Lawyers and NGOs aware of Algeria’s poor human rights record disagreed, as did some of the Algerian prisoners themselves, to the extent that the last two Algerians sent home — Abdul Aziz Naji in July 2010 and Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed in January 2011 — had actively resisted being sent home, and had taken their cases all the way to the US Supreme Court, which had paved the way for their enforced return by refusing to accept their appeals.

In assessing whether or not it was safe for Algerians to be repatriated from Guantánamo, the US government was required to weigh Algeria’s established reputation for using torture against the “diplomatic assurances” agreed between Washington and Algiers, whereby, as an Obama administration official told the Washington Post at the time of Naji’s repatriation, the Algerian government had promised that prisoners returned from Guantánamo “would not be mistreated.” The US official added, “We take some care in evaluating countries for repatriation. In the case of Algeria, there is an established track record and we have given that a lot of weight. The Algerians have handled this pretty well: You don’t have recidivism and you don’t have torture.”

According to research I undertook after Abdul Aziz Naji’s enforced repatriation, by speaking to the men’s attorneys, the US government was able to justify its claims because there had been no recorded incidents of torture amongst the ten Algerians previously released from Guantánamo. Although they were held incommunicado for 12 days by the Department of Intelligence and Security (DRS), as permitted under Algerian law, none of them reported being physically abused. In addition, although they all faced dubious trials after their return — generally about 15 months after their repatriation — and although they also suffered prejudice because of the perceived “taint” of Guantánamo, they had not been convicted on trumped-up charges, and had been released after their trials.

I cannot guarantee that I was able to ascertain the exact details of what happened to each of the ten men, but until two weeks ago the most troubling information from Algeria relating to the Guantánamo prisoners appeared to be the 20-year sentence delivered in absentia against Ahmed Belbacha, one of the four Algerians cleared for release but still held, on trumped-up charges of “membership of a terrorist group active overseas.” As far as his lawyers can ascertain, this sentence only came about because Belbacha had been vocal in his opposition to being repatriated, based on his fears about the government, and about the Islamists who had prompted him to flee the country in the first place when they threatened him while he was working for a government-owned oil company.

On January 16, however, any comfort to be gleaned from the Algerian government’s refusal to imprison those returned from Guantánamo for the other Algerians who do not wish to be repatriated — and who, by my reckoning, are Nabil Hadjarab (PDF), Motai Saib and Djamel Ameziane (PDF), who were all cleared for release by military review boards under the Bush administration — dissipated when, as AFP reported, Abdul Aziz Naji received a three-year sentence “for membership of an extremist group active overseas.”

As AFP explained, “The prosecution had sought a 10-year prison sentence and a 5,000-euro ($6,330) fine” for Naji (described as Nadji Abdelaziz). Following the ruling, Naji’s lawyer, Hassiba Boumerdassi, said she would appeal, describing it as “an unprecedented ruling” in Algeria, although AFP pointed out that there was a precedent — the in absentia sentence against Ahmed Belbacha, and those who have studied what happened when Algerians were repatriated from the UK with “assurances” a few years ago are even less convinced. As a friend with close knowledge of the Algerians’ cases explained to me, one of them “was given the same sentence with the same accusation in 2007 when he returned home and another is still serving an 8 year sentence on his return.” She added, “Yet the Home Office claims that Algeria is now a country where it is safe to return the Algerian detainees here despite some of them still bearing the torture marks of Algeria’s torture chambers,” and the echoes with the US government’s view of the “safety” of Algeria are surely not coincidental.

Neverthless, this was the first sentence delivered in person against a former Guantánamo prisoner, and, as the legal action charity Reprieve noted in a follow-up report, Naji, an amputee “who is suffering from serious health complications due to the amputation of his leg,” has had his worst fears confirmed with his conviction. As Reprieve also noted, the charge against him “derived from the unsubstantiated accusations the US administration made against him in 2002.”

In an appeal, the NGO Cageprisoners also noted that, although Naji “returned to his family and tried to start a new life,” he “was deprived of any identity documents and suffered from depression, anxiety and other symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder due to his treatment in American custody.” Cageprisoners also explained that he was under “judicial supervision” and “had to sign a register every week at the local police station,” and also explianed that on the day of his trial he had been arrested without warning and taken to the court.

Reprieve added that, during his trial, “the prosecutor presented no evidence of Mr. Naji’s guilt — rather, the judge simply questioned him and produced a guilty verdict,” and also noted that he “is being held in the notorious El Harache prison in Algiers, where violent abuse of prisoners has been reported by Amnesty International.”

Reprieve also stated:

His family is deeply concerned about his rapidly deteriorating health, and his lawyer reports that his condition has become critical and is worsening by the day. He has not had access to adequate medical treatment while in prison.

Mustafa Bouchachi, the president of the Algerian League for the Defence of Human Rights, visited Mr. Naji in prison on Wednesday and attested to Mr. Naji’s critical health condition. He reports that Mr. Naji is on hunger strike as “the only way that he has to protest his unjust treatment — first by the US authorities in Guantánamo and now in his own country.” Mr Naji further explained that his imprisonment in Algeria is bringing back to him his horrible and unjustified years in Guantánamo.

Katie Taylor, of Reprieve’s “Life After Guantánamo” project, added, “It is outrageous that Mr. Naji is being punished again for the same discredited accusations that the US used to hold him in Guantánamo for eight years without charge or trial — this time in his own country. Algerian authorities must restore his right to a fair trial and overturn his conviction on faulty charges for which the prosecutor did not even bother to introduce evidence.”

As Reprieve also noted, Abdul Aziz Naji is represented in the US by Ellen Lubell and Doris Tennant, who prepared the following profile with the Center for Constitutional Rights:

Mr. Naji was born in Batna, Algeria in 1975. After sixth grade, he began work in his father’s blacksmith shop and later completed his required military service in the Algerian Army. After his service, Mr. Naji, like many young Muslims, travelled to Mecca on pilgrimage and then, during early 2001, worked briefly with a reputable Pakistani charity, providing humanitarian assistance to needy Muslims and Christians in Kashmir. Offering to volunteer his services was important to his religious beliefs. While carrying food and clothing to poor villages one night with a group of other volunteers, Mr. Naji stepped on a landmine (one of many unexploded ordnance that lace the region) and sustained a serious injury, resulting in the loss of his lower right leg. He was taken to a hospital in Lahore, Pakistan where he was treated for several months and fit with a prosthetic leg. He spent many months after that in rehabilitation, living with a few generous families in the city who offered to board him.

An amputee with few resources and in need of the most basic assistance, Mr. Naji was directed by acquaintances to an Algerian in Peshawar to help find a wife. While visiting this man in May 2002, he and his host were arrested during a raid of the man’s house by Pakistani police, one of the many house raids in the area. The reason for the arrests was never explained. In fact, the Pakistanis told Mr. Naji that they would release him. But instead, he was taken by Americans stationed in Peshawar and transferred first to Bagram and then to Guantánamo where he was held for eight years without charge or trial before being forcibly repatriated to Algeria.

Note: In the hope of securing clemency from the Algerian government, Cageprisoners has drafted the following message to the Algerian Minister of Justice:

Monsieur le Ministre,

A la suite d’informations reçues de l’organisation britanique de défense des droits de l’Homme CagePrisoners, je vous exprime ma vive préoccupation concernant l’affaire d’Abdel Aziz Naji arrété le 16 janvier 2012 et condamné le jour même à trois ans de prison, accusé d’appartenir à un groupe terroriste opérant à l’étranger. Il apparaît que cette condamnation n’a pas été prononcée dans des conditions compatibles avec celle d’un procès équitable.

Alors que l’Egypte a mis fin à la détention injuste d’Adel Al-Gazzar, alors que des anciens détenus tunisiens de Guantanmo ont pu regagner leur pays d’origine en toute sécurité et alors que les nouvelles autorités tunisiennes se sont engagées à tout faire pour obtenir la libération de ses cinq citoyens toujours détenus sur l’île cubaine, l’Algérie incarcère un homme qui a déjà passé 8 ans à Guantanamo sans procès, et ce sur la base de vagues accusations et, semble t-il, de manière expéditive.

Je vous demande donc la libération immédiate d’Abdel Aziz Naji.

Je vous prie de recevoir l’expression de mes salutations distinguées.

The message can be sent by email, or by post to: M. Tayeb Belaiz, Ministère de la Justice, 8 Place Bir Hakem, El-Biar, Alger. The phone number is (213) 021-92-41-83 and the fax number is (213) 021-92-17-01.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

“[T]his is a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy.”
Joe Burnham, Time Out

“Every American needs to watch this film. Or at least every mouthpiece in the corporate media. They should broadcast this instead of the WWII Holocaust documentaries, which play on rotation on the cable networks.”
Alexa O’Brien, journalist, WL Central

As featured on Democracy Now!, ABC News and Truthout. Buy the DVD here (£10 + £2 postage in the UK, and worldwide) or here if in the US ($10 post free).

On Tuesday June 21, at 6 pm, there will be a special Parliamentary screening of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington), in the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House, opposite the House of Commons on Bridge St, London, SW1A 2LW (Please note that this venue change was announced on June 15, and amended accordingly).

The screening, hosted by the MPs Caroline Lucas (Green, Brighton Pavilion), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour, Islington North) and Peter Bottomley (Conservative, Worthing West), is to raise awareness of the ongoing plight of the remaining 171 prisoners at Guantánamo (who are still, for the most part, held without charge or trial in a prison that remains a monstrous aberration from international norms), and, in particular, to raise awareness amongst MPs of the fact that one of these men still held without charge or trial is the British resident Shaker Aamer.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with US attorneys Brent Mickum and Tom Wilner, who are both visiting London for this event, British lawyer Gareth Peirce, former Guantánamo prisoners Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg, and Andy Worthington and Polly Nash. It will be chaired by journalist Victoria Brittain,.

Brent Mickum represents Shaker Aamer (and also the supposed “high-value detainee” Abu Zubaydah), and Tom Wilner, who is featured in the film, was Counsel of Record to the Guantánamo prisoners in their cases before the US Supreme Court. British readers are no doubt familiar with solicitor Gareth Peirce, who has represented beleaguered minorities in the UK from the Irish in the 1970s and 1980s to the Muslims of today (and who also appears in the film), and Omar Deghayes, Moazzam Begg and journalist, author and Guantánamo expert Andy Worthington (who worked as a media partner for WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to the Guantánamo prisoners) also feature prominently in the film.

As I explained in a recent article:

The last British resident in Guantánamo, with a British wife and four British children who live in Battersea, Shaker Aamer has been held without charge or trial in America’s notorious “War on Terror” prison for over nine years, despite being told that he had been approved for transfer in 2007.

In WikiLeaks’ recent release of classified military documents relating to almost all of the 779 prisoners who have been held at Guantánamo throughout its long history (171 of whom remain), the reasons for Shaker Aamer’s continued detention were revealed as the paranoid sham that they have always been.

Because of his principled stand regarding the prisoners’ rights, and because of his fluency in English, his charisma and his influence, Shaker Aamer has persistently been regarded as a threat by the US authorities, even though most of the supposed evidence against him in his file consists of statements made by some of the most notoriously unreliable witnesses in Guantánamo and the CIA’s network of secret prisons.

As Amnesty International noted in a news release last month, foreign secretary William Hague and the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg “have both raised Aamer’s plight with members of the US administration in the last six months, and the British government maintains that it is doing all it can to secure his return.”

However, as I also explained:

Britain’s heel-dragging on this issue is both inexplicable and unacceptable, as the British government negotiated a compensation deal for Shaker, as well as 15 former prisoners, last year, which was announced in November, and which cannot, of course, be concluded in Shaker’s case while he remains in Guantánamo.

As I have also pointed out repeatedly, the inquiry into British complicity in torture abroad, which David Cameron announced last July, cannot proceed without Shaker’s presence, not only because he is a prime witness to some of the claims that the inquiry will have to address, but also because a Metropolitan Police inquiry into his claims that he was tortured in US custody in Afghanistan, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo, while British agents were present in the room, cannot, realistically, conclude without him, and, as the PM has acknowledged, the inquiry cannot begin while the Met’s investigations are ongoing.

Despite all this, however, as Amnesty noted, Shaker Aamer’s case “remains unresolved, with no timetable for either a trial or release,” and it is this inaction that we all hope to address on June 21 in Portcullis House.

The screening is free, but it will be on a first come, first served basis, so if you wish to attend, please turn up early. And if you are attending, please note that the Portcullis House entrance is on Victoria Embankment and you should allow plenty of time to clear security.

