San Juan, August 22: A Guantanamo prisoner who has been cleared for release by a U.S. judge was fighting Friday against what his lawyers said was an apparent plan to send him to Bosnia, where he would likely be deported to his native Algeria and imprisoned.
Saber Lahmar said the International Committee of the Red Cross told him he would soon be transferred from the U.S. base in Cuba to Bosnia despite concerns about what may happen upon arrival, said Stephen Oleskey, one of his lawyers. Because the diplomatic efforts on behalf of Guantanamo prisoners are secret, it was impossible to confirm the account.
His lawyers say the prisoner is distraught over the situation and they have made a last-minute appeal to the State Department to halt the alleged transfer. Oleskey said he believes his client may be among several prisoners expected to be released in coming days.
“We all want to see Guantanamo closed and emptied out but nobody should be sent to a place where they could be harmed,” Oleskey said.
Lahmar, 40, is one of six Algerians who were detained in Bosnia in 2001 on suspicion of plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. They were taken to Guantanamo in January 2002.
A judge ordered five of them released for lack of evidence, but found there was enough reason to believe the sixth was close to an al-Qaida operative and tried to help others travel to Afghanistan to fight the United States and its allies.
Of those cleared, three were released to their families in Bosnia, where they have citizenship, and one was sent to France. Lahmar has been held back while authorities try to find a country to accept him. He was a resident of Bosnia at the time of his capture but never got citizenship there.
The prisoner is one of dozens who have been cleared for release from Guantanamo but whose transfer has been stalled by the difficulty of persuading other countries to accept men that the U.S. has accused of having links to terrorism and refuses to allow within its own borders.
There are about 229 prisoners at the American prison in Cuba that President Barack Obama has pledged to close in January.
Lahmar also alleges he was assaulted by Guantanamo guards in a 1 a.m. confrontation Wednesday in an isolation cell. He told his lawyers he was struck, kicked and punched and that one of his teeth was knocked out. A prison spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, but a Department of Justice official said the military investigated and found no evidence of abuse, according to a Department of Justice e-mail provided by the attorneys.
State Department officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Lahmar’s case and a Department of Justice spokesman, Dean Boyd, said the U.S. cannot comment on the specifics of any pending release from Guantanamo until after it has been completed.
But Boyd said the U.S. “as a matter of policy” does not send prisoners to countries where they would likely face inhumane treatment.
Oleskey, a Boston-based attorney whose firm represented all six of the Algerians, said the Red Cross told him Tuesday that his client would be sent within three days to Bosnia, where his residency permit has expired. “If he goes to Bosnia, he will be put in a deportation camp for immigrants,” he said.
He said that Algerian authorities would likely arrest him because of the taint of Guantanamo, not anything he actually did in that country. His lawyers are seeking to have him sent to a country in Western Europe that has begun considering an application to resettle him. They declined to specify the country.
Lahmar moved to Bosnia in the 1990s to work as an Arabic language teacher and married a Bosnian woman. He was convicted of robbery in 1997, but was pardoned and released from jail, his lawyers said.
He divorced the woman in 1999 and married another Bosnian, with whom he has a daughter who was born after he was taken into custody.
–Agencies