Algerian Six
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Guantanamo Bay Naval Base
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is located on of land and water at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba which the United States leased for use as a coaling station following the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903. The base is located on the shore of Guantánamo Bay at the southeastern end of Cuba. It is the oldest overseas...
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
since January 2002; five of them were ordered released after a long disputed habeas hearing before Judge Leon in the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C.; three were then flown to Bosnia to reunite in 'protective custody' with their families while three remained at Guantanamo, one, Belkacem, as a suspected terrorist and the other two, including Lakhmar Boumediene, as effectively stateless because Bosnia did not want them. The men were all born in Algeria, but five of the six were naturalized Bosnian citizens and the sixth had been a permanent resident of Bosnia prior to his detention. Five of the men worked for humanitarian organizations in Bosnia before they were sent to Guantanamo. After falling under U.S. suspicion of planning an attack on the U.S. embassy in Bosnia, the six men were turned over to the U.S. in January 2002 in Sarajevo
Sarajevo
Sarajevo |Bosnia]], surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated along the Miljacka River in the heart of Southeastern Europe and the Balkans....
by the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina , sometimes called Bosnia-Herzegovina or simply Bosnia, is a country in Southern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula. Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the southeast, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for the...
at the express demand of the U.S. Though they have remained imprisoned at Guantanamo since that date, the U.S. has yet to charge any of the men with any crimes.
The six men were formally arrested by Bosnian authorities in October 2001. They were held in Bosnian custody during a three-month investigation into U.S. claims that the men had plotted an attack on the U.S. and British Embassies. This investigation produced no evidence to justify their continued detention. The six men were then ordered released by the Bosnian Supreme Court, with recommendation of the prosecutor. At the moment of their release from Bosnian imprisonment, they were illegally handed over to American officials who flew them to detention and interrogation in the U.S. naval base at Guanatanamo Bay, Cuba. The conduct of the Bosnian authorities was formally condemned as illegal by the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia Herzegovina, the relevant Bosnian court at the time. http://www.hrc.ba/database/decisions/CH02-8679%20BOUDELLAA%20et%20al.%20Admissibility%20and%20Merits%20E.pdf Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
recalled in 2002 that the Bosnian Supreme Court explicitly opposed itself to this transfer to US authorities
In late 2004, the six men were sent before Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) of three military officers. The CSRTs concluded that the six men were properly classified as "enemy combatants" based on classified evidence, which justified their continued detention at Guantanamo. However, transcripts of CSRT hearings for four of the six men record the Bosnians reporting to their tribunal officers that interrogators did not believe that there had ever been any substance to the U.S. allegations that they had planned to bomb the U.S. embassy. Furthermore, the CSRTs applied a definition of "enemy combatant" that was so broad the government admitted it could include a "little old lady in Switzerland," who donated money to a chartiy in Afghanistan that then, without her knowledge, funded al Qaeda. (See Transcript of Motion to Dismiss before United States District Court Judge Joyce Hens Green at pp. 25–26 (December 1, 2004) Rasul v. Bush, Docket No. 02-02999; see also press coverage, for example, Neil A. Lewis, Fate of Guantanamo Detainees Is debated in Federal Court, NY Times (Dec. 2, 2004), available for download at http://www.mayispeakfreely.org/nodev/index.php?gSec=doc&doc_id=117).
According to Wolfgang Petritsch
Wolfgang Petritsch
Wolfgang Petritsch is an Austrian diplomat of Slovene ethnicity. He was born to a Carinthian Slovene family in Klagenfurt and spent his childhood in a partially Slovene, partially German-speaking environment. He has a PhD from the University of Vienna and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University...
, UN
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
diplomat and former High Representative
High Representative
High Representative may refer to either:* The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy High Representative may refer to either:* The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy High Representative may refer to either:* The High...
for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the US threatened the UN to withdraw their men from the mission if he protested against the transfer of the Six. The transfer was done by US general John Sylvester
John Sylvester
John "Jack" Sylvester was an officer in the United States Navy who served from the 1930s to the 1960s and rose to the rank of Vice Admiral.-Background:...