How you can help

Caroline Lucas, Jeremy Corbyn and Peter Bottomley are this week sending letters to their fellow MPs asking them to attend the screening, but if readers in the UK would like to contact their own MPs independently to ask them to attend the screening, that would be very useful. MPs can be contacted via WriteToThem or via Parliament’s website (also see “Find Your MP“). If you are writing to your MP, you can ask them to RSVP to Cath Miller (for Caroline Lucas), and you can also let me know, so that I can keep tabs on developments. You may also wish to ask your MP to sign up to Caroline Lucas’ Early Day Motion regarding Guantánamo Bay (EDM 1093), which has so far been signed by just 30 MPs. The text of the EDM (which was submitted last November, and which I wrote about here), is as follows:

That this House:

- notes with regret that President Obama’s pledge to close the US Military Detention Centre at Guantánamo Bay by January 2010 is almost one year overdue and little closer to realisation;

- welcomes gestures by other European States to accommodate and receive innocent prisoners who have been cleared for release to help close the facility;

- notes with dismay that on 11 January 2011 the detention facility will have been open for nine years and that British resident Shaker Aamer has now been held there without charge or trial for almost the same length of time;

- urges the Government to step up its action to secure his release without further delay;

- and further notes the case of Ahmed Belbacha, previously resident in the UK and facing the imminent threat of forced return to his native Algeria where there are fears he will face abuse of his human rights;

- applauds the lead taken by countries such as Ireland, France, Spain, Germany and Bulgaria, who have accepted prisoners cleared for release from Guantánamo Bay by the US authorities on humanitarian grounds but who cannot return to their country of origin;

- and urges the Government to take similar measures to accept a number of such cleared prisoners.

The 30 MPs who have signed the EDM are:

Green: Caroline Lucas (Brighton Pavilion)
Conservative: Peter Bottomley (Worthing West)
Labour: Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North), Martin Caton (Gower), John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington), Marsha Singh (Bradford West), Michael Connarty (Linlithgow & Falkirk East), John Cryer (Leyton & Wanstead), John Robertson (Glasgow North West), Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East), Alan Keen (Feltham & Heston), Albert Owen (Ynys Mon), Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East), Frank Doran (Aberdeen North), Barry Gardiner (Brent North)
Liberal Democrat: Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South), John Hemming (Birmingham Yardley), David Ward (Bradford East), Simon Wright (Norwich South), Bob Russell (Colchester), Andrew George (St Ives), John Leech (Manchester Withington), Tom Brake (Carshalton & Wallington), Malcolm Bruce (Gordon, Aberdeen)
Social Democratic and Labour Party: Mark Durkan (Foyle), Alasdair McDonnell (Belfast South)
Plaid Cymru: Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr), Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy), Hywel Williams (Caernarfon)
Alliance: Naomi Long (Belfast East)

About the film

“Outside the Law” focuses on the stories of three British prisoners — Shaker Aamer (who is still held, and is the subject of an ongoing campaign to secure his return) and Omar Deghayes and Binyam Mohamed (both released). The film looks at how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws after 9/11, and examines how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening, and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism. The film provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

For further information about the film, for interviews, or to inquire about broadcasting, distributing or showing “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” please contact Polly Nash or Andy Worthington, and please see below for the first five minutes of the film:

Note: Readers who wish to do more can find a letter here to William Hague (which I wrote in November), and campaigners can order postcards to William Hague and to Shaker in Guantánamo here. And see here for Amnesty International’s campaign page, where readers can write to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Campaigners can also send postcards to the US State Department, specifically to Daniel Fried, President Obama’s Special Envoy on Guantánamo.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As can be seen from the accompanying photo (click on it to enlarge), they did such a good job that the Associated Press noticed, and the story of the plucky protestors, included at the end of an AP report, went around the world, picked up on by countless newspapers. What the AP said — which was excellent apart from the mistaken use of the past tense — was:

[E]ven at Buckingham Palace, it’s impossible to banish all the discordant notes. Just beyond the palace’s black-and-gold gates, about a dozen orange-jumpsuit clad demonstrators were rallying for the freedom of Guantánamo Bay detainee Shaker Aamer, a former British resident who had been held without charge for some nine years. One man wore plastic shackles and an Obama mask.

Although Shaker’s return to the UK has been mooted since August 2007, when Gordon Brown, shortly after replacing Tony Blair as Prime Minister, asked for the return of all the remaining British residents, Shaker, the father of four British children, whose wife is British, continues to suffer in Guantánamo, apparently beyond the reach of Britain’s best diplomats. Last year, it emerged that the Labour government had done little to secure his return, but in recent months both William Hague, the foreign secretary, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, have raised his case with the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Yet still, astonishingly, he is held, even though the British government needs to conclude a financial settlement with him, as it did with 15 released prisoners last November, and even though the Metropolitan Police are investigating his claims that British agents were in the room when he was being tortured by US forces in Kandahar, Afghanistan. In addition, the PM’s much-vaunted inquiry into British complicity in torture abroad cannot begin until the Met has completed its investigations — or, it should be noted, until Shaker Aamer, a key witness to British wrongdoing, is back in the UK.

The day after the protest outside Buckingham Palace, as President Obama addressed Parliament, Faris Aamer, Shaker’s youngest son, who has never seen his father, spoke publicly about his suffering. In a statement directed to the President, Faris said:

I am nine years old and I never met my daddy. At school I get bullied a lot, they say bad things about my daddy, and I become very upset and cry. I am telling you my problem because you are the only one who can bring him back. I feel sorry for my dad because he gets tortured I have never seen him and I want to really see him and only you can let him free so please let him free I want to play with him so let him free.

Shaker’s other children, Johina, Michael and Saif, added:

We were relieved at your closing Guantánamo Bay Prisons program, but we are very sad that Guantánamo did not close at the time you promised. Please we want our father to come home. I hope you understand because you are a father yourself of two daughters. Our father has been there for almost 10 years. Our father loves us very much and we are dying to see him. We don’t understand why he has not been sent home even though he is cleared for release. We would remain ever thankful to you if you help us. Our family is going through a lot of hardship.

During the President’s state visit, supporters of Shaker Aamer’s return (and that of Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who lived in the UK before he took an ill-advised holiday to Pakistan and was seized and sent to Guantánamo) sent a letter to David Cameron calling on the Prime Minister to raise Shaker Aamer’s case with President Obama during the state visit. The text of the letter, and its many signatories, which was submitted to the Guardian and the Independent, but passed over for publication, is published below:

Campaigners’ letter to David Cameron urging him to ask President Obama to secure the return to the UK of Shaker Aamer and Ahmed Belbacha

President Obama’s visit to the UK offers this government a unique opportunity to demand the closure of Guantánamo Bay and the release and return to this country of two men still held there with links to the UK. Ahmed Belbacha, who formerly resided in the UK, was cleared for release over four years ago and is at risk of forced return to Algeria, where his life would be in danger. UK resident Shaker Aamer, who has a British wife and children, has been imprisoned without charge for close to a decade. The latter’s case has been raised with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by William Hague and Nick Clegg, but apparently to no avail.

The time has come for David Cameron to take an unequivocal stand by addressing these issues head on with the US president during his visit to the UK.

Signed:

Daniel Viesnik, London Guantánamo Campaign
Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London
Bruce Kent
Louise Christian, Christian Khan Solicitors
Andy Worthington
Ray Silk, Save Shaker Aamer Campaign
John Pilger
Sarah Ludford, Lib Dem MEP for London
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC
John McDonnell MP
Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC, Bindmans LLP
Ruhul Ahmed and Tarek Dergoul, former Guantánamo prisoners
Kika Markham
Omar Deghayes, Legal Director, Guantánamo Justice Centre
Kate Hudson, General Secretary, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Professor Bill Bowring, Research Fellow, University of Essex
Natalia Garcia, Tyndallwoods Solicitors
Tayab Ali, Irvine Thanvi Natas Solicitors
Liz Davies, barrister and Chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers
Anjum Anwar, Dialogue Development Officer, Blackburn Cathedral
Professor Mark McGovern, Department of Social and Psychological Sciences, Edge Hill University
Faisal Hanjra, Assistant Secretary General, Muslim Council of Britain
Sultan Sabri, Surrey Solicitors
Salma Yaqoob
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham
Councillor Jonathan Bloch, Lib Dem Councillor for Muswell Hill, London Borough of Haringey
Estella Schmid, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities
Maryam Hassan, Justice for Aafia Coalition
Richard Haley, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities
Katherine Craig, Christian Khan Solicitors
Sarah McSherry, Christian Khan Solicitors
Maria Gallastegui, Peace Strike
Darren Johnson, Green London Assembly Member
Millius Palayiwa, Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, England
Chris Coverdale, Campaign to Make Wars History
Dr Shahrar Ali, Green Party
Simon Moore
Anita Olivacce
David Polden
Chris Cole
Noel Hamel, Kingston Peace Council
Joy Hurcombe, Brighton Against Guantanamo
Frances Webber, vice-chair, Institute of Race Relations
Maya Evans
Milan Rai, Co-editor, Peace News
Sam Walton
Ismail Patel, Chair, Friends of Al-Aqsa

Note: For further information about Ahmed Belbacha, who lived and worked in the UK from 1999 to 2001, was cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2007, but is terrified of being repatriated, see Lawyers for Ahmed Belbacha, Guantánamo Prisoner and Former UK Resident, Sue UK Government Over Refusal to Disclose Evidence of His Abuse. In addition, readers who wish to do more for Shaker Aamer can find a letter here to William Hague (which I wrote in November), and campaigners can order postcards to William Hague and to Shaker in Guantánamo here. In addition, readers can also follow the links here to encourage their MPs to sign up to an Early Day Motion regarding the closure of Guantánamo and the return of Shaker Aamer and Ahmed Belbacha that was introduced by our only Green MP, the excellent Caroline Lucas: Urge Your MP to Sign Caroline Lucas’ Early Day Motion Calling for the Return of Shaker Aamer and the Closure of Guantánamo.

Please also note that the photo at the top of the article, by Mary Stamm-Clarke, was originally published by Demotix. See the website for more of her photos, and also for contact details.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In fact, there was little to report. The authorities, it seems, made some effort on this great Christian holy day, but the prisoners, for the most part, were in no mood to accept one day of charity when the rest of the year was so devoid of Christian charity.

Instead, I thought I’d take this opportunity to remind readers who may be searching the Internet because they need a break from eating and drinking, or because they want to get away from their families for a while, or because the TV is so relentlessly pointless, or because they don’t celebrate Christmas, about some of the 174 men still held in Guantánamo, for whom concern is particularly appropriate right now, as, between them, the Obama administration and Congress seem to have ensured that the majority of them will be spending many more Christmases at Guantánamo.

My first thoughts were for prisoners I have written about recently — in particular, Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, cleared for release in 2007 but still held; Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian, also cleared for release in 2007, who is terrified of being forcibly repatriated; and Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti who lost his habeas petition in September, but who appears, by any objective measure, to be an innocent man.

I encourage readers to visit this page for information about how to write to the British and American governments about Shaker Aamer, to visit this page for information about the latest attempts by Ahmed Belbacha’s lawyers to prevent his involuntary repatriation, and to visit this page to sign a petition asking Attorney General Eric Holder to return Fayiz al-Kandari to Kuwait (or just sign the petition here).

However, in thinking about all the prisoners still held, I was also reminded of one particular prisoner whose story I have not written about for many months, but who is in desperate need of help. That man is Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a 34-year old Yemeni prisoner who won his habeas corpus petition on July 21 this year, but is still held, even though it became apparent during his hearing that the Bush administration had cleared him for release from Guantánamo in 2007, and even though one of his lawyers, David Remes, explained after the ruling, “This is a mentally disturbed man who has said from the beginning that he went to Afghanistan seeking medical care because he was too poor to pay for it. Finally, a court has recognized that he’s been telling the truth, and ordered his release.”

Latif is certainly mentally ill, and may have schizophrenia. He has also attempted suicide on numerous occasions, and as Amnesty International explained in a report in 2009, he told his lawyers that “when he is awake he sees ghosts in the darkness, hears frightening voices and suffers from nightmares when he is asleep.” He also told his lawyers that he had “ingested all sorts of materials including garbage bags, urine cups, prayer beads, a water bottle and a screw,” that he had “eaten his own excrement and smeared it on his body” and that he had “used his own excrement to cover the walls of his cell door, the camera on the ceiling of his cell and the air vent in his cell.”

Despite this, he continues to be held because the Obama administration has appealed against his successful habeas petition, as it has in the cases of four other Yemenis who won their habeas petitions: Mohammed al-Adahi, whose successful petition was reversed by the D.C. Circuit Court in July, Saeed Hatim, who won his petition last December, Uthman Mohammed Uthman, who won his petition in February this year, and Hussein Almerfedi, who won his petition in July this year.

Like Latif, these three men are awaiting a ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court (a largely Conservative court dominated by judges who have delivered a number of disturbing rulings supporting Bush-era executive power), and it would be difficult not to conclude that the Obama administration is happy to appeal any successful petition by a Yemeni, because it corresponds with senior officials’ desire not to release any Yemenis from Guantánamo at all.

