Adelhaze, an ethnic Kazakh from Karamay, China, disappeared on 2 May 2017 while crossing from Kazakhstan into China at the border at Qorǵas (Korgas). Adelhaze used to work for a national oil company in China before retiring and moving to Kazakhstan in August 2016. The Chinese authorities called him a few days before his disappearance saying that he needed to go back to China otherwise they were going to stop paying his pension. According to a trusted source interviewed by Amnesty International and based in Kazakhstan, the Chinese police stopped Adelhaze at the border and he had to get off the bus he was travelling on. The bus driver waited for him but he never came back. Three days after he was taken away, the police went to see Adelhaze’s sister in Xinjiang to return his belongings.

Adelhaze spent one year in a temporary detention centre in Karamay then he was moved to Dushanzi District Prison but after a while, he was transferred back to the initial detention centre. According to a trusted source, Adelhaze was tried, charged for “terrorism”, and sentenced to nine years in prison. He is now detained in a prison in Shihezi City. The source believes that the real reasons for Adelhaze’s imprisonment are having a copy of the Qur’an at home, having married with a Muslim ceremony, and living in Kazakhstan.