, then commandant of the SFOR
SFOR
The Stabilisation Force was a NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force in Bosnia and Herzegovina which was tasked with upholding the Dayton Agreement. It replaced the previous force IFOR...
United Nations forces.
Three British citizens who had been detained in Guantanamo, the "Tipton Three", wrote a 131 page account of their time Guantanamo.
They wrote about the Bosnians:
- "By Bosnians we mean six Algerians who were unlawfully taken from Bosnia to Guantanamo Bay. They told us how they had won their Court case in Bosnia. As they walked out of Court, Americans were there and grabbed them and took them to Camp X-RayCamp X-RayCamp X-Ray was a temporary detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Joint Task Force Guantanamo on the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.The first twenty detainees arrived at Guantanamo on January 11, 2002....
, January 20, 2002. They arrived five days after us. They were treated particularly badly. They were moved every two hours. They were kept naked in their cells. They were taken to interrogation for hours on end. They were short shackled for sometimes days on end. They were deprived of their sleep. They never got letters, nor books, nor reading materials. The Bosnians had the same interrogators for a while as we did and so we knew the names which were the same as ours and they were given a very hard time by those. They told us that the interrogators said if they didn't cooperate that they could ensure that something would happen to their families in Algeria and in Bosnia. They had dual nationality. They had families in Bosnia as well as in Algeria."
The Six
The six men are:| Bensayah Belkacem Bensayah Belkacem Bensayah Belkacem is a citizen of Bosnia, currently held in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.He was born in Algeria, and arrested in his home in Bosnia, on October 8, 2001, shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001.... |
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| Hadj Boudella |
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| Lakhdar Boumediene Lakhdar Boumediene Lakhdar Boumediene, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina was held in military custody in the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba beginning in January 2002.... |
Boumediene v. Bush Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 , was a writ of habeas corpus submission made in a civilian court of the United States on behalf of Lakhdar Boumediene, a naturalized citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina, held in military detention by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camps in Cuba... upheld by a three member Court of Appeals. |
| Sabir Mahfouz Lahmar Sabir Mahfouz Lahmar Sabir Mahfouz Lahmar is a Bosnian citizen, who won his habeas corpus after being eight years and eight months in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba.... |
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| Mustafa Ait Idr |
Karate is a martial art developed in the Ryukyu Islands in what is now Okinawa, Japan. It was developed from indigenous fighting methods called and Chinese kenpō. Karate is a striking art using punching, kicking, knee and elbow strikes, and open-handed techniques such as knife-hands. Grappling, locks,... , and was 1995 Croatia Croatia Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ... n champ. |
| Mohammed Nechle |
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Background
The U.S. Government alleged that six Algerian men living in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzagovina were associated with Abu ZubaydahAbu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen, sentenced to death in Jordan and currently held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Not neutral: Arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, he has been in US custody for more than eight years, four-and-a-half of them spent incommunicado in solitary confinement...
and a plan to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo.
The United States chargé d'affaires reportedly told the prime minister of Bosnia that the U.S. would withdraw its personnel and cut diplomatic relations if Bosnia did not arrest and investigate the Algerian Six. The Algerian Six were arrested by Bosnian authorities within the week, were investigated fully, and tried for the alleged plot to bomb the U.S. and British Embassies in Sarajevo. All six men were released by the Supreme Court of Bosnia for lack of evidence against them. The Human Rights Chamber of the Bosnian Judiciary explicitly ruled that the government must take all steps to prevent their forcible deportation, as well. However, upon leaving the courthouse they were apprehended by U.S. officials and taken to Guantanamo Bay. Wolfgang Petritsch, the international community’s top official in Bosnia at the time remembers being told by Bosnian leaders that the U.S. applied a lot of pressure on Bosnia to be allowed to take the Algerian Six to Guantanamo. In fact, Wolfgang states that the U.S. conveyed to him they would remove their support for an international mission he was leading if Bosnia didn’t comply.