Although the Guantánamo Review Task Force, convened by President Obama last year to review all the Guantánamo cases, concluded that 59 of the 89 Yemenis still held at Guantanamo should be released, only one (Mohammed Hassan Odaini, who won his habeas petition in May) has been freed in the last year because of a moratorium that President Obama issued in January, preventing the release of any prisoners to Yemen, after it was revealed that last year’s failed Christmas Day plane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been recruited in Yemen.

Commenting on the injustice of this moratorium in September this year, with specific reference to the case of Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, Letta Taylor of Human Rights Watch wrote:

Latif’s case underscores both the gross human rights violations and strategic risks inherent in such blanket bans. Detaining Latif because of an attempted bombing committed without his knowledge or participation is a form of collective punishment that violates American notions of justice. Holding him on suspicion of a crime he theoretically may commit in the future, particularly with no credible evidence that he committed a crime in the past, is an equally gross betrayal of US constitutional values. US reliance on preventive detention also hands militants a recruitment tool and sets a dangerous precedent for abusive regimes around the world.

While the government ponders its next move, Latif, 34, lives in an isolation cell, except when he is placed in the psychiatric ward or force-fed through his nose during his frequent hunger strikes. His attorney, David Remes, said that when he visited Latif last month, he found him emaciated and seated on the floor in a padded garment known at Guantánamo as a “suicide smock.” He said Latif’s neck was marked with abrasions from attempts to strangle himself the previous night with the waistband of his underwear.

Remes said that when he told Latif that a judge had ordered his release, he was too despondent to take much interest.

The “collective punishment” of the Yemenis — or what I call guilt by nationality –remains the most startling example of the ongoing injustice at Guantánamo, especially now that Congress has just passed this year’s defense authorization act, which specifically includes a provision preventing the President from returning any prisoners to Yemen — or to other countries considered problematical, including Afghanistan and Pakistan — under any circumstances.

I don’t like to be the bearer of such gloomy tidings at what should be a time of Christian celebration, but in just 17 days time it will be the ninth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo. I’ll be in Washington D.C. on that day, supporting Americans protesting against the continued existence of Guantánamo, and, to be honest, I could really do with some help from anyone who can advise me on how to get the message across to the American people — and to their leaders — that if Christ were to turn up tomorrow, he would be deeply disturbed to find Americans who claimed to be his followers finding ever more elaborate ways to hold men who should not be held — and whose ongoing detention is unjustifiable — nearly nine years after they were first imprisoned in an experimental facility that remains an insult to all of his teachings.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

For an overview of all the habeas rulings, including links to all my articles, and to the judges’ unclassified opinions, see: Guantánamo Habeas Results: The Definitive List. For a sequence of articles dealing with the Guantánamo habeas cases since the start of 2010, see: Appeals Court Extends President’s Wartime Powers, Limits Guantánamo Prisoners’ Rights (January 2010), Fear and Paranoia as Guantánamo Marks its Eighth Anniversary (January 2010), Rubbing Salt in Guantánamo’s Wounds: Task Force Announces Indefinite Detention (January 2010), The Black Hole of Guantánamo (March 2010), Guantánamo Uighurs Back in Legal Limbo (March 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: The Torture Victim and the Taliban Recruit (April 2010), An Insignificant Yemeni at Guantánamo Loses His Habeas Petition (April 2010), With Regrets, Judge Allows Indefinite Detention at Guantánamo of a Medic (April 2010), Mohamedou Ould Salahi: How a Judge Demolished the US Government’s Al-Qaeda Claims (April 2010), Judge Rules Yemeni’s Detention at Guantánamo Based Solely on Torture (April 2010), Why Judges Can’t Free Torture Victims from Guantánamo (April 2010), How Binyam Mohamed’s Torture Was Revealed in a US Court (May 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Consigning Soldiers to Oblivion (May 2010), Judge Denies Habeas Petition of an Ill and Abused Libyan in Guantánamo (May 2010), Judge Orders Release from Guantánamo of Russian Caught in Abu Zubaydah’s Web (May 2010), No Escape from Guantánamo: Uighurs Lose Again in US Court (June 2010), Does Obama Really Know or Care About Who Is at Guantánamo? (June 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: 2 Years, 50 Cases, 36 Victories for the Prisoners (June 2010), Obama Thinks About Releasing Innocent Yemenis from Guantánamo (June 2010), Calling for US Accountability on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture (June 2010), Judge Orders Release from Guantánamo of Yemeni Seized in Iran, Held in Secret CIA Prisons (July 2010), Innocent Student Finally Released from Guantánamo (July 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Prisoners Win 3 out of 4 Cases, But Lose 5 out of 6 in Court of Appeals (Part One) (July 2010), Obama and US Courts Repatriate Algerian from Guantánamo Against His Will; May Be Complicit in Torture (July 2010), In Abu Zubaydah’s Case, Court Relies on Propaganda and Lies (July 2010), Guantánamo and Habeas Corpus: Prisoners Win 3 out of 4 Cases, But Lose 5 out of 6 in Court of Appeals (Part Two) (July 2010), Judge Orders Release from Guantánamo of Mentally Ill Yemeni; 2nd Judge Approves Detention of Minor Taliban Recruit (August 2010), Judge Denies Habeas Petition of Afghan Shopkeeper at Guantánamo (September 2010), Nine Years After 9/11, US Court Concedes that International Laws of War Restrict President’s Wartime Powers (September 2010), Fayiz Al-Kandari, A Kuwaiti Aid Worker in Guantánamo, Loses His Habeas Petition (September 2010), Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose: The Betrayal of Mohamedou Ould Slahi (September 2010), First Guantánamo Habeas Appeal to US Supreme Court (Fayiz al-Kandari, October 2010), Former Guantánamo Prisoner, Tortured by Al-Qaeda and the US, Launches Futile Attempt to Hold America Accountable (October 2010), Judge Denies Guantánamo Prisoner’s Habeas Petition, Ignores Torture in Secret CIA Prisons (October 2010), Court Orders Rethink on Tortured Guantánamo Prisoner’s Successful Habeas Petition (November 2010).

A former professional footballer, Ahmed Belbacha fled Algeria for the UK in 1999 after receiving death threats from the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA), which, as Reprieve explained in its submission to the High Court (PDF), “targeted individuals who had served in Algeria’s military (and might again be called up), as well as employees of state-owned enterprises. Mr. Belbacha, who had completed a mandatory term of national service and worked for Sonatrach, the state-owned oil company, fitted both categories.”

Reprieve added that Belbacha “sought for a period to evade the GIA from within Algeria,” but that, “when the threats continued to escalate … he left the country for good,” subsequently settling in the UK, and living for nearly two years in Boscombe in Bournemouth, where, as has been previously reported, and as the Guardian explained, he “worked and studied English,” and, during one Labour Party conference, “was responsible for cleaning the hotel room of the then deputy prime minister, John Prescott,” who left him a tip and a thank-you note.

In the summer of 2001, Belbacha traveled from the UK to Pakistan and then on to Afghanistan,” which he would not have done had he had any militant aims, as his asylum claim was still pending in the UK. After the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, he returned to Pakistan, where he was seized. He was then held in a Pakistani prison (where he was abused), before being transferred to US custody, staying in the US prison at Kandahar from December 2001 until approximately February 9, 2002, when he was flown to Guantánamo, where he has been held ever since.

In the court submission, Belbacha’s lawyer, Cori Crider, stated that her client “seeks disclosure from the Secretaries of State tending to show that certain statements he is said to have made during detention were obtained by torture and mistreatment.” She added, “This information is necessary for two purposes: first, to make representations to US executive officials (and in the US courts) against his transfer to Algeria, and second, to have his coerced statements suppressed in the litigation of his substantive habeas claim.”

The torture of Ahmed Belbacha

Crider proceeded to explain how Belbacha was subjected to torture and abuse in US custody in Kandahar and Guantánamo, and how British agents, who interrogated him in both locations, helped to provide information that formed the basis of the false confessions that resulted from the more brutal sessions at the hands of US interrogators:

Mr. Belbacha has on several occasions told me that, during his detention at Kandahar and Guantánamo, he suffered serious mistreatment and was tortured. He alleges that the mistreatment included, among other things, beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and abuse, sensory deprivation, exposure to temperature extremes, dietary manipulation and the use of stress positions. [...]

Mr. Belbacha alleges that he was questioned by UK interrogators at Kandahar and Guantánamo during the period of his mistreatment. The interrogators knew of Mr. Belbacha’s employment history in the UK and questioned him about his connection with certain mosques in the UK. [...]

During his interrogations, Mr. Belbacha informs me that he made false statements and confessions as a result of his torture and mistreatment during custody and, in particular, due to his fear that his abuse would otherwise continue. He is unable to specify the precise details of the statements and confessions, as he has been questioned hundreds of times over the past nine years and because the memories are in many instances too painful, but much of his questioning by British officials related to his alleged association with the Finsbury Park mosque in the United Kingdom and how individuals at the mosque had allegedly assisted him in travelling to Afghanistan. Mr. Belbacha’s false confessions obtained under torture are the sole source of a number of allegations made against him.

None of this is surprising, of course, as the array of techniques to which Belbacha was subjected were common, in various permutations, in both Kandahar and Guantánamo, and because it has been established, in court proceedings in the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, that the British security services provided information to their US counterparts while he was being held and tortured in Morocco. However, the chain of events is of particular interest in Belbacha’s case, as it suggests that the US interrogators stepped in after their British counterparts had obtained information from him directly, and indicates a very clear example of complicity in torture.

Reprieve’s aim, however, is not primarily to expose this aspect of the British security services’ activities, but, as stated in the lawsuit, to secure information in the possession of the British government to help prevent Belbacha’s forcible repatriation, and also to provide important evidence as part of his ongoing habeas corpus petition in the District Court in Washington D.C., where, since the Supreme Court gave the prisoners constitutionally guaranteed habeas rights in June 2008, 57 cases have been decided, two-thirds of which have been won by the prisoners.

Resisting involuntary repatriation and seeking a new home for Ahmed Belbacha

This information is of great significance because of the particular circumstances in which Belbacha finds himself. Although Reprieve was notified on February 22, 2007 that Belbacha had been cleared for release from Guantánamo after an Administrative Review Board hearing the year before, he was desperate not to return to Algeria, because, as Cori Crider explained, “he fears that he would be mistreated by the Algerian state, having spent nearly a decade in US custody stamped as a would-be terrorist (and having vocally objected to returning to Algeria for many of those years)” and he “also fears retaliation from the contemporary descendant of the GIA — al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) — as he has been an equally vocal critic of the GIA’s attacks on civilians.”

On the former point, Belbacha’s fears appeared to be confirmed last November, when he was “convicted in absentia in Algeria of unspecified charges and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment.” Reprieve has been unable to establish the grounds for his conviction, and, as Cori Crider noted in her submission, “The sentence is particularly troubling because no other Algerian in Guantánamo was thus singled out. It appears likely that the sentence reflects a decision by the Algerians to retaliate against Mr. Belbacha, the earliest and most vociferous opponent of repatriation to Algeria from Guantánamo. I am not aware of any diplomatic or political assurances (credible or otherwise) that have been given by the government of Algeria in relation to Mr. Belbacha’s treatment on his return.”

As a result of Belbacha’s credible fears, Reprieve has spent nearly four years trying to secure resettlement for him in a third country. The British government has persistently refused to help, an application for asylum in the US was turned down in 2007, and although the town of Amherst, Massachusetts passed a resolution last year offering him a new home, this cannot happen because of legislation passed by Congress preventing the transfer of any Guantánamo prisoner to the US mainland except to face a trial (and even that last proviso is currently in doubt).

The closest Belbacha came to resettlement in a third country appears to have been in January this year, when representatives from Reprieve, Cageprisoners and the Center for Constitutional Rights traveled around Europe attempting to secure new homes for cleared prisoners who faced the risk — or the probability — of torture in their home countries. Crider noted that “The most advanced of those efforts, which targeted the government of Luxembourg, was apparently blocked by the US State Department,” and explained, in a footnote:

I know this because our efforts with the government of Luxembourg culminated in a meeting, on January 14, 2010, which was attended by myself for Reprieve, Moazzam Begg [for Cageprisoners], the Foreign Minister of Luxembourg, and a member of staff at a partner group, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The discussion centred on two individuals — Mr. Belbacha and one of CCR’s clients — and during the meeting, Reprieve, with Mr. Begg’s support, proposed Mr. Belbacha as an appropriate candidate for resettlement in Luxembourg. We later learned from a contact in the Luxembourg Foreign Ministry that, as a result of this meeting, Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn had inquired of our client by name of the US authorities. The contact related that the US State Department officials had brushed off this approach, stating that Mr Belbacha “could go back to Algeria.”

This experience led Crider to conclude, as she explained, that “further efforts in this vein will be futile without additional exculpatory information or information that indicates that [Belbacha] will be at risk on return to Algeria. Without this information, the US government is unlikely to be willing to press [his] case for resettlement out of Algeria.”

