Return to torture

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, explains why news that four British residents are to be released from Guantánamo provides grounds for cautious celebration, but also points out that two British residents will not be coming home. I was at a mosque in Glasgow [...]

The recent conviction, in a Tunisian court, of former Guantánamo detainee Abdullah bin Omar undermines claims by the US administration that it has found adequate ways of repatriating wrongly arrested detainees to their home countries. A former railway engineer, bin Omar (51) left Tunisia because of religious persecution in 1989. Taking his wife and children [...]

The story of Guantánamo detainee Lofti Lagha, which I first broke here, and subsequently reported on here and here, reached a predictably sad conclusion last week when he was sentenced to three years in prison. The 39-year old, who had traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 after several years as an illegal immigrant in Italy, was [...]

In a genuinely startling development in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Gladys Kessler has ruled that Mohammed Abdul Rahman, a Tunisian detainee at Guantánamo who was cleared for release after the first round of administrative reviews in 2006, “cannot be sent to Tunisia because he could suffer ‘irreparable harm’ that [...]

On 6 August, just before the British government announced that it was asking for the return of five British residents in Guantánamo (Shaker Aamer, Jamil El-Banna, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed and Abdulnour Sameur), I wrote a letter to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband asking the government to act on behalf of another British resident, Ahmed [...]

In the Washington Post, Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch provides gruelling updates on the stories of Abdullah bin Omar and Lofti Lagha, the Tunisian Guantánamo detainees who were returned to the country of their birth in June. Having recently travelled to Tunisia, Daskal reports that, although she was unable to gain access to bin [...]

The story of Hedi Boudhiba, a 46-year old Tunisian, who has been abandoned in Spain after being extradited from the UK and cleared of all charges against him in the Spanish National Court, calls into doubt the quality of British and pan-European intelligence about activities related to terrorism, and also raises uncomfortable questions about the [...]

Back in June, I was the first journalist to cover the story of Lofti Lagha, one of two Tunisians repatriated from Guantánamo, who faced an uncertain future in the country of his birth. While fears that his fellow countryman, Abdullah bin Omar, would face torture on his return to Tunisia (which were confirmed in July), [...]

In a resounding break with the policies of Tony Blair, the new British government, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has announced that it has requested the return of five British residents in Guantánamo: Shaker Aamer, Jamil El-Banna, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed (aka al-Habashi) and Abdulnour Sameur. According to a Press Association report, “The Foreign [...]

The following is the text of a letter that I have just emailed to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (smithjj@parliament.uk) and Foreign Secretary David Miliband (milibandd@parliament.uk), regarding the prospect of Ahmed Belbacha’s imminent return to Algeria, where he is at risk of torture. I’ll let you know if I receive any response, but in the meantime [...]