WASHINGTON: Two Algerian detainees at Guantanamo Bay are fighting efforts by US President Barack Obama’s administration to transfer them to their homeland, fearing abuse, a lawyer said on Friday.
Attorney Robert Kirsch said he had pressed the Pentagon and State Department, along with the Algerian Embassy in Washington, to avoid the men’s “imminent” repatriation set to take place as early as this weekend.
Without confirming when a detainee transfer may take place, a Pentagon spokesman said: “We carefully ensure that every transfer we carry out is consistent with the US government’s humane treatment policy and standards.”
“Consistent with the Convention Against Torture and our own commitment to human rights, the United States is firm in its commitment to not transfer detainees to countries where we believe they would face torture,” spokesman Todd Breasseale said.
Belkacem Bensayah and Djamel Ameziane’s protests over their pending transfer, however, is complicating Obama’s efforts to shutter the US detention centre in Cuba, where 164 “war on terror” suspects still linger nearly 12 years after it was opened.
Ameziane, who lived in Austria and Canada, has asked to return to America’s northern neighbour since president George W Bush’s administration cleared him for release in 2007.
Bensayah is demanding to be returned to Bosnia, where he was arrested in 2002 and where his wife and daughters live.
AFP
