Return to torture: an update on the fate of Tunisian Guantánamo detainee Abdullah bin Omar
13.7.07
In the New Statesman, Clive Stafford Smith updates the story of Abdullah bin Omar, previously reported here and here, confirming that, as suspected, the Tunisian refugee has been imprisoned and tortured on his return to the country of his birth.
For those who missed the story the first time round, bin Omar had been living in Pakistan for 13 years until he was captured by opportunist soldiers in 2002 and sold to the Americans, who took five years to realize that he was innocent of any crime. His forced return to his home country, where, as Stafford Smith states, he “has already been tortured, and he has been told that if he does not confess falsely to crimes, his wife and daughters will be raped,” is a moral outrage, and should provoke all decent people to stand up and demand that the US government no longer tries to worm its way out of a humanitarian disaster of its own making by sending innocent men to imprisonment, torture or even death.
Shockingly, bin Omar’s repatriation to torture is just the start of what may be a disturbing trend. As Stafford Smith notes, “There is doubtless worse to come. There are many other Guantánamo prisoners facing bin Omar’s fate –- from Tunisia and from Algeria, China, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Syria and Uzbekistan. Like him, many have been cleared for release. Much as they want to get out of Guantánamo –- a purgatory of imprisonment without charge or trial –- repatriation may take these men to hell itself.”
For more on the Tunisian detainees in Guantánamo, see my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed.
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