The Swedish Migration Board had denied Adil Hakimjan, 34, refugee status in Sweden last June because he had first applied for asylum in Albania after his release from Guantanamo in 2006 and because he lacked sufficient links to Sweden.

A special immigration court in Stockholm overturned that decision however, due to his claim that US authorities had pressured him to apply for asylum in the Balkan country if he wanted to leave Guantanamo.

Since Hakimjan's sister in Sweden was his only family outside of China, where as a member of the Uighur minority community he faced persecution, he also had grounds to receive asylum, the court ruled.

"The way in which Adil Hakimjan was forced to seek asylum (in Albania), his family connection and the humanitarian nature of his request lead the migration court to unanimously find there are strong enough grounds ... to grant him residency as a refugee," one of the judges in the case, Carl-Otto Schele, said in a statement.

"He has been detained for nearly five years under very stressful and special conditions," the court said of his time at Guantanamo.

Uighurs, who are mostly Muslim, form the largest ethnic group in northwest China's remote but strategic Xinjiang region that borders Central Asia. Some of them hope for independence from China.

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