Algiewrs, November 23: An Algiers court on Sunday cleared two men held at Guantanamo Bay for seven years, according to a legal source.
Faghoul Abdelli and Mohamed Terari were accused of belonging to an overseas terrorist group but were acquitted by the criminal court in Algiers.
During the trial, the men said they were “savagely tortured” while in detention at the US-run prison camp in Cuba.
They were alleged to have left Algeria in the early 1990s for Germany, before travelling to Afghanistan, where they were arrested by Pakistani police following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
The Algerian state prosecutor had called for them to be given 20-year prison sentences.
In 2008 the country’s justice minister said Algeria would repatriate 17 of its citizens held at Guantanamo and prosecute them where possible.
—Agencies