion?  Standing up to Cosa Nostra is still unthinkable to most in Sicily.  Everyone remembers what happened to Libero Grassi, who not only refused to pay the pizzo, but he broke the code of silence about it when he published an open letter to the Mafia in the early 1990s.  [``A businessman rebels against the pizza'']

[www.pbs.org: More about Mafia history]

PINA GRASSI, Wife:  [subtitles]  The letter shocked everyone because it was written by a local businessman.  For the first time in our city's history, he had dared to talk publicly about the Mafia and the pizzo.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Libero's wife, Pina Grassi, tells me how publicly refusing to pay the Mafia put her husband in the media spotlight.

REPORTER:  [subtitles]  Are you scared?

LIBERO GRASSI:  [subtitles]  Am I scared?  Am I scared.  I used to be scared.  I will continue to be scared.  So I'm no more afraid than I usually am.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Grassi struck a defiant pose.  But when he tried to get others to join him, Cosa Nostra decided to make an example of him.

PINA GRASSI:  [subtitles]  It was August 29, a Thursday.  The following Monday, the factory would have reopened after the summer break.  Libero left at 7:30 AM.  I walked him to the elevator.  And a few minutes later, I heard gunshots.  Immediately after, someone rang the intercom and said, ``Madam, is your husband home?''  And I thought, ``Oh, God!''  That's when I knew.  I went downstairs.  I sat on the stairs and really started to wonder, ``What do I do now?''

LIRIO ABBATE, Journalist:  [subtitles]  It was an extraordinary murder that allowed the Mafia to send a signal to everyone else.  But that didn't cause business owners to band together.  They remained silent for the next 15 years.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  But underneath the surface, Palermo's view of the Mafia was changing.  After the death of Libero Grassi, a number of other high-profile murders turned public opinion against the Mafia.  The old ways were coming under question by a new generation.  And then one morning, Palermo woke up to find the streets covered in mysterious leaflets.

NEWSCASTER:  [subtitles]  Palermo's district attorney has launched an investigation to find out who plastered the city's center with anonymous anti-pizzo leaflets.

PINA GRASSI:  [subtitles]  In July 2004, these leaflets appeared all over the city.  ``An entire people who pays the pizzo is a people without dignity!''  Reporters immediately called me. ``Who are they?'' they asked me.  And I said, ``Who knows?  I haven't got a clue.  But if they were young people,'' I said, ``they could be my nephews because they see things the way I do.''  Three days later, the door opened and three kids showed up saying, ``We're your nephews.''

LAURA NOCILLA, Pub Owner:  [subtitles]  We wanted to open a pub.  When we were about to open — we had almost paid the first rent — a friend of ours created a business plan.  He included the pizzo as part of the expenses.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Laura Nocilla and Raffaele Genova are part of the generation tiring of Mafia control.  They knew people in Palermo were paying the pizzo, but when it got in the way of opening their pub, they wondered why they should put up with it.

LAURA NOCILLA:  [subtitles]  We were kidding ourselves that we were living in a normal city where we could do things as free citizens.  That wasn't true.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Laura and Raffaele say Sicily offers few economic prospects to their generation.  It's the Mafia they think that's keeping the region underdeveloped.  Few will invest.  That's why they decided to put up the anti-pizzo leaflets.

RAFFAELE GENOVA, Pub Owner:  [subtitles]  It was a call to arms, a way to get attention.  Initially, we didn't think we'd succeed so well.  We simply wanted to open the debate.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  The media attention to their stunt made them nervous, afraid of becoming Mafia targets themselves.  The only way to be safe, they felt, was to get more people involved.

LAURA NOCILLA:  [subtitles]  One Sunday, we went to the stadium.  We made a banner.

RAFFAELE GENOVA:  ``United Against the Pizzo.''  And underneath was the address of our Web site.  That's when Giorgio saw us on TV and contacted us.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Giorgio was the first shop owner to join their movement, Addiopizzo, or ``Good-bye Pizzo.''  The idea was to build a coalition of Mafia-free businesses.  Like free-trade coffee or organic produce, they launched a pizzo-free brand.

LIRIO ABBATE:  [subtitles]  It's something concrete.  They brought together businesses and published a list of their names, urging people only to shop in places that don't pay the pizzo, that say ``no'' to pizzo, ``no'' to racketeering.

LAURA NOCILLA:  [subtitles]  Why did focus on the pizzo, rather than drugs, weapons or shady deals?  Because we immediately realized that the pizzo was a tool the Mafia used to create a culture that accepts their control of territory.  If you take that away, everything else the Mafia does will collapse.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  One by one, the Addiopizzo kids signed up businesses.  In less than two years, the movement began to pick up steam.

LAURA NOCILLA:  [subtitles]  By then, we were no longer just seven people, we were 3,500 consumers and citizens united to support the law.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  The Addiopizzo kids decided to make a show of force.  They declared a pizzo-free day for the entire city.

ADDIOPIZZO KIDS:  [singing]  [subtitles]  One, two, three, four, five, ten, one hundred steps—

LAURA NOCILLA:  [subtitles]  We were in shock and incredibly moved when night fell and we realized how many people there were in that piazza.

PERFORMERS:  [singing]  [subtitles]  You can change your life now, but only if you're ready to act.

LIRIO ABBATE:  [subtitles]  The defiance of these young people is really significant.  It doesn't right after a big Mafia massacre, when you expect people to rise up.

 [Leaflet subtitle: ``You're no longer alone'']

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Addiopizzo has grown into an network of over 300 businesses.  Almost 10,000 consumers have pledged only to shop pizzo-free.  The movement has transformed the atmosphere in Palermo.

SALVATORE PIPARO, Story Teller:  [subtitles]  We are all Palermitans.  We all want to be free, and proud to say so.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Salvatore Piparo is part of this new generation and one of the last of Palermo's epic story tellers.

SALVATORE PIPARO:  [subtitles]  The time has come to tell you the story of Palermo's puppet masters and little puppets—

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  The story he's telling is the one of the restaurant owner, Conticello, who had shocked the city with the decision he had finally made to testify in open Court against the Mafia.

SALVATORE PIPARO:  [subtitles]   Yes, sir, that's why you Americans come here with microphones and cameras, to witness what's going on in Palermo!

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  The showdown in court was set for a Monday morning.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  The night before, I was walking as I always do among tables.  A man at one of the tables told me to come closer.  He said, ``I bring you greetings from many friends.''  I was perplexed and asked him, ``Who are these friends?''  He said, ``You know who wishes you well.  And we know you know how to behave.''  That night, I didn't sleep well at all.

[subtitles]  When I arrived at the court, I saw a huge crowd, many young people with the ``Goodbye Pizzo'' T-shirts.  The presence of all these people really gave me strength.  I realized that it wasn't just my personal battle, it was the battle of an entire city.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Now all of Palermo was focused on what happened that first day in his focacceria.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [trial testimony]  I walked him out.  He left on a scooter.  I wrote down his license plate number.

ATTORNEY:  [subtitles]  Could you describe this man for us?  Do you remember what he looked like?

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  Of course I remember him.  He's the man sitting over there.

[subtitles]  Silence fell in that room.  No one even breathed.  The prosecutors, the lawyers, the public, the defendants were motionless.  I, on the other hand, breathed.  I took a deep breath.

SALVATORE PIPARO:  [subtitles]  This had never happened in a Palermo courtroom.  I still remember that day's newspaper.  Conticello's picture was on the front page with his finger pointed at his extortionist.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Conticello had dared to name Giovanni Di Salvo, the man who had come to the focacceria to ask for the pizzo.

SALVATORE PIPARO:  And so Vincenzo [sp?] became the hero of Palermo!  Thank you, Vince, because with one finger you redeemed us!  Hurray to Palermo and her patron saint, Rosalia!  Hurray!

[www.pbs.org: Sicily's story-telling tradition]

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  In the meantime, the Carabinieri had been stepping up their efforts to combat Cosa Nostra.  Last month, Capt. Mannucci and his men carried out the biggest operation of the last 20 years.  They arrested almost 100 people, including alleged top Mafia leaders, and paraded them through the city before taking them to jail.

Capt. JACOPO MANNUCCI:  [subtitles]  There's been an incredible series of successes within the past two years.  Everyone in Palermo can really see it for themselves.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  These days, Addiopizzo has enlisted the help of Conticello and Pina to spread the word.

YOUNG MAN:  [subtitles]  You fingered your extortionist at the trial, but where did you find the courage to do it?

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  Obviously, courage is always a consequence of fear.  Without fear, you'd have no reason to find courage.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  Palermo used to be the heart of the Mafia culture in Sicily, but Addiopizzo's presence is only growing stronger and more public.

ADDIOPIZZO SPEAKER:  [subtitles]  There's never been a better time to say no.  You will not be left alone.  These are no longer the 1990s, when Libero Grassi was murdered because he was abandoned.

CAROLA MAMBERTO:  A year ago, Palermo's first anti-racketeering association was launched.  And the powerful Italian business lobby, long silent about the pizzo, ruled to expel all businesses that pay protection.  But in Palermo, and elsewhere in Italy, the Mafia remains deeply entrenched.  Most businesses continue to pay.

VINCENZO CONTICELLO:  [subtitles]  What I have made is a small opening, a small hole.  We must hammer at it every day so that it becomes bigger and we can then advance in this ongoing war.  Mine is just a battle.

PINA GRASSI:  [subtitles]  That's the way it is.  It's something that happens little by little.  Will our heroes succeed?  Who knows?

ANNOUNCER:  Later tonight, in Brazil, Obama-mania and one man's historic run for mayor.

But first, in Guantanamo Bay— what will happen to these prisoners under a new administration?

 

Albania: Getting Out of Gitmo
Reported by Alexandra Poolos, Serene Fang

 

NARRATOR:  On May 5, 2006 a plane took off from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with five men shackled inside.  The men landed here at this airport in southern Europe.  They were given a new set of clothes, but little information.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM, Former Guantanamo Detainee:  [through interpreter]  There were 20 to 30 soldiers inside the plane.  Our hands and feet were tied by chains.  The first thing we saw was darkness.

NARRATOR:  The men were members of a Muslim ethnic minority group from western China called the Uighurs, but they now found themselves driven through the streets of a city that most of them had never heard of.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:  [through interpreter]  At that moment, we thought, ``They lied to us.''  We were very afraid.

NARRATOR:  It turned out the Uighurs had been taken to Tirana, Albania.  This past summer, we arrived to track them down.

We first found Abu Bakker Qassim.  He led us to the building where he and the others had been taken after they arrived.  He began to tell us the Uighurs' story.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:   [through interpreter]  When I first arrived, they brought me to this place behind me.  It is the Political Asylum Center of Albania.  We arrived at about midnight.  I spent a year-and-a-half of my life here.

NARRATOR:  When the local news heard about the arrival of Abu Bakker and his friends at the refugee center, they staked them out.  People were worried that these men were Al Qaeda terrorists.

NEWSCASTER:  [subtitles]  The Uighur immigrants have been forbidden to go out in public.  They must stay within the camp.

NARRATOR:  Under scrutiny, Abu Bakker and the others struggled to make sense of it all.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:  [through interpreter]  Getting caught up in international terrorism, being taken to Guantanamo, then becoming the focus of the world as an evil person— this was beyond my wildest thoughts.  It was a punishment of destiny that we went through.

NARRATOR:  The story of the Uighurs' unimaginable odyssey began in an even more unlikely place.  This is Xinjiang, a remote area of western China where Abu Bakker and the others grew up.  Bordering Central Asia along the old silk road, the Uighurs consider this their homeland and struggle with Chinese rule.  The longstanding tension between this Muslim minority and the Chinese government dominates daily life.

Here in Xinjiang, Abu Bakker made a living as a leather worker, and at age 26, he married.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:  [through interpreter]  I had love.  I had a family.  Our life was beautiful.  Now it's devastated.

NARRATOR:  Abu Bakker's big move came in mid-2000.  He says he headed out of Xinjiang, looking for work.  Leaving was bittersweet.  His wife was now pregnant.  He told her he'd be back in six months, but the trip didn't go as planned.

From his home in Xinjiang, Abu Bakker headed southwest.  Running low on money, he stopped in a Uighur village in Afghanistan.  It was a decision that left him in one of the worst spots in the world after the 9/11 attacks.  The U.S. had just begun bombing the al Qaeda stronghold in Tora Bora, where Abu Bakker had been staying.

In the confusion that followed, U.S. forces pursued hundreds of al Qaeda suspects who fled the bombings.  Cash bounties offered by U.S. forces encouraged local villagers to turn in as many people as they could capture, and this is what Abu Bakker and two dozen other Uighurs say happened to them.

JOHN KIRIAKOU:  If Pakistani or Afghan villager comes up to you with a guy he has tied up and says, ``This is a terrorist, I caught him in my village,'' what are you going to do?  Maybe he is a terrorist.

NARRATOR:  John Kiriakou was a top CIA official in Pakistan after 9/11.  He says the only way to sort out the captives was to send them to Guantanamo.

JOHN KIRIAKOU:  We viewed it as a place where you had the luxury of time, you had a staff of linguists, and you could spend quality time with each one of these prisoners, interviewing them and getting to the bottom of each one of these stories.

NARRATOR:  Abu Bakker and the others arrived in the spring of 2002.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:  [through interpreter]  It was not normal to be taken somewhere in the middle of the sea and put in solitary iron cells.  I figured I must have been charged with a severe crime.  I was totally desperate and hopeless.

RUSHAN ABBAS, Former Translator:  The first meeting, before I went in to meet the detainee, I thought this radical jihadist, I thought he might be really disrespectful to me or he may not even want to talk to me.

NARRATOR:  Rushan Abbas was a Uighur from California brought into Guantanamo to translate for the interrogations of Abu Bakker and the others.

RUSHAN ABBAS:  At the beginning, I felt that mission was important, I was doing something really important to help the government to sort through these people, to find out about them and make a decision.  After about six, seven months, I realized that the mission is becoming useless, especially my translations.  I felt the interrogators already got what they want to know.

NARRATOR:  There are no publicly available recordings of any of the Uighur interrogations, but the Uighurs would later answer similar questions at special hearings held in a makeshift courtroom in the camp.

HEARING OFFICER:  Did you receive any type of training on al Qaeda or from Taliban—

NARRATOR:  But after months of questioning, the military became convinced of the Uighurs' story that China was their foe, not the U.S.

DETAINEE/TRANSLATOR:  I heard the Uighur people in Afghanistan, they trying to fight back the Chinese government and try to get back our independence.  We never fight back to U.S. forces or coalition forces.

PIERRE RICHARD PROSPER, Fmr. Amb-at-Large, War Crimes Issues:  It became clear to us who these Uighurs were, in fact, that they were not part of the al Qaeda network.  We decided that there were many of them that could actually be released or transferred from Guantanamo.

NARRATOR:  At the State Department, Pierre Richard Prosper would be put in charge of the Uighur cases.  For him, the Uighurs presented a unique dilemma.  The U.S. did not regard the Uighurs as a threat, but the Chinese saw them as terrorists.

PIERRE RICHARD PROSPER:  We looked into sending them back to China, and the more we examined it, the more complicated the question became.  We spent years trying to find a home for them.  When I left at the end of 2005, the Uighurs were still there.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:  [through interpreter]  Sometimes the interrogators came only once a month, or even once every two months.  We would end our lives there, I thought.

NARRATOR:  At this point, the Uighurs were entering their fourth year at Guantanamo, stuck in a seemingly endless waiting game.

RUSHAN ABBAS:  The interrogators just lost interest in them because their story is not what they are looking for.  They kept being told they are innocent, they are innocent, they are going to be released soon.

NARRATOR:  It was at this time that a Boston-based lawyer named Sabin Willett volunteered to take on their cases and was flown to Guantanamo.

SABIN WILLETT, Attorney:  We would meet our clients in a place called Camp Echo, which was an old interrogation facility.  And you'd be admitted into this through a series of gates.  It was hot.  It was the middle of the summer.  It's all gravel, and then these huts.  And in the back of your mind is, ``Am I about to meet a 9/11,'' you know, ``criminal?''

NARRATOR:  But the Uighurs' story, Willett found, was very different.

SABIN WILLETT:  One of the things we did learn was that Abu Bakker had been cleared by the military.  They weren't enemy combatants at all.  But this clearance was held secret even from the court, and the men had been sent back to the same cells as everybody else.

NARRATOR:  Willett decided to file a petition to free Abu Bakker and four others who had been cleared by a military tribunal.  In late 2005, Willett won a minor victory in federal court.  The judge believed the Uighurs were unlawfully detained, but he didn't believe he had the power to set them free.  [Court document: ``This indefinite imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay is unlawful.'']

NARRATOR:  Willett appealed.  But just a few days before the case was to be heard, he got a phone call.

SABIN WILLETT:  It was my opposite number at the Justice Department, and he said, ``We're moving to dismiss your appeal.''  And I said, ``Really?''  I said, ``Why?''  And he said, ``Because they're not there anymore.''  I said, ``Where did they go?  They swim somewhere?''  He said, ``They're in Albania.''  And I said, ``Bob, where are they really?''

NARRATOR:  This is when the Uighurs were put on that night flight to Tirana and driven to their new home in exile.  The next day, Willett landed in Albania himself and found Abu Bakker and the others where they'd been dropped off.

SABIN WILLETT:  I met them on Sunday.  It was thrilling to be out of Gitmo.  I'll never forget that reunion.  It was pretty wonderful.  And then the reality set in.  You know, their families are in China.  They're stuck in Albania.  You can't— as an American, you can't look at these people in the eye and not feel embarrassed about what's happened to them.

VIJAY PADMANABHAN, Former State Department Lawyer:  What do you do with people that you pick up, they come into your custody and they can't be returned home because of treatment issues?  What are the options for them?  And I think you'd find there are very few options.

NARRATOR:  Vijay Padmanabhan was the State Department lawyer who helped negotiate the release of Abu Bakker and four of the other Uighurs to Albania.

VIJAY PADMANABHAN:  Albania and the United States have a very positive relationship, and I think the Albanian government made a decision, humanitarian reasons, political reasons, that it was in its interests to help the United States on this issue.

NARRATOR:  It was a marriage of convenience.  After years of a controversial foreign policy, the Bush administration had few friends left in the world.  They turned to Albania, one of the last countries where the United States still had leverage.  Albania agreed to take 5 of the 22 Guantanamo Uighurs.  The following year, President Bush became the first sitting U.S. president to visit the country.

LULZIM BASHA, Albanian Foreign Minister:  We have tried to do our best to help out with one of the aspects of the war against terror, which is the difficult situation in Guantanamo.

NARRATOR:  We asked the Albanian foreign minister, Lulzim Basha, if they took the Uighurs as part of a quid pro quo for aid.

LULZIM BASHA:  I wouldn't say this was a trade-off.  This— just like our presence in Iraq, our presence in Afghanistan, this is a sign of our will and our capacity to share the responsibility in the coalition against terror.

NARRATOR:  But the Chinese weren't happy and began to pressure the Albanians to hand back the Uighurs.

LIU JIANCHAO, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman:  [subtitles]  The five people accepted by Albania are not refugees but terrorist suspects   We think they should be sent back to China as soon as possible.

NARRATOR:  Not long after, the Albanian prime minister met with a Chinese delegation.  He would not hand back Abu Bakker and the others, but he also wouldn't do anything more to provoke the Chinese.  Despite requests, the Albanians would not take any of the 17 Uighurs remaining at Guantanamo, and neither would anyone else.

VIJAY PADMANABHAN:  We actually have not sent Uighur detainees from Guantanamo to any country other than Albania.  Many other countries, almost every other country in the world has been approached with respect to taking Uighur detainees, but no one has actually agreed to take them.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:  [through interpreter]  Five of us have been cleared and released, but the rest of us are still there.  Now 17 Uighurs have been detained in Guantanamo for seven years.  I don't know how it came to this.

NARRATOR:  By mid-2006, the remaining Uighurs at Guantanamo had been moved to a new facility called Camp Six, modeled after a supermax prison.

SABIN WILLETT:  The men call it the dungeon above the ground.  It's total isolation in a concrete bunker.  So you're in a cell alone for 22 hours in the day.  You don't have a companion.  You don't have a book.  You don't have a television.  You don't have anybody to talk to except yourself.

They started to crack up.  One of them used to tell me that he was starting to hear voices in his head.  And we noticed that his foot would tap on the floor like this, you know?  He was shaking when we saw him.

RUSHAN ABBAS:  They became more withdrawn, quiet, don't say much, don't ask that many questions, negative about everything.

NARRATOR:  Rushan Abbas had quit Guantanamo in back in 2003.  Now she was back as part of the Uighurs' defense.  The legal team urged the Uighurs to keep pressing their case through the courts, but the remaining Uighurs had lost hope.

For one detainee, the moment of choice came when conditions at the camp grew tougher and the guards took away his bed sheets.

SABIN WILLETT:  A few months earlier, some other prisoners had used bed sheets to commit suicide, having despaired of ever getting out of there.  So he had no bed sheet.  And he wanted to know in our meeting, did we think his having brought a case was why they took away his bed sheet.  And we said no, but he was a little skeptical.  So we get outside the cell and our interpreter, Rushan, says, ``He said to drop the case.''  And I said, ``What?''  She said, ``Yeah, he said it's not worth the bed sheet.''

Sen. BARACK OBAMA, Presidential Candidate:  As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions.  It is time to turn the page and it is time to write a new chapter in our response to 9/11.

[www.pbs.org: More on closing Guantanamo]

NARRATOR:  President Obama has signed the order to close the camp, but hard choices remain about the fate of the prisoners still there.

Alt:  President Obama has said closing the camp is a top priority, but tough choices remain about the fate of the detainees still there.

VIJAY PADMANABHAN:  You have to figure out, what do you do with the residual population, the people that we can't find a way to send home and that we can't prosecute?  It's fine to say close Guantanamo, but when a senator or congressman says, ``OK, well that means the person's going to be let loose on the streets of Topeka, Kansas,'' they'll be opposed to actually letting that happen.  So the new president's going to have to ask himself some very difficult questions.

NARRATOR:  Meanwhile, as the fate of their friends hangs in the balance, the freed Uighurs have been trying to make new lives for themselves in Albania.  They've found a local mosque to attend and look to its imam for guidance on how to fit in.

IMAM:  [subtitles]  In the beginning, we were very skeptical of them.  But once we got acquainted, we realized they were not here to cause trouble and now we are very comfortable with them.  We've tried to help them and stay close to them, to try to be like a family for them and to give advice on religion and community issues.

NARRATOR:  Their real families were back in China, but most of the men are resigned to never seeing them again.  Two of the Uighurs have given their wives permission to remarry, but not Abu Bakker.  Not long ago, Abu Bakker's wife sent him the video of their wedding.  He says he watches it to reminisce.

ABU BAKKER QASSIM:  [through interpreter]  It's been eight years that we are living apart.  And for the past two years, we just exchange simple words over the phone.

[subtitles]  Hi.  How are you?  How are the kids?

[through interpreter]  We are just getting along like acquaintances.

NARRATOR:  In the fall of 2008, all of the Uighurs at Guantanamo were removed from the Pentagon's enemies list.  Last month, in a gesture of good will, a few European countries stepped forward to say they would help resettle some Guantanamo detainees.

Meanwhile, for some of the Uighurs, this will be the start of their eighth year of captivity.

 

ANNOUNCER:  Finally, in Brazil, the people of a small town look to their own "Barack Obama" for hope.

 

Brazil: The Obama Samba
Reported by Andres Cediel

 

ANDRES CEDIEL, Reporter:  [voice-over]  For the lucky few, Rio de Janeiro is a playground filled with beach soccer, bikinis and samba.  But the reality is bleak for those living on the outskirts of the city, in the lowlands of Belford Roxo, where violence and poverty rule.

WOMAN:  [subtitles]  We're a population in need.  We've been suffering from neglect for a long time.  The city officials say money is coming, but it never arrives here.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  The need here is endless, but the few politicians who have tried to change things have been silenced or killed.

MAN:  [subtitles]  Even Joca got killed.  He was the best mayor we ever had.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  Recently, some hope has come back to Belford Roxo, thanks in large part to one man.  He's returned from Rio to his boyhood home to campaign for mayor.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE:  [subtitles]  I'd like to thank all of you for believing in our dream of making our city a different place.  We know that our greatest legacy is right here, the people of Belford Roxo.  Thank you all.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  His name is Claudio Henrique, but as he tries to become the town's first black mayor, the people here have given him a new name.

YOUNG WOMEN:  Barack Obama!

MAN:  Barack Obama.

WOMAN:  Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack Obama!

MAN:  Barack Obama.  [subtitles]  Barack Obama of the lowlands!  [singing, with children]  I'm voting for Claudio Henrique for mayor.  Vote number 14!  The people want change!  Claudio Henrique is work, youth and hope.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE:  It started as a joke, in a playful, affectionate way.  And then it picked up steam until it became serious.  At the party convention, after the announcement of my name, the members began to shout, ``That's our Barack Obama!''

ANDRES CEDIEL:  It turns out Brazilian law allows candidates to run under almost any name they choose, and this year, one name stood out.  What started out as a small joke turned into an international phenomenon.  Commentators around the world ran with the story.

NEWSCASTER:  Few countries have embraced Obama-mania as enthusiastically as Brazil—

ANDRES CEDIEL:  The punchline was that Claudio was not alone.  At least seven other candidates across the country were using Obama's name.  But for these black politicians trying to break Brazil's political color barrier, the story was no laughing matter.

JOAO LUIZ DE SOUZA:  [subtitles]  I think Brazil is living a moment of Obama proliferation, and this is very good for us because Obama is a symbol of affirmation for Brazil—

ANDRES CEDIEL:  Joao Luiz de Souza is a professor of Brazilian literature.

JOAO LUIZ DE SOUZA:  [subtitles]  —and for all the people that have suffered the stigma of poverty or a lack of access to power.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  At least half of the country's population has African ancestry, making Brazil the largest black nation on earth after Nigeria.  But these numbers have not translated to political power, as black politicians are virtually absent from government.

[www.pbs.org: More about race in Brazil]

JOAO LUIZ DE SOUZA:  [subtitles]  I'm not sure Americans understand what Obama means to the world.  I think that just as Brazil has many Obamas, there should be Obamas scattered all over the world.  Everyone now wants to be a bit like Obama.  Everyone wants to be a proponent of dialogue and unity.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE:  [subtitles]  The fact that I am black brings with it the responsibility to the children and black people of Belford Roxo so they can dream of achieving that goal.  I would be a role model.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  Claudio grew up poor in Belford Roxo, but after studying electronics in the air force, he now runs his own tech company downtown.  But like his mentor, he says his heart is in community organizing.

With two days left before the election, Claudio is campaigning hard.  He needs to place second to force a run-off in the next round.  Of the five candidates in the race, Claudio is the only black man running, and he's generating a lot of buzz, even from these young women working for another candidate.

YOUNG WOMAN:  [subtitles]  You're the man!  I'm voting for you.  Thank you for coming out to see us.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE:  [subtitles]  I'm going to make a difference in this town.

[subtitles]  I'm getting an overwhelming response from people of different groups, young and old, and I think it stems from the fact that I have responded to their anxieties.  To have my picture taken, to give people my autograph, it's very gratifying, especially at the beginning of my career.

SUPPORTERS:  Barack Obama!  Barack Obama!

CLAUDIO'S BROTHER:  [subtitles]  It's dangerous for a rising politician in this city.  I accompany my brother wherever he goes.  Together with some friends, we make up his security team.

SECURITY GUARD:  [subtitles]  Let's do this later.

CAMERA CREW MEMBER:  [subtitles]  No, we're just finishing up.

SECURITY GUARD:  [subtitles]  We can do this somewhere else.  We have to go, man!

ANDRES CEDIEL:  Security's always a concern.  The campaign caravan, made up of a small group of family and friends, never stays in the same place for too long.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE:  [subtitles]  To be honest, I've already lost some of my fears some time ago.  Running for mayor of Belford Roxo would always be risky.  Several politicians have already been assassinated in the city.  But even if I didn't have the courage to do this, some underprivileged kid might do me harm anyway.  So the risks exist everywhere.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  With one day before the vote, there's still some time for last-minute campaigning.

PRESS AIDE:  [subtitles]  If all the people in the streets who embrace Claudio and show support, if they really vote for him, he'll make it to the second round for sure.  And I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up winning outright in the first round.  It's going to come down to the voters, if what they say in the streets is true.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  It's election day and the polls have been crowded all morning.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE:  [subtitles]  When it was time to vote, I felt the weight on my shoulders of everything I had seen on the campaign— women telling me I was their hope, the affection from the children, contrasting with the images of open sewers, the hospitals that weren't working.  In those final minutes, it came to me like a flash in my mind, my responsibility to do everything I could for my city.  The energy is good.  I'm happy.  I'm at peace, just waiting for the results.  The people's decision is blessed by God.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  By the end of the day, party officials would report that Claudio received 30,000 votes, a third place finish that knocks him out of the race.  Even worse, all his votes were thrown out on a technicality.  In what many think was a political dirty trick, his old party never withdrew his membership and the election board deemed him double registered.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE::  [subtitles]  Am I disappointed?  No.  I've come out stronger from the process.  I started out with one vote, which was mine.  Today I have 30,000 people who believe.  So I've grown politically.

ANDRES CEDIEL:  Claudio hasn't given up his political aspirations and is fighting to reform the system that shut him out.  And even though he lost, along with all the other Brazilian Obamas, the American Obama continues to be an inspiration.

CLAUDIO HENRIQUE:  [subtitles]  He influenced, contributed, helped, or perhaps just loaned his name to the people.  But if they used his name to promote change or to create a more just society, then we welcome 8, 80, 800 or even 8 million Obamas.