Since the capture of the six men by the United States, the Bosnian government has argued for their release from Guantanamo Bay. In November 2008, Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court in Washington DC ruled all of the men except Bensayah Belkacem were being held illegally.
Melissa Hoffer's interviews
Melissa HofferMelissa Hoffer
Melissa Hoffer is a lawyer specializing in environmental law.She is currently the New Hampshire Advocacy Center Director for the Conservation Law Foundation.Hoffer graduated from Northeastern University's School of Law in 1998....
,
Stephen Oleskey,
Rob Kirsch,
Mark C. Fleming,
Lynne Campbell Soutter, Jeffrey Gleason, Lauren Brunswick, and Allyson Portney., each from the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr
Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, which also goes by the shorter market name WilmerHale, is an American law firm with twelve offices across the USA, Europe and Asia. It was created in 2004 through the merger of the Boston-based firm Hale and Dorr and the Washington-based firm Wilmer Cutler...
, traveled to Guantanamo to volunteer their services to the Bosnians.
Hoffer delivered a speech at the 17th Concours International de Plaidoiries.
She said that during her interviews the Bosnians described horrific treatment.
The USA drops the allegation of a plot to bomb the US Embassy in Sarajevo
The Washington Post published a profile of the six Bosnians.The profile reported that the allegations the men faced during their Administrative Review Board
Administrative Review Board
The Administrative Review Board is a United States military body that conducts an annual review of the suspects held by the United States in Camp Delta in the United States Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba....
hearings dropped the accusation that the men had been plotting to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo.
The article reports the speculation that the men remain in detention because the Bush administration is unwilling to undergo the embarrassment of admitting it held the men for four years and never had any real evidence against them.
The article reports some of the new justifications Guantanamo intelligence analysts offered for continuing to detain the men following the abandonment of the claim the men plotted to bomb the US embassy, including:
- Mustafa Idr had taught Karate to Bosnian orphans.
- Another detainee, during his compulsory military service, when he still lived in Algeria, over ten years ago, had served as an army cook.
- "Boudella was accused ... of joining bin Laden and Taliban fighters at Tora Bora, Afghanistan,.. in December 2001. In fact, at the time, Boudella was locked up thousands of miles away in Sarajevo, after his arrest in the later-discredited embassy plot."
- A ring Boudella wore a ring "similar to those that identified the Red Rose Group members of Hamas," Boudella's wife has obtained an affidavit from the jeweller where the ring was purchased, explaining that this style of ring is extremely popular in Bosnia.
The article reports a confusing story of Bush administration negotiators trying to secure face-saving deals with Bosnia and Algeria. According to the article:
- "U.S. officials have pressed Algeria to take back the prisoners on the condition that they be confined or kept under surveillance there. So far, the Algerian government has balked."
- "Senior Bosnian officials said they have been told by U.S. diplomats that the six Algerians will never be allowed to return to Bosnia, which had granted dual citizenship to most of the men before their seizure. Instead, U.S. officials have pressed Algeria to take back the prisoners on the condition that they be confined or kept under surveillance there."
- Bosnian Prime Minister Adnan Terzic requested Condoleezza Rice arrange the return of the men in a letter dated February 2, 2005.
- On March 17, 2005 Rice replied the men could not be freed because "they still possess important intelligence data." Rice also said they still represent a threat to the USA.
- "Three months later, the State Department offered a somewhat different explanation.., Matthew A. ReynoldsMatthew A. ReynoldsMatthew A. Reynolds served as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs from to . Prior to this appointment he served as the bureau's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and intermittently as Acting Assistant Secretary beginning in March 2005....
, acting assistant secretary for legislative affairs, explained that the Algerians could not be released in part because the Bosnian government 'has not indicated that it is prepared or willing to accept responsibility for them upon transfer'." - "Justice Minister Slobodan Kovac said there would be no legal basis to place the men under arrest or surveillance if they were returned to Bosnia because they have already been exonerated there. 'There is no case against them here in Bosnia, no criminