He was the subject of a controversial court case in 2006 when he was arrested in Uzbekistan, extradited to China against the objections of the Canadian government, and sentenced to life in prison on charges of terrorism.

[2] The conviction was based on his supposed identification with a man called Guler Dilaver, who had been wanted in Kyrgyzstan for terrorism charges.

[3][4] Amnesty International's press releases typically omit the suffix "can", referring to him simply as Huseyin Celil, or alternatively as Husein Dzhelil.

[5] Police in Uzbekistan, China, and Kyrgyzstan all claim that Huseyincan Celil is in fact an alias for Guler Dilaver, a man whose name appears on Interpol watchlists; the Uzbek embassy in London also stated in an open letter to Amnesty International that he had used a variety of other aliases such as Hussein Calil and Calil Husan Siddikovich.

[4] In 1994, while Celil was living in Xinjiang, he was arrested, charged with several murders and terrorism-related activities, and imprisoned by Chinese police.

He escaped from China by way of Kyrgyzstan and Turkey, and sought asylum in Ankara through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

[11] On March 27, 2006, Uzbek police arrested, detained, and held Celil incommunicado while in Tashkent, attempting to renew his visitor's visa.

Dilaver, a man born in 1955, had been placed on the Interpol watch list by the Kyrgyz government in 2002 after he attacked a Chinese delegation from Xinjiang.

Uzbekistan's embassy in London stated that Celil's fingerprints matched those Kyrgyzstan had on file for Dilaver when he was arrested there on May 10, 1998.

His name had been mentioned earlier in the sentencing documents of Ismail Semed, another Uyghur who had allegedly been his accomplice in another attack on a Chinese delegation visiting Xinjiang.

[20] However, Li Wei, director of the Center of Counter-Terrorism, Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations, has stated that because Celil was on Interpol's Red List before being admitted into Canada, that agreement doesn't apply to this case.

[22] In November 2006 Prime Minister Harper, President of the People's Republic of China Hu Jintao, and 21 other national leaders attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Hanoi, Vietnam.

[24] When Harper visited China in December 2009, expectations were high that he would bring up the topic in his discussion with the Chinese leaders, as he had promised in 2007.

By a voice vote on September 17, 2007, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 497, calling on the People's Republic of China to immediately release the children of Rebiya Kadeer and Canadian citizen Huseyin Celil and to "ensure the linguistic, cultural, and religious rights of the Uyghur people" in Xinjiang.

Telendibaeva urged the Canadian government to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics unless China frees Celil and allows him to return to Canada.