France to accept a Guantanamo detainee

The French government confirmed last Thursday that it would allow a detainee currently held at Guantanamo into the country.

Lakhdar Boumediene, 42, an Algerian national, has been held without charge at Guantanamo since January 22, 2002, and is expected to arrive in France some time next week.

Mr Boumediene was arrested in Bosnia in October 2001, at the request of the United States.

A legal resident, he worked for the Red Crescent in the Bosniac capital Sarajevo. Along with five other Algerians, he was accused by the US government of planning a terrorist attack against the US embassy in Sarajevo, and thus picked up by the local police.

The men were released in January 2002, following a Supreme Court of Bosnia ruling, ordering the charges be dropped due to lack of evidence...

The men were nevertheless handed over to US authorities, who proceded to detain them at Guantanamo, where they have languished for the last seven years...

According to a report published by the New York Center for the Constitutional Rights entitled Report on Torture, Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, (July 2006), Mr Boumediene was deprived of sleep for 13 days during an intense interrogation period in early 2002, chocked by an interrogator, repeatedly hurled onto the floor of his cell while his wrists were shackled to his waist and his feet were shackled to an anchor in the floor of his cage.

When requesting medication, interrogators controlled his access to medical treatment, and access to that treatment was granted or denied based on the interrogator's assessment of his level of cooperation.

The list goes on...

Mr Boumediene went on a hunger strike to protest these abuses, in December 2006.

He has undergone forced feeding ever since...

On June 12, 2008, The US Supreme Court ruled (in Boumediene vs Bush) that Guantanamo detainees could not be deprived of the right to habeas corpus, contrary to the provisions of The Military Commissions Act (2006), which sought to do just that.

Finally, in November 2008, US District Court Judge Richard Leon ordered the release of five of the Algerians, due to the fact that the evidence put forward was insufficient: one single unnamed source!

There are about 240 detainees left at Guantanamo and, as President Obama pledged to close the facility by January 2010, a home must be found for all of them.

It is in this context that House Republicans plan to propose a bill called Keep Terrorists Out of America Act, to prevent any detainees from residing in the US.

Yet, if we are to take seriously the bill's language, including in its title, none of the detainees in question are covered by it. Indeed, none of the detainees have been convicted, let alone charged of any terrorist offences. As such, they may be many things, but terrorists they are surely not, for only a court conviction can transform a detainee into a terrorist.

Furthermore, because of the Bush-Cheney "enhanced interrogation techniques" program, steadfastly supported and applauded by these very same Republicans, it seems fair to say that most, if not all, will never be tried due to the fact the evidence against them (if indeed any exists) is tainted and thus inadmissible.

One cannot expulse them to their home countries either, as they would most likely be detained and tortured anew upon their arrival...

So this conundrum now facing the new administration is principally a Bush-Cheney-Republican party creation (with, it seems, some tacit support from Democratic leaders), but President Obama's to solve...