Problems in the US courts

In seeking to prevent Belbacha’s involuntary return to Algeria, Reprieve has, after initial success, run up against renewed opposition from officials of the Obama administration and various US courts, which affects not only Belbacha but dozens of other prisoners as well. In July 2007, Reprieve asked the District Court in Washington D.C. to prevent Belbacha’s involuntary repatriation, and secured an injunction preventing his removal on June 13, 2008. This, however, only stood until the D.C. Circuit Court became involved, ruling in September 2009, in a case known as Kiyemba II, involving the Uighurs in Guantánamo (Muslims from China who won their habeas petition in October 2008, but feared torture in China) that questions relating to the transfer of prisoners — even when the risk of torture was involved — were solely for the executive branch of government to decide.

The court, out of nowhere, drew on Munaf v. Geren, a case from 2008 in which “two American citizens held in the custody of the United States military in Iraq petitioned for writs of habeas corpus, seeking to enjoin the Government from transferring them to Iraqi custody for criminal prosecution in the Iraqi courts.” In Munaf, the court ruled that “it could not enjoin the Government from transferring the petitioners to Iraqi custody,” because “that concern is to be addressed by the political branches, not the judiciary.”

As a result of the Kiyemba II ruling, which the Supreme Court refused to reconsider in March this year, Belbacha’s injunction was vacated by a District Court judge (in February), and attempts to have it reconsidered were refused. The last straw for Belbacha came in July, when, after protracted court dealings (mostly conducted in secret), the Supreme Court refused to prevent the administration from repatriating any of the six Algerians in Guantánamo at the time, leading to the immediate repatriation of one of these men, Abdul Aziz Naji, who promptly disappeared for a few days, before resurfacing with the threat of a dubious terrorism trial hanging over him.

As Crider noted in her submission, “because there is no injunction in place, the US government may forcibly repatriate Mr. Belbacha at any time.” She also noted that public criticism of the decision to transfer Naji against his will appeared to have paused further transfers, but stressed that the current situation — in which all the government needs to do is assert that it is “government policy not to transfer prisoners to torture” for all judicial inquries to come to an end — is deeply unsatisfactory, and, as a result, Ahmed Belbacha is now seeking to win his habeas corpus petition in the District Court in Washington D.C., and needs the documents in the possession of the British government as an essential part of his defense.

Explaining the importance of his habeas petition, Crider noted, that although “under current Court of Appeals precedent, the judge has no power to order the production of the prisoner in the courtroom; no power to order that the prisoner be released into the United States (or, it would appear, anywhere else); and no power to order the US not to send a petitioner, prevailing or otherwise, anywhere,” and that “The scope of the habeas remedy left to the US judiciary, in other words, is remarkably slim … there remains a category of prisoners that the US has never forced back to a country unwillingly: habeas winners.”

The importance of the British information about Ahmed Belbacha

After running through the poor history of disclosure in the US courts, where “government lawyers litigating the habeas cases have repeatedly claimed that they do not have access to the full set of relevant documents that might be implicated in a habeas action, and that to be required to search all of every relevant agency’s files (the DOD, the CIA, and so forth) for relevant material would be ‘unduly burdensome,’” and where, in the case of Binyam Mohamed, who was demonstrably sent to Morocco to be tortured, “Morocco never once appeared as a detention site on any document … in three separate orders from the district judge in [his] habeas action to the government to disclose all exculpatory information”, Crider’s submission ended with an appeal to the High Court to order disclosure of documents that might help prevent her client’s involuntary repatriation, and I believe this entire passage is worth quoting in its entirety:

A key category of information that is, in my experience, never disclosed is exculpatory information identifiably sourced from a foreign government. So, for example, even had the UK authorities generated reports of their interviews with the Claimants in Afghanistan and in Guantánamo and shared those reports with the US — something UK agents might well do — the US government has not disclosed and would not disclose such foreign-sourced material out of respect for the “control principle” [of not disclosing foreign intelligence sources] that was litigated at length in the English Binyam Mohamed litigation.

It is also, of course, likely that the UK produced internal reports about the situation in Afghanistan or Guantánamo that were never transferred to the US. Those reports, self-evidently, would be unavailable in any habeas disclosure process.

I am aware only of two instances in which exculpatory material originating with a foreign intelligence agency has been disclosed to a petitioner’s lawyer in a Guantánamo case: the case of Binyam Mohamed, and the case of Shaker Aamer. In both cases, the only reason such material was disclosed was as a result of Norwich Pharmacal litigation in England. I am cleared counsel of record in both cases, and have reviewed those disclosures at the Secure Facility in the US [where Guantánamo lawyers must travel to view all classified information]. In both instances, the UK disclosures were, by some margin, the most useful, illuminating, and exculpatory material that I saw in the habeas process.

For these reasons, the information sought is a vital part of having my client’s coerced statements suppressed in their habeas proceedings. I also believe it an essential component of persuading Obama administration officials not to transfer my client to Algeria against his will.

While I cannot know the scope of the information used by the Obama administration to determine whether and under what circumstances to transfer my clients, I do know that my own capacity to make effective representations to them has thus far been very limited. The reasons for this are simple: I have as yet had no information I could use to prove to the administration that my clients’ allegations of coercion, particularly during their early years in US military detention, were true. This, combined with the challenges of producing detailed statements on abuse (or, indeed, on the circumstances of capture) from prisoners who have been in Guantánamo for nearly nine years, has limited me to making fairly general statements: statements to the effect that I believe the clients were abused in custody, that the clients were never implicated in any terrorist act and never joined al-Qaida or the Taliban, and that the clients would pose no threat to anyone upon their release to a safe third country.

It is my view that the representations I could make if I had meaningful exculpatory information about Mr. Belbacha, and about how he was treated in US custody, would be qualitatively different. This, in turn, I believe would make the Obama administration more open to the prospect of resettling him, rather than simply forcing him back to abuse, an unfair trial and/or lengthy imprisonment in Algeria.

The Obama administration has stated, on more than one occasion, that it considers a prisoner’s individualized claim of fear of torture when it decides whether to repatriate a prisoner. In theory, of course, the question of the abuse a prisoner faces in Algeria and his fitness to be released elsewhere are distinct; in practice, however, I believe the lines blur. Proving to the Obama administration that Mr. Belbacha was tortured; that he gave false statements under torture; that, therefore, that allegations lodged against him are unreliable, particularly the most severe ones, is, I believe, an essential part of persuading the government that it would be unjust and inappropriate to return Mr. Belbacha to Algeria.

I wish Reprieve every success in this approach. The Norwich Pharmacal litigation mentioned above, which, in simple lay terms, involves appraisals of how parties (in these cases, the UK government) can become involved in “wrongdoing,” whether intentionally or not, for which a remedy may be sought, was invaluable in the case of Binyam Mohamed, and eventually led to his release. It has not yet had the same end result in Shaker Aamer’s case, although it led, last December, to the release of important documents in the possession of the British government, and it is clear, in the grounds for a judicial review submitted by Cori Crider (PDF), that it should also apply in Ahmed Belbacha’s case. As she explained:

Mr. Belbacha alleges that the Defendants have become involved in the wrongdoing of the US authorities in the following ways. UK officials:

(1) interviewed Mr. Belbacha in circumstances where it was standard practice for detainees to be mistreated prior to interviews to secure their cooperation, thereby facilitating further mistreatment;

(2) interviewed Mr. Belbacha in circumstances where this is likely to have prolonged his detention, in particular at Kandahar;

(3) failed to protest at the mistreatment, torture and/or unlawful detention of Mr. Belbacha, despite no doubt being aware of the circumstances of his detention;

(4) failed to take any or any sufficient steps to secure better treatment for Mr. Belbacha; and

(5) failed to take any or any sufficient steps to secure the release from detention of Mr. Belbacha.

If justice has not entirely vanished, it will lead, as intended, to Ahmed Belbacha winning his habeas petition, and the Obama administration accepting that it will no longer try to forcibly repatriate him, and will, instead, seek a third country prepared to take him.

And if there is any justice left over, that third country will be the UK, where he lived in a peaceful and law-abiding manner for nearly two years, and where there are many people wiling and able to help with his resettlement.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners.

Less than 24 hours before the coalition government announced its spending review, which demonstrated a notable absence of compassion and empathy for the poor and the disadvantaged, several hundred people turned up at Malvern Theatres to watch “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” the documentary film that I co-directed with filmmaker Polly Nash, which tells the story of Guantánamo, and of the Bush administration’s secret prison program, through the stories of three British residents: Shaker Aamer, who is still held, Omar Deghayes (released in December 2007), and Binyam Mohamed (released in February 2009).

In turning up in force, the members of the Malvern group, other members from surrounding areas, and the many sixth-formers from local schools, whose presence was deeply appreciated, bucked a trend that has seen Guantánamo slip off the mainstream media’s radar, and showed that, as Amnesty International prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, founder Peter Benenson’s belief in the power of “common action” against arbitrary imprisonment, torture and extrajudicial killings remains as important, and as powerful as ever.

As Peter Benenson stated in an article for the Observer on May 28, 1961 that led to the creation of Amnesty International, “Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government … The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective could be done.”

I was delighted that the audience responded to the film with enormous support and enthusiasm — and also that they were able to overlook the absence of both Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg, who had also been scheduled to appear — and I was particularly pleased that some of the sixth-formers expressed an interest in showing the film in their schools, as it is young people who will carry Peter Benenson’s struggle forward, and their engagement in human rights issues, in a world that tries incessantly to sideline them into more trivial pursuits, is both commendable and worthy of unconditional support.

In the question and answer session that followed the film, I was unable to tell the Malvern audience that Guantánamo would be closing anytime soon, because of the ways in which President Obama has allowed his promise to close the prison to be undermined by his opponents, and by his own excessive caution. However, I am aware that the importance of action has always been crucial to Amnesty International, and I was pleased to be able to tell the crowd that they can — and should — write to the government to ask why Shaker Aamer has not been freed, despite being cleared for release in 2007 (a template of a letter is here), and I also explained how he may well be “the man who knows too much,” and that, as a result, both the British and American governments appear to be putting off his release as long as possible. This also allowed me to point out to audience members that they should not put up with risible arguments that the US authorities still have “security concerns” about Shaker Aamer, as these could be safely and adequately addressed by the British government if ministers were genuinely prepared to press for his return.

I also pointed out that it would be useful to ask the government to offer asylum to Ahmed Belbacha, a cleared Algerian, who lived in the UK from 1999 to 2001, and who is terrified of returning to Algeria, and that, given Britain’s distressing role as America’s closest ally in the “War on Terror,” it would also make sense to press the government to take other cleared prisoners, who cannot be repatriated because they face the risk of torture, and to follow the lead established by 16 other countries — including Albania, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland — who have all given homes to men who had no prior connection to their countries.

I’d like to particularly thank Trevor Trueman and Sue Wolfendale of the Malvern group for looking after me, and for putting together and publicizing such a well-attended event, and if there are any sixth-formers out there who would like to show “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” then please get in touch.

Please see here for further information about the film, and see here for details of how to order it on DVD. Information about previous screenings can be found here, and I’ll shortly be publicizing new screenings in November and December.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

This is the fourth part of a nine-part series telling the stories of all the prisoners currently held in Guantánamo (174 at the time of writing). See the introduction here, and Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Five, Part Six and Part Seven.

This fourth article tells the stories of 19 prisoners seized in Pakistan after crossing from Afghanistan in December 2001, shortly after the prisoners described in Part One, and during a week-long period when around a quarter of the total number of prisoners held at Guantánamo (779 in total) were seized. Although these 185 or so men were routinely regarded as al-Qaeda members who had fled from the showdown between al-Qaeda and the US (via its Afghan allies) in the Tora Bora mountains, the truth is that almost every significant al-Qaeda member escaped from Tora Bora, that many of these men were nothing more than insignificant foot soldiers, and that many others were missionaries, humanitarian aid workers or economic migrants, caught fleeing the death and destruction in Afghanistan.  Nevertheless, all were presented as al-Qaeda operatives by their Pakistani captors, who then handed them over — or sold them — to their US allies.

Around 140 of these men have been released, and the remaining prisoners are not only described in this article, but also in Part Three, where I told 22 more stories. Disturbingly, seven of these men have won their habeas petitions, but are still held, and at least five have been cleared for release (or “approved for transfer,” to use the language that the Obama administration learned so carefully from its predecessor).

ISN 249 Al Hamiri, Mohammed (Yemen)
Al-Hamiri, who was 19 when he was seized, claimed that he “left Yemen for medical treatment and was tricked by a British resident into going into Afghanistan where he did nothing for six months.” An unidentified source — or sources — claimed that he had trained at al-Farouq (the main camp for Arabs, associated with Osama bin Laden in the years before 9/11) and had spoken to bin Laden at a guest house in Kabul, but al-Hamiri denied the allegations, and only conceded that, in Kabul, he had stayed in the home of someone he “felt may have been associated with the Taliban.” His most critical comments were delivered in a statement that was read out in his absence during his tribunal. All the charges, he said, “were made up in order to keep him and other Muslims at the camp,” because he “never had a weapon, never carried one and never even killed a chicken.” According to weight records released by the Pentagon in 2007, he weighed 122 pounds on arrival at Guantánamo, but his weight dropped to just 102 pounds in February 2003, probably during one of the many hunger strikes that have punctuated Guantánamo’s history (PDF).

ISN 251 Bin Salem, Mohammed (Yemen)
In a particularly thin set of allegations, the US authorities claim that bin Salem, who was cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, traveled from Yemen to Afghanistan in July 2001, and received training at al-Farouq. Noticeably, he is not accused of having taken part in combat against the Taliban (let alone US forces), as it is only alleged that he “supported al-Qaeda and Taliban forces by serving as a cook at a rest and relaxation facility for front line troops at Bagram,” and that he was captured by Pakistani forces after retreating directly from Bagram to Pakistan.

ISN 254 Khenaina, Muhammad (Yemen)
In Guantánamo, Khenaina has stated that he went to Afghanistan in August 2001 “to teach the Koran in Arabic,” although he admitted that he “did not actually teach the Koran.” After staying in a guest house in Kabul, he said that he heard of the 9/11 attacks and was “concerned about retaliation by the Americans and wanted to get out.” He explained that the owner of the house arranged for him to travel to Logar and then Khost, where he stayed with an Afghan, and then traveled through the mountains to Pakistan with five other Arabs and an Afghan guide. After joining up with another group of 19 men who were also fleeing Afghanistan, he reached the border, where he was detained by the authorities. Throughout this story, the only claim of militancy against Khenaina was an allegation that the manager of the guest house “arranged transportation for guests to a Taliban training area 35 minutes north of Kabul,” but Khenaina insisted that “he was not in Afghanistan to participate in jihad,” and that he “did not have a weapon while in Afghanistan.” He also condemned the 9/11 attacks, and explained that, if released, “he would return to Yemen and marry a cousin who has been betrothed to him and never leave again.”

ISN 255 Hatim, Saeed (Yemen)
In December 2009, Hatim won his habeas corpus petition, but it did not lead to his release. In fact, the Obama administration has appealed the ruling, even though the judge in Hatim’s case, Judge Ricardo Urbina, clearly established that the government’s allegations — that he trained at al-Farouq, stayed in al-Qaeda and Taliban guesthouses, “operated under the command of al-Qaeda and the Taliban at the battlefront against the Northern Alliance,” and fought at the battle of Tora Bora — “rest[ed] almost entirely upon admissions made by the petitioner himself,” which he made “only because he had previously been tortured while in US custody” in Kandahar. In addition, Judge Urbina discredited the Tora Bora allegation, because it was made by a fellow prisoner who had made false allegations against dozens of other prisoners (first exposed publicly in 2006), and “whose grasp on reality,” as Judge Urbina explained, “appears to have been tenuous at best.” Distressingly, the Obama administration’s appeal has been filed despite knowledge that Hatim has suffered from what Judge Urbina described as “severe psychological problems” in Guantánamo, and has tried to commit suicide on several occasions. Indeed, in May 2002, an interrogator stated, “I do not recommend [Hatim] for further exploitation due in part to mental and emotional problems [and] limited knowledgeability.”

ISN 259 Hintif, Fadil (Yemen)
Prior to traveling to Afghanistan, Hintif, who was cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, told his tribunal at Guantánamo that he had spent many years working as a farmer on his family’s land, and had then moved to Sana’a to look for work. There he met a man at a mosque who asked him about “going to Afghanistan to help poor Afghans,” and he “felt this would be a chance to do something good in memory of his deceased father, so he thought it was a good idea.” He then apparently sold his car to raise funds for his trip, received some money from his brother and set off for Afghanistan. In Kabul, he “began living with an individual who previously taught the Koran in Afghanistan,” and when he asked him how he could help the Afghans, was told that “he could either work with the Afghani Red Crescent or he could help distribute food supplies.” Having decided to work for the Red Crescent, he said that he traveled with the instructor to Logar province, south of Kabul, but stopped his work after the US-led invasion began, when he was escorted to the Pakistani border. There, he said, he surrendered to the Pakistani police, who took him to a prison in Peshawar. He was then transferred to a larger prison in Kohat, and was eventually turned over to the Americans. Throughout his whole story, Hintif maintained that he “did not receive any training in Afghanistan” and “did not fight in Afghanistan because he was not convinced of the causes that were being fought for.” He explained that he “felt that the groups there were fighting for power, and that there was no reason to fight a jihad.” Disturbingly, apart from vague allegations about the guest houses in which he stayed, the only allegations that the US authorities have been able to come up with are that his name was on a document “recovered from a safe house raid associated with al-Qaeda in Karachi, Pakistan” (which is not necessarily reliable, as it may not have been his name, but a kunya or alias that does not necessarily refer to him) and a much-derided claim that his Casio watch was the same model as one used in improvised explosive devices “in bombings linked to al-Qaeda and radical Islamic terrorist groups.”

ISN 263 Sultan, Ashraf (Libya)
Sultan, who is accused of being a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (opposed to the regime of Colonel Gaddafi), training at various camps in Afghanistan, and fighting at Tora Bora, has denied the allegations, stating that he left Libya because of religious persecution, and lived with other Libyan refugees in Jalalabad. He has also stated that he was not a member of the LIFG (or of al-Qaeda), and was not at Tora Bora, and has declared that he traveled to the Pakistani border, where he was seized on December 18, 2001, with an Afghan guide, and not with a group of soldiers. His disdain for the betrayal of justice at Guantánamo was revealed in his appearance at his tribunal in 2004, when he stated, “I know my fate is already predetermined and the judgment has been pronounced already. So this Tribunal is just for show and it is not real. Everybody is reading from papers that are already printed and everything is already predetermined. I know for sure my destiny is already predetermined. The judgment against me is already made up. My presence, me defending myself or not defending myself, will have no importance whatsoever.”

ISN 275 Abbas, Yusef (Abdusabar) (China)
Abbas is one of 22 Uighurs (Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province), who had fled persecution in their homeland, and had ended up in Afghanistan, either because they had been thwarted in their attempts to reach Turkey or Europe, or because they nursed futile hopes of rising up against the Chinese government. He is one of 17 of the men who were living in a rundown settlement in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains when the US-led invasion began in October 2001, and who, after the settlement was destroyed in a bombing raid, made their way to the Pakistani border, where they were seized and later sold to US forces. 21 years old at the time of his capture, Abbas was a farmer, who, as I explained in The Guantánamo Files, “learned about the oppression of his people as he was growing up, and was determined to leave to find a better life, but could find little information about other countries, except through broadcasts that were made by a covert US radio station. Having finally obtained a passport, he decided to try to get to America. Taking $600 with him, he went first to Kyrgyzstan, where he was warned that the police planted false evidence on Uighurs and handed them over to the Chinese authorities, but where they took $300 from him instead, and laughed at him when he told them that he wanted to go to America. He then went to Pakistan, where a Uighur businessman, who befriended him at the airport, encouraged him to go to an Uzbek house in Jalalabad, where another Uighur took him to the camp in the Tora Bora mountains.” Five of the Uighurs were released in Albania in May 2006, and the remaining 17 — including Abbas — won their habeas corpus petitions in October 2008. However, although 12 of these men have been resettled in Bermuda, Palau and Switzerland, Yusef Abbas and four others remain in Guantánamo. Having turned down offers of a new home because of fears about the suitability or security of the countries offered, they are back in legal limbo, as the US courts have ruled that they have no right to be accepted in the US, and no other offer to rehouse them has yet been made.

ISN 280 Khalik, Saidullah (Khalid) (China)
One of 22 Uighurs held in Guantanamo (see the entry for Yusef Abbas, ISN 275), little is known of Khalik’s story, as he refused to engage with the tribunal process at Guantánamo. In his absence he was accused of being in Afghanistan during the US bombing campaign, and, in a sign of how information was twisted in a ridiculous manner to come up with anything that officials might find a way of using, of receiving “wounds to his face and arm as well as other flesh wounds” during the bombing. Like the other four remaining Uighurs, he is currently in legal limbo, as he awaits an offer of a new home.

ISN 282 Abdulghupur, Hajiakbar (China)
One of 22 Uighurs held in Guantánamo (see the entry for Yusef Abbas, ISN 275), Abdulghupur told his tribunal at Guantánamo, when asked about the “training camp” in the Afghan mountains, where he and 16 others had lived before the bombing raid that destroyed the settlement, “They called this place a camp but that’s way too much of a name for that place we stayed. They did not have enough bathrooms to use or housing or anything. That is way too big of a name for the place where we stayed.” He added, “the conditions were really bad and stressful and there was lots of hard work, [but] I decided to stay there because our goal was to be against the Chinese government and I wouldn’t give up my goal even in the bad conditions to live.” After the bombing raid that completely destroyed the settlement, so that, as Abdulghupur explained, “it looked like no one ever even stayed in that place,” the men’s journey to Pakistan (and their betrayal by Pakistani villagers) was also described by Abdulghupur. “After that there was no stopping,” he said. “There was constantly bombing all the time. In the mountain we stayed in a cave because we didn’t know where to go … We were waiting for our leaders to come and tell us to go to the city or somewhere else but no one showed up and we decided to go to Pakistan. When we got to Pakistan, the local people came to us with tea, bread and meat, really good stuff. In the middle of the night they came to take us to the mosque. We went to the mosque and then they turned us over to the Pakistani authorities … They put us in cars and took us to jail. After that they turned us over to the US.” Like the other four remaining Uighurs, Abdulghupur is currently in legal limbo, as he awaits an offer of a new home.

ISN 288 Saib, Motai (Algeria)
One of five Algerian prisoners facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, Saib (also identified as Mutaj Sayab), had been living in Jalalabad prior to his capture (like many of the Algerians held at Guantánamo), and had traveled to Afghanistan via France and London. Throughout nearly nine years of detention, he has only been accused of “receiving small arms training” near Jalalabad. In relation to plans for his release from Guantánamo, his lawyers explained, in a court filing in July 2008, that in February 2008 the Department of Defense notified them that he had been “approved to leave Guantánamo,” but stated obliquely that “such a decision does not equate [to] a determination that your client is not an enemy combatant, nor does is it a determination that he does not pose a threat to the United States or its allies. I cannot provide you any information regarding when your client may be leaving Guantánamo as his departure is subject to ongoing discussions.” As his lawyers noted, “Saib has serious concerns that this ambiguous and damaging language will prevent his safe release from Guantánamo” to a third country, and these fears have only heightened after the involuntary repatriation of another Algerian, Abdul Aziz Naji, in July this year.

ISN 290 Belbacha, Ahmed (Algeria-UK)
Another of the five Algerians facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, Belbacha was cleared for release in March 2007, and has repeatedly appealed to the US courts to prevent his return to Algeria — although in September 2009, the notoriously Conservative D.C. Circuit Court ruled that the lower courts were no longer able to grant injunctions preventing their forcible repatriation. A former footballer in Algeria, Belbacha then worked as an accountant for a government-owned oil company, but after receiving death threats from Islamist militants, fled to the UK in 1999, where he sought asylum and secured work in Bournemouth. During the Labour Party conference in 1999, he received a thank-you letter and a tip from Deputy Prime Minster John Prescott, whose room he was responsible for cleaning. In June 2001, he decided to take a holiday in Pakistan with a friend, and then traveled to Afghanistan to see the country, staying for several months in a guest house in Jalalabad, and then fleeing to Pakistan after the US-led invasion, where he was seized by opportunistic villagers and sold to US forces. Despite being cleared for release in 2007, the British government has persistently refused to accept Belbacha, so that his lawyers at Reprieve, and other organizations, including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Cageprisoners, have sought help from the governments of Ireland and Luxembourg as well, although to date all these efforts have been unsuccessful. He has also been offered a home in Amherst, Massachusetts, although a law passed by Congress, banning any Guantánamo prisoners from being brought to the US mainland except to face a trial, has prevented him from taking up this offer. In case any doubt remains about the legitimacy of Belbacha’s fears of repatriation, it should be noted that, in November 2009, he was tried in absentia and sentenced to 20 years in prison, for what his lawyers can only conclude was the crime of speaking out about his fears of being repatriated. As Reprieve explained, “In a disgraceful show trial, the court sentenced Ahmed to 20 years in prison for belonging to an ‘overseas terrorist group.’ Despite repeated requests and extensive investigation, Reprieve’s lawyers have been unable to discover what exactly Ahmed is supposed to have done. No evidence has been produced to support his ‘conviction,’ which appears to be retaliation against Ahmed for speaking out about human rights abuses in Algeria.”

ISN 309 Abd Al Sattar, Muieen (UAE)
One of Guantánamo’s least-known prisoners, al-Satter is ostensibly from the United Arab Emirates, although the UAE claims not to know who he is, and his Unclassified Summary of Evidence also states that he “has a Pakistani passport and originally went to Pakistan on vacation in September 2001.” All that is known of this man — listed by the US authorities as Muieen A Deen Jamal A Deen Abd Al Fusal Abd Al Sattar — is contained in this slim document, released in September 2007, but it makes clear that al-Sattar taught at the Private Holy Koran School in Mecca, that he paid for his own travel, that he was “convinced by a friend to go to Afghanistan and teach the Five Pillars of Islam,” and that he “thought if he traveled to Afghanistan that he would get credit from God and that, since the trip was only going to be for a week, there would be no harm in going.” This seems fairly straightforward, and is certainly more comprehensible than other claims from unattributed sources: that he “was identified as a trainer at the al-Farouq training camp in Afghanistan” (which would have been impossible if he arrived in Pakistan in September 2001, as al-Farouq closed after the 9/11 attacks), and that he was “a fighter in Tora Bora who moved around encouraging people to fight and be religious.” Perhaps what actually happened, as was indicated in other passages in the Unclassified Summary, was that the “friend” who convinced him to travel to Afghanistan — a Syrian whom he had met in Karachi — tricked him into traveling to Tora Bora. According to the allegations, al-Sattar “advised that if he saw al-Moaz again, he would be very upset with him and would want to do him physical harm for getting him into so much trouble.”

ISN 310 Ameziane, Djamel (Algeria)
Ameziane, another of the five Algerians facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, had also been living in Jalalabad. A Berber, he left Algeria in 1992 “in order to escape persecution and make a better life for himself,” and unsuccessfully sought asylum in Austria, where he worked legally for three years, becoming the top chef at an Italian restaurant in Vienna, until a new government clamped down on immigrants, and his work permit was denied without explanation. From there, he moved to Canada, where he obtained a temporary work permit and worked for an office supply company and for various restaurants in Montreal. In 2000, after five years in Canada, his asylum claim was denied, and, as his lawyers explained, “Fearful of being forcibly returned to Algeria, and with few options, [he] went to Afghanistan, where he could live freely without discrimination as a Muslim man, and where he would not fear deportation to Algeria.” Apart from an allegation that he stayed in a guest house in Kabul that was associated with the Taliban, before traveling to Jalalabad, the US authorities failed to come up with a shred of evidence against him, with the exception of an evidently unreliable claim, by an unidentified “source,” who said that he “met the detainee” at al-Farouq. In relation to plans for his release from Guantánamo, Ameziane fears returning to Algeria because of the stigma of Guantánamo and the instability in his hometown of Kabylie, where, as his lawyers have explained, practicing Muslims are “targeted for arrests and detention by the government based solely on their religious practices” and “The stigma of having spent time at Guantánamo would alone be enough to put him at risk of being imprisoned if he is returned.”

ISN 311 Bin Mohammed, Farhi Saeed (Algeria)
Bin Mohammed, who is 50 years old, is one of the five Algerians facing involuntary repatriation, after being cleared for release by a military review board under the Bush administration, and also by President Obama’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force. In his case, uniquely, he was also cleared for release by a US judge after winning his habeas corpus petition in November 2009.  A former conscript in the Algerian army, bin Mohammed had traveled around Europe for many years, working as a laborer in the UK, France and Italy, before traveling to Afghanistan in 2001, apparently in search of a wife. Although the US authorities alleged that he had undertaken military training in Afghanistan, the judge in his case, Judge Gladys Kessler, ruled that the government’s evidence was unreliable because it came from statements made by Binyam Mohamed, the British resident and torture victim, who had been subjected to torture in Pakistan, Morocco and at the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Kabul from April 2002 to May 2004. In an attempt to prevent his enforced repatriation, and to uphold the United States’ obligation, under the UN Convention Against Torture, not to “expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Judge Kessler issued a temporary order barring bin Mohammed’s transfer to Algeria in June this year, following up on his lawyers’ request for her “to order the government to carry out his release, but to bar his transfer to Algeria, where he fears persecution or even death from either the Algerian government or from armed terrorist groups there.” After protracted wrangling with the notoriously Conservative judges of the D.C. Circuit Court, Judge Kessler’s temporary order was overturned, and the Circuit Court’s decision — which drew on previous rulings preventing the lower courts from interfering in the Executive branch’s right to decide how and where to dispose of prisoners — was upheld in July this year, when the US Supreme Court sided with the Circuit Court, just a few hours before the Supreme Court also approved the repatriation of Abdul Aziz Naji, who was immediately sent home. As SCOTUSblog noted, the ruling was “the first indication that the Supreme Court will not allow federal judges to interfere with government controls on who leaves or stays at Guantánamo Bay.” Despite the ruling, bin Mohammed remains at Guantánamo, still desperately hoping that a third country will offer him a new home, although he could, of course, be sent back to Algeria any time the Obama administration feels like doing so.

ISN 324 Al Sabri, Mashur (Yemen)
According to the US authorities, al-Sabri traveled to Afghanistan in summer 2000, lived in Jalalabad for a year, and traveled on occasion to the Taliban lines at Bagram and Kabul. Quite what else he did is difficult to ascertain — not because there are no allegations, but because their trustworthiness is hard to gauge. According to various unidentified sources, in May 2001 he was working as a facilitator for new arrivals at two guest houses in Kabul, and was “well known and well respected as an administrator in the guest houses.” It was also noted that he “was said to facilitate the transfer of weapons and other supplies to the front lines,” and, most worryingly (or most outrageously, depending on your point of view), was accused of working for Osama bin Laden. According to the unidentified allegations, he was “believed to have sworn bayat to Osama bin Laden,” because he and others around him knew bin Laden’s travel dates and routes, and another “source” identified him as “a member of al-Qaeda,” because he was “following Osama bin Laden’s orders to keep the guest house up and running.”

ISN 326 Ahjam, Ahmed (Syria)
Ahjam is one of four Syrians who had been living in Kabul before the US-led invasion, and who were subsequently seized on the Pakistani border. As one of these men, Maasoum Mouhammed (also known as Bilal Abdah Mohammed), was released in Bulgaria in May this year, despite having been accused of running “a safe house,” which was used for “money and document forging operations” for al-Qaeda, it seems likely that Ahmed Ahjam and the other two men, Ali Husein Shaaban (ISN 327) and Abu Omar al-Hamawe (ISN 329) have also been approved for release. Certainly, there is nothing in the men’s story to indicate that they were connected in any way with al-Qaeda. At Guantánamo, Mouhammed described it as “a normal house, a place to eat, drink and sleep,” and, as I explained in The Guantánamo Files, “The four men certainly matched the profiles of economic migrants, drifting from country to country in search of employment, and drawn to Afghanistan by its Arab-influenced reputation for welcoming Muslims from all around the world. They said that only seven people lived at the house (themselves, the owner, and two other Syrians), and that they all put money in to keep the place running.” According to his account in Guantánamo, Ahjam worked for al-Wafa, a Saudi humanitarian aid charity, which the Bush administration regarded as being tied to al-Qaeda, although no proof of this was ever forthcoming, and, with a few exceptions (including Ahmed Ahjam), the many dozens of prisoners who worked for the charity, including its Saudi director, have all been released.

ISN 327 Shaaban, Ali Husein (Syria)
One of four Syrians who had been living in a house in Kabul before the US-led invasion, and who were subsequently seized on the Pakistani border (see the story of Ahmed Ahjam, above), Shaaban, who was just 19 years old when he was seized, came from a poor family in Syria and had been an ironsmith in his father’s store. He told his tribunal at Guantánamo that he went to Afghanistan because he wanted to move there to seek a new life.

ISN 328 Mohamed, Ahmed (China)
One of 22 Uighurs held in Guantanamo (see the entry for Yusef Abbas, ISN 275), and also identified as Hammad Mohammed, he is one of an unknown number of prisoners subjected to “do-over” tribunals at Guantánamo, after the military panels responsible for reviewing their cases in 2004 and 2005 concluded that they were not “enemy combatants” and should be released. These “do-over” tribunals were convened in secret in Washington D.C. — often on more than one occasion — until the military officers delivered the desired verdict, and in Mohammed’s case he was not finally vindicated until a subsequent military review board cleared him for release in 2006. In his initial tribunal, he explained why his desire for military training was aimed at China and not America. “The Chinese people have tortured and pressured the Uighur people really bad,” he said. “The Uighur people are trying to go all over the world now. One sixth of the world’s population is in China. They are a threat to the whole world. If I have such a large enemy, why would I go and fight with another enemy?” Throughout his tribunal, the only explanation for the administration’s determination to continue holding him was an allegation that he was a weapons instructor from May to October 2001. In response, he called one of his compatriots as a witness, who explained, “I saw that he was sick during that time. He has a stomach problem and he was helping with the kitchen work and helping the cook. He was also studying the language.” The allegation was then dropped, but in the meantime ludicrous new allegations were added to his Unclassified Summary of Evidence, in which it was claimed that he “was identified as Abdul Jabar, an al-Qaeda member with the Islamic Movement of Turkistan,” and was also “identified as a visitor to known al-Qaeda guest houses.”

ISN 329 Al Hamawe, Abu Omar (Syria)
One of four Syrians who had been living in a house in Kabul before the US-led invasion, and who were subsequently seized on the Pakistani border (see the story of Ahmed Ahjam, above), al-Hamawe, who was just 20 years old when he was seized, told his tribunal at Guantánamo that he had been working at a store in Kabul, but that he planned to move on to Pakistan when a friend sent him money from Syria, as I explained in The Guantánamo Files. He also stated that the house in Kabul was close to the Pakistani embassy and that their neighbors, who worked for the Red Cross, “knew that all of us were not fighters or Taliban, just refugees.”

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners. Cross-posted on The Public Record, Uruknet and New Left Project.

The identity of the second — Mahmoud Salim al-Ali, a Syrian — was then revealed by Der Spiegel, which stated that he had arrived in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in central-western Germany. In fact, the identities of both men should not have come as a surprise, as Der Spiegel devoted a major article to their stories back in July, after the German government had confirmed that it would take two prisoners from Guantánamo.

The release is good news not only for Ayman al-Shurafa and Mahmoud al-Ali, but also for the many campaigners and commentators — myself included — who have been trying to keep Guantánamo on the mainstream media’s radar. Although President Obama briefly discussed Guantánamo on September 9, in his first press conference since May, apologizing for failing to meet his self-imposed deadline of January 2010 for the prison’s closure, progress towards belatedly fulfilling his promise has been horribly slow this year. Although the President’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force recommended that over half of the remaining prisoners should be released, just 21 of the 111 prisoners cleared for release at the start of the year have been freed in the last nine months, and 90 cleared men still remain.

Dozens of these men — like Mahmoud al-Ali — cannot be repatriated because they face the risk of torture in their home countries, and must wait for third countries to rehouse them (a difficult task, given that the Obama administration, Congress and the judiciary have all made sure that the United States will not take any of them), and one, like Ayman al-Shurafa, is a stateless Palestinian. However, 58 others are Yemenis, who could be sent home tomorrow were it not for an indefensible moratorium on releasing any Yemenis that was issued by President Obama in January, following hysterical overreaction to the news that the failed Christmas day plane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been recruited in Yemen.

Clearly, the President has no chance of fulfilling his promise to close Guantánamo until this moratorium is lifted, and those who wish to see the prison closed must do more to challenge this cynical knee-jerk ban which effectively tars all Yemenis as terrorist sympathizers. For now, however, the German government must be congratulated for offering new homes to Ayman al-Shurafa and Mahmoud al-Ali, and for bringing their long and unjust imprisonment to an end.

Ayman al-Shurafa, a stateless Palestinian

Ayman al-Shurafa, who is now 34 years old, was cleared for release by a military review board in 2007, but remained at Guantánamo because of the particular problems facing the handful of Palestinians held in the prison, who are — or were — literally stateless. In al-Shurafa’s case, although his family is from Gaza, his parents settled in Saudi Arabia with their four children when he was a young child. He spent most of his life in Saudi Arabia, where his family still lives, but because he does not have a Saudi passport, the Saudi government refused to press the US authorities for his repatriation. Instead, he holds documents issued by the Jordanian government (as part of his family’s long search for refuge), which are suitable only for travel purposes, and until Germany agreed to accept him, he was, therefore, literally a man without a home.

Around ten years ago, al-Shurafa traveled to Gaza to enroll in a Palestinian university to finish a business degree that he had started in Saudi Arabia. However, after the intifada broke out, he feared for his life and decided that he had to leave. He returned to Saudi Arabia, but, as with all Saudi residents, discovered that his educational opportunities were more limited than those available to Saudi citizens. It was then that, like many other young men, he found himself taking poor advice from a Saudi sheikh who stated that he needed to be “prepared” to defend Muslims from those oppressing them — a religious duty known as e’dad, which is conceptually distinct from jihad or any participation in combat.

As a result, he traveled to Afghanistan in summer 2001, but, like many young men recruited by religious figures, he was unaware that the Taliban’s enemies were other Muslims. Throughout his detention, he maintained that, although he was in Afghanistan, he never took up arms against the Northern Alliance — or against the United States after the US-led invasion of October 2001. In meetings at Guantánamo with his lawyers, he explained that “he hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was getting himself into; he knew nothing about the Taliban’s long inter-Muslim struggle with the Northern Alliance, and had no knowledge whatsoever of al-Qaeda.”

In 2007, a military review board agreed with this assessment, but although al-Shurafa was cleared for release, and was compliant throughout his detention, he still ended up held in isolation in a cell in Camp 6 for 22 to 23 hours a day. Throughout his life, he has suffered from vitiligo, a painful skin complaint, and his permanent isolation from sunlight made his skin condition flare up horribly, causing maddening discomfort, as well as permanent skin damage. According to his lawyers, although he was well regarded by both the guards and by his fellow prisoners, leading prayers in his cell block, he was deeply concerned that he would never see his elderly mother again, and also showed signs of depression, asking the authorities for medication to “let the days go by without feeling anything.”

Mahmoud Salim al-Ali, a Syrian seized by an Afghan warlord

As Der Spiegel explained in July, Mahmoud Salim al-Ali, who is 36 years old, had been living in Kuwait before he made an ill-fated trip to Afghanistan in October 2001. His last job had been in a fruit and vegetable market, but he also had “experience working in the service sector and in industry, as a salesperson in the Sultan Shopping Center and with the Al-Fahad Aluminum & Glass Works.”

However, in late September 2001, he traveled to Afghanistan, via Syria and Iran, apparently because, as the US authorities alleged at Guantánamo, he “had a desire to join the jihad after viewing videos depicting the situation in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.” Nevertheless, as Der Spiegel also explained:

[H]e never received any military training or saw any combat. After a few days in Kabul, al-Ali contracted a serious case of diarrhea, for which he was treated in a hospital. He then spent the night in the house of a doctor. By the next day, as he was fleeing from the Northern Alliance, which was fighting the Taliban, his big adventure was over. Al-Ali and his companions were captured by an Afghan warlord and robbed. The bandits took his money, his wedding ring and his watch, and he was later turned over to the Americans.

New life in Germany

For both these men, life in Germany promises to present them with an excellent opportunity to rebuild their lives. As Der Spiegel explained in July, Mahmoud al-Ali “has a wife and a 10-year-old daughter living in Syria who apparently want to come to Germany to live with him, to which the state politicians dealing with the case have no objections,” and Ayman al-Shurafa, whose immediate physical and psychological needs appear to be more acute, is already receiving attention in a medical clinic, where, as Der Spiegel reported on Thursday, “he will be given an extensive check-up over the next few days.” Hamburg government officials stated that “the goal was to help reintegrate the former prisoner into society, with the hope that he will ultimately become self-sufficient.”

Accepting these two men has not been without problems for the German authorities. There was fierce opposition from conservative ministers, for example, and, in response, plans for the state of Brandenburg to take a third prisoner, Mohammed Tahamuttan, the last Palestinian in Guantánamo, were quietly dropped. In July, Rainer Speer, the state’s interior minister, told Der Spiegel, “We were up to the task,” and the newspaper also noted that “the Interior Ministry task force charged with the issue had apparently concluded that accepting all three candidates was fundamentally justifiable.” However, Der Spiegel speculated that the rejection of Tahamuttan was “probably intended primarily to send a political message at home in Germany, where de Maizière felt that he had to show the many members of his party who had opposed reaching an agreement with the United States on Guantánamo that he was not blindly obeying the Americans.”

Noticeably, the government in Berlin also refused to proceed with the resettlement of Ayman al-Shurafa and Mahmoud al-Ali without written guarantees from the Obama administration. As Der Spiegel noted, Germany was “probably the only ally to have done so.” According to a joint declaration signed by the two countries, “The United States will not release any inmates if this could jeopardize the security of the United States or our friends and allies.” Der Spiegel added that “the Germans also have it in writing that the US government would not permit any individuals deemed a threat to the national security of the United States to ‘enter the country,’” explaining that what this means is that the men being released and sent to Germany “are not dangerous and could even enter the United States as tourists.”

As Der Spiegel also explained, this was “a delayed victory for Wolfgang Schäuble who, as interior minister in Berlin’s former grand coalition government, refused to accept Guantánamo inmates because, as he noted, they would not even be given a tourist visa for the United States.”

Will other countries now help?

While this will send shockwaves though the more paranoid parts of the US establishment (and should, if there is any justice, lead to calls to revoke the various bans on bringing cleared prisoners to live in the US), the impact of Germany’s acceptance of two prisoners should be most marked in Europe, where hopes for rehousing other cleared prisoners who cannot be repatriated are most sharply focused.

Although ten other countries in Europe (Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland) have taken in 23 prisoners over the last 16 months, who had no prior connection to their new homes (and 15 others have been settled in Bermuda, Cape Verde, Georgia, Latvia and Palau), other countries have failed to be swayed by the entreaties of Daniel Fried, President Obama’s Special Envoy to Guantánamo.

Ambassador Fried’s thankless task has been to persuade other countries to overlook US hypocrisy regarding the resettlement of prisoners, and to help President Obama close Guantánamo by taking in men like Ayman al-Shurafa and Mahmoud al-Ali. However, despite his success to date, certain prominent countries in western Europe — Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK — have so far refused to help, even though, in some cases, persuasive arguments can be made that they should be involved as part of a tacit acknowledgment of their involvement in the crimes committed in the “War on Terror.”

In Norway’s case, this arose because of the involvement of AkerKvaerner, the country’s largest commercial company, which, as filmmaker and journalist Erling Borgen has noted, “had 700 people working on the Guantánamo base,” providing logistical support that included “fueling the rendition flights.” In Sweden’s case, the complicity centers on the government’s involvement, in December 2001, in the CIA-directed kidnap and rendition to torture in Egypt of two Egyptian asylum seekers, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed Alzery. In Britain’s case, the true scale of the complicity of the Bush administration’s closest ally has not yet been revealed, but enough has been exposed to indicate that providing new homes for a handful of cleared Guantánamo prisoners who cannot be repatriated is the least that the government should do.

The British government’s complicity includes former foreign secretary Jack Straw’s recently-revealed support for Guantánamo and former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s interference in plans to provide consular access to a British citizen seized in Zambia (Martin Mubanga). It also includes involvement in the kidnap and rendition of two British residents in the Gambia (Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna), its knowledge of the torture by US agents in Pakistan of British resident Binyam Mohamed, who was later sent to be tortured in Morocco (also with British knowledge), and the repeated visits made by British agents to British nationals and residents while they were held in Pakistan, and in US custody in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, even though it was apparent that the conditions in which they were being held did not meet internationally recognized standards of humane treatment.

Although Prime Minister David Cameron has announced an inquiry into British complicity in torture abroad, one way in which the government could atone for its deep involvement in the “War on Terror” would be to step back from the outrageous position taken by the previous government — that, in securing the return of nine British nationals and five British residents, the UK had “done its bit,” as foreign secretary David Miliband claimed in January 2009 — and accept that this was, in fact, nothing more than what was required.

The new coalition government already faces questions about why it cannot secure the return of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, who was cleared for release in 2007 but is still held, and is also under pressure to explain why it will not accept Ahmed Belbacha, an Algerian who lived and worked in the UK between 1999 and 2001, who was also cleared for release in 2007, but is terrified of returning to Algeria. Perhaps it might now be worth asking if the British government will take up where Germany left off, and also offer a new home to Mohammed Tahamuttan, the Palestinian who is still waiting for someone to free him from Guantánamo.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation, as “Two Freed Prisoners in Germany.” Cross-posted on The Public Record, Cageprisoners and New Left Project.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the 64 prisoners released from February 2009 to July 2010, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; ; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs to Bermuda, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad), 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni, 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; October 2009 — 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); December 2009 — 2 Somalis, 4 Afghans, 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland, 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania, 1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini); July 2010 — 1 Algerian, 1 Syrian to Cape Verde, 1 Uzbek to Latvia, 1 unidentified Afghan to Spain.

Bin Mohammed won his habeas corpus petition last November, but was so scared of returning to Algeria that the judge in his case, Judge Gladys Kessler of the District Court in Washington D.C., tried to prevent his enforced return, eventually losing that appeal in the Conservative-dominated D.C. Circuit Court, and then losing again on July 16, when the Supreme Court also refused to act on his behalf. When Abdul Aziz Naji’s appeal was denied by the Supreme Court the following day, the last obstacle to the enforced repatriation not only of bin Mohammed, but also of Nabil Hadjarab, Motai Saib, Djamel Ameziane and Ahmed Belbacha was also removed.

As the legal action charity Reprieve reports today, “the Algerian prosecutor’s office reported on Monday that Abdul Aziz Naji was charged with an unspecified offence and is now under ‘judicial supervision.’” This may well mean that he will now undergo long months of horrible uncertainty as the government prepares to try him, even though, in the cases of other Algerians who returned voluntarily between July 2008 and January 2010, no trial has resulted in a conviction.

However, as Human Rights Watch noted after Naji’s repatriation:

Although the Algerian detainees who were returned voluntarily to Algeria have not reported serious abuse, this should not be the basis for determining how future returnees will be treated. Some of the men who returned voluntarily were elderly, in ill health, or had wound up at Guantánamo as cases of mistaken identity. Some of the remaining detainees, though never accused of any crime, might be perceived by the Algerian government as more dangerous than those who previously returned.

Senior counterterrorism counsel Andrea Prasow added, “The US needs to consider the individual circumstances of each detainee before repatriation. Someone who would rather remain at Guantánamo than go home should at least be given the chance to explain why in a proper legal setting.”

While there are valid concerns for all the men’s safety and well-being if returned to Algeria, Ahmed Belbacha is particularly vulnerable, as he was tried in absentia in November 2009 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, for what his lawyers can only conclude was the crime of speaking out about his fears of being repatriated. As Reprieve explained, “In a disgraceful show trial, the court sentenced Ahmed to 20 years in prison for belonging to an ‘overseas terrorist group.’ Despite repeated requests and extensive investigation, Reprieve’s lawyers have been unable to discover what exactly Ahmed is supposed to have done. No evidence has been produced to support his ‘conviction,’ which appears to be retaliation against Ahmed for speaking out about human rights abuses in Algeria.”

Human Rights Watch has stated that “Under Algerian law, Belbacha has the right to a new trial upon his return to Algeria,” but after his conviction in November it is unsurprising that Belbacha does not trust the Algerian government to treat him fairly if he is returned. As Reprieve noted, “He faces a lengthy illegal prison term, torture, and persecution if returned to Algeria.”

In an urgent appeal, Reprieve has called on the governments of Britain, Ireland and Luxembourg to offer Belbacha a new home. His lawyer, Tara Murray, stated:

We know from bitter experience that Guantánamo prisoners cannot trust “diplomatic assurances” from rights-abusing countries like Algeria, and the Obama Administration should have known better. The US has betrayed Abdul Aziz Naji and we are fighting to ensure that our client Ahmed Belbacha does not suffer the same fate. Algeria’s government has a clear grudge against Ahmed and cannot be trusted. Ahmed has repeatedly pleaded for help and we are running out of time. Will the governments of Luxembourg, Ireland and the UK hear his pleas?

Ahmed Belbacha’s appeal for the British government to offer him a new home is long-standing, as he lived and worked here for nearly two years from 1999 to 2001, when, with his asylum claim ongoing, he decided to take an ill-advised holiday in Pakistan. A resident in Bournemouth, where he lived, has offered him a room, but the British government has been so indifferent to his fate that Reprieve and other organizations, including Amnesty International and Cageprisoners, sought help from Ireland and Luxembourg as well. He has also been offered a home in Amherst, Massachusetts, although a law passed by Congress, banning any Guantánamo prisoners from being brought to the US mainland except to face a trial, has prevented him from taking up this offer.

Last week, the London Guantánamo Campaign prepared a letter to foreign secretary William Hague asking him to secure Mr. Belbacha’s return to the UK. A slightly amended version of this letter is posted below (which readers can cut and paste), but please feel free to change it as you see fit. The letter can be emailed to the foreign secretary (email address here), or sent to: William Hague MP, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, King Charles Street, London, SW1A 2AH.

Dear Foreign Secretary,

I am writing to you as a matter of urgency, concerning the case of Ahmed Belbacha, a British resident who has been held at Guantánamo Bay for over eight years.

Mr. Belbacha is a 40-year old Algerian who lived in the UK for nearly two years, from 1999 to 2001, having fled Algeria where his life was at risk. While travelling in Pakistan, he was captured and taken to Guantánamo Bay. Cleared for release in 2007, he has chosen to remain at Guantánamo Bay, rather than face the risk to his life in Algeria. This risk was compounded in November 2009 when he was sentenced in absentia to 20 years in prison for “membership of a terrorist organisation overseas”. No evidence was produced to back this up.

On 17 July, a US Supreme Court ruling resulted in an Algerian national, Abdul Aziz Naji, being forcibly repatriated to Algeria, where he has been indicted on unspecified charges, and is subject to “judicial supervision”. His return, the first forced repatriation under the Obama administration, was strongly condemned by Human Rights Watch and the United Nations. There is a strong likelihood that in sending Mr. Naji back to Algeria, the US government has breached the principle of “non-refoulement” in the UN Convention Against Torture.

This ruling paves the way for the forced return of Ahmed Belbacha.

Mr. Belbacha’s return to the UK was not sought by the previous government. However, we maintain that, given his ties to this country, he should be allowed to return here on humanitarian grounds. Such a move would provide him with a safe haven, and act as a gesture of cooperation with the US in its efforts to find countries for prisoners who cannot be safely repatriated, thereby helping President Obama to close the prison. Several other European countries have taken this action, providing residence to non-nationals as a means of assisting the US.

I urge you to take urgent action for Ahmed Belbacha to ensure a safe end to his wholly illegal ordeal over the past eight years.

I look forward to your response,

Yours sincerely,

The London Guantánamo Campaign also recommended that supporters send the letter to their MP (find your local MP via TheyWorkForYou), and also to write to the Algerian Embassy and the Permanent Mission of Algeria at the United Nations, asking them not to accept the forced repatriation of prisoners who do not wish to return to Algeria, and to ensure that prisoners who are returned are treated fairly.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Cross-posted on Eurasia Review.

Given that, in its 2009 report on human rights in Algeria, the US State Department noted, “Local human rights lawyers maintained that torture continued to occur in detention facilities, most often against those arrested on ‘security grounds’” it was not entirely reassuring that an Obama administration official told the Washington Post that the Algerian government had “provided diplomatic assurances” that prisoners returned from Guantánamo “would not be mistreated,” and added, “We take some care in evaluating countries for repatriation. In the case of Algeria, there is an established track record and we have given that a lot of weight. The Algerians have handled this pretty well: You don’t have recidivism and you don’t have torture.”

Following Naji’s transfer, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights issued immediate press releases urging the Obama administration to recognize its international obligations, and warning that Naji had legitimate fears of both the Algerian government and of extremists who might prey on him, and on Wednesday Manfred Nowak, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, and Martin Scheinin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism, issued a statement drawing attention to the Supreme Court rulings that paved the way for the enforced transfer of Naji and another Algerian, Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, who won his habeas corpus petition last November, but is still held.

Criticism of Obama and the Supreme Court by the UN and the New York Times

The UN experts stated, “We are extremely worried that the lives of two Algerian detainees could be put in danger without a proper assessment of the risks they could face if returned against their will to their country of origin. While we appreciate the efforts of the authorities to close the Guantánamo detention facility, the risk assessment should be a meaningful and fair process, and the courts should be part of it.” The experts also called into question the Obama administration’s reliance on diplomatic assurances that Naji — and bin Mohammed — would be treated humanely, stating, “Diplomatic assurances are unreliable or difficult to monitor,” and reiterating that they “cannot substitute the sending country’s obligation to assess the real risk facing the individual.”

Over the weekend, the New York Times became involved, noting, in a sternly worded editorial, that “A prisoner who begs to stay indefinitely at the Guantánamo Bay detention center rather than be sent back to Algeria probably has a strong reason to fear the welcoming reception at home,” reminding the Obama administration of Naji’s belief that “he would be tortured if he was transferred to Algeria, by either the Algerian government or fundamentalist groups there,” and criticizing the decision to forcibly repatriate him as “an act of cruelty that seems to defy explanation.”

The Times also noted that Naji had asked for political asylum in Switzerland, which Ellen Lubell, one of his lawyers, elaborated on at the weekend, telling supporters, “We had applied for asylum in Switzerland for Aziz and his application was proceeding through the Swiss courts with support from many in that country.” The Times also ran through the outline of Naji’s story, noting that he was “picked up by the police in Pakistan in May 2002 and turned over to the Americans on suspicion of being a terrorist,” and adding that, although he “admitted working for the humanitarian wing of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist organization,” the Bush administration “never charged him with a crime, explained why he was being held, or demonstrated any connection to terrorist acts.”

Abdul Aziz Naji’s story

This was a fair précis of Naji’s case, although it is worth elaborating on in more detail. As the Center for Constitutional Rights explained (PDF), he was born in 1975 in Batna (about 300 miles east of Algiers), and, after completing his schooling, worked in his father’s blacksmith shop and then undertook his obligatory military service in the Algerian army. In early 2001, he traveled to Pakistan to provide humanitarian aid to Muslims and Christians in Kashmir, but one night, while carrying food and clothing to poor villagers with a group of other volunteers, he stepped on a landmine and sustained a serious injury, which led to the loss of his lower right leg.

After being treated in a hospital in Lahore, where he was fitted with a prosthetic leg, he was taken in by a few generous families while he recuperated, and was then recommended to visit an Algerian in Peshawar, near the Afghan border, who would be able to help him find a wife. While visiting this man in May 2002, he was seized in a raid by Pakistani police — one of many raids at the time that helped to fill Guantánamo — even though he was never told why he had been seized, and, in fact, was told by the Pakistanis who seized him that he would be released.

In Guantánamo, Naji told his interrogators that he was unaware that Lashkar-e-Taiba was affiliated with al-Qaeda, as the Americans alleged (which was understandable, as LeT’s humanitarian work was separate from its military operations), and was also obliged to counter an allegation that he had received de-mining training at an LeT camp, pointing out that the fact that he lost his leg after stepping on a mine made a mockery of the allegation, and explaining that it was something he had been forced to admit when he was tortured in the US prison at Bagram airbase after his capture. He also explained the meaning of jihad to a military review board that reviewed his case, telling the panel of three officers, “The jihad does not have to be a jihad where you fight. Jihad can be carrying food or helping others. It does not have to be fighting.”

The latest news from Algeria

After Naji’s return, there were alarming indications that the worst fears about the Algerian authorities had been confirmed, when the Associated Press reported that the state prosecutor’s office in Algiers had stated on Monday that Naji had been “indicted,” on unspecified grounds. It later transpired that this was not the case, and that, as Reuters explained, Naji had been reunited with his family after approximately a week in lawful detention (according to Algerian law, terror suspects can be held for up to 12 days before appearing in court). A judicial source “who did not want to be identified” told Reuters, “He is at home in Batna. He just needs to go every week to the local police station to sign a form.”

In a statement, the prosecutor’s office said Naji “was released after appearing before a judge on Sunday who placed him under judicial control — which means he has to report regularly to police pending a further decision on his case,” as Reuters described it. The statement also explained, “Contrary to what has been falsely reported, this person’s case has been dealt with in the most complete transparency and in respect for the law, whether in terms of procedure or the length of his detention.”

The Algerian government could still spring a surprise on Naji, by deciding to put him forward for a trial, but even if the authorities leave him unmolested, there is no guarantee that the extremists that Naji fears will do the same — and it remains deeply troubling that the Obama administration may still seek to forcibly repatriate four other Algerians, also cleared for release after the deliberations of the President’s interagency Guantánamo Review Task Force, who are also terrified of returning home, as the Washington Post explained three weeks ago in an article entitled, “Six detainees would rather stay at Guantánamo Bay than be returned to Algeria.”

Although administration officials conceded last week that they would “continue to examine each case individually before any repatriation,” noting that some officials “have expressed some concern about returning one of the Algerians [Ahmed Belbacha] who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in absentia” last year (for speaking out about his fears of repatriation), it now appears, as I explained last week, that there is “no obstacle to prevent the Obama administration from sending the other four Algerians home whenever it feels like it.”

The other Algerians who fear enforced repatriation from Guantánamo

From what I can ascertain, given that the Obama administration has not released details about the men cleared for release by the Guantánamo Review Task Force, these men are, in addition to Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed, Nabil Hadjarab (PDF), Motai Saib and Djamel Ameziane (PDF), who were all cleared for release by military review boards under the Bush administration, and who all have legitimate fears about returning to Algeria.

Last February, in an article entitled, “Guantánamo’s refugees,” I described Nabil Hadjarab, who was 22 years old when he was seized, as “a young Algerian from a broken home, with relatives in Lyon, who was only persuaded to travel to Afghanistan because he was caught in limbo between Algeria and France as his family disintegrated around him.” As Afghanistan descended into chaos following the US-led invasion in October 2001, Hadjarab, who had been living in Kabul and had then moved to the eastern city of Jalalabad, tried to flee across the mountains to Pakistan, but was wounded by a bomb and taken to a hospital in Jalalabad, where he was sold to US forces.

Returning Nabil Hadjarab to Algeria would be, to extend the New York Times’ comment about Abdul Aziz Naji, “an act of cruelty that seems to defy explanation,” because his extended family is in France, and is willing to take him in, and because he has almost no family connections in Algeria, making him particularly vulnerable to both the government and to extremists who might wish to prey on him. Given that a guard in Guantánamo described him as “a brilliant artist, a keen footballer, and a sweet kid,” it is apparent that the French government should offer him a home, as his lawyers at the legal action charity Reprieve have requested.

Motai Saib, who was 25 years old when he was seized crossing the Pakistani border, had also been living in Jalalabad, and had traveled to Afghanistan via France and London. As his lawyers noted in a court filing in July 2008 (PDF), in February 2008 the Department of Defense notified them that Saib “’has been approved to leave Guantánamo,’ but stated obliquely that ‘such a decision does not equate [to] a determination that your client is not an enemy combatant, nor does is it a determination that he does not pose a threat to the United States or its allies. I cannot provide you any information regarding when your client may be leaving Guantánamo as his departure is subject to ongoing discussions.” As Saib’s lawyers noted, “Saib has serious concerns that this ambiguous and damaging language will prevent his safe release from Guantánamo.”

Djamel Ameziane, who was 34 years old when he was seized crossing the Pakistani border, had also been living in Jalalabad. A Berber, he left Algeria in 1992 “in order to escape persecution and make a better life for himself,” and unsuccessfully sought asylum in Austria, where he worked legally for three years, becoming the top chef at an Italian restaurant in Vienna, until a new government clamped down on immigrants, and his work permit was denied without explanation. From there, he moved to Canada, where he obtained a temporary work permit and worked for an office supply company and for various restaurants in Montreal. In 2000, after five years in Canada, his asylum claim was denied, and, as his lawyers explained, “Fearful of being forcibly returned to Algeria, and with few options, [he] went to Afghanistan, where he could live freely without discrimination as a Muslim man, and where he would not fear deportation to Algeria.”

Ameziane fears returning to Algeria because of the stigma of Guantánamo and the instability in his hometown of Kabylie, where, as his lawyers explained, practicing Muslims are “targeted for arrests and detention by the government based solely on their religious practices” and “The stigma of having spent time at Guantánamo would alone be enough to put him at risk of being imprisoned if he is returned.”

Advice for President Obama

With the uproar over the return of Abdul Aziz Naji, the Obama administration must surely be having second thoughts about proceeding with further enforced repatriations to Algeria, and if any further encouragement is needed, senior officials should recall that, although there were periodic threats to stealthily repatriate Algerians against their will under the Bush administration (as I reported here), the Bush administration was aware of Algeria’s dubious human rights record, and refused to repatriate Algerians who believed that they faced the risk of torture.

I leave the final word of advice to the editors of the New York Times, who concluded their editorial on Sunday with the following words:

We support the administration’s efforts to close Guantánamo, and understand the concern that if there is a more heavily Republican Congress next year, doing so may become harder. That is no reason to deliver prisoners to governments that the United States considers hostile and that have a record of torture and lawlessness.

The government refuses to deport prisoners to Libya, Syria and other countries known for abuse. It could find a new home for the Algerians.

I doubt that we will hear anything about discussions taking place behind the scenes, but for the sake of President Obama’s credibility (and, sadly, that of the Supreme Court), I hope that discussions are ongoing regarding the return of Nabil Hadjarab to France, of Ahmed Belbacha to the UK (where he lived without incident for nearly two years), of Djamel Ameziane to either Austria or Canada, and of Farhi Saeed bin Mohammed and Motai Saib to countries where dubious “diplomatic assurances” are not required to ensure their welfare as refugees who have already lost over eight years of their lives for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Andy Worthington is the author of 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) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), and my definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on Cageprisoners. Cross-posted on Eurasia Review and The Public Record.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the 60 prisoners released from February 2009 to mid-July 2010, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; ; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs to Bermuda, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad), 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni, 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; October 2009 — 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); December 2009 — 2 Somalis, 4 Afghans, 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland, 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania, 1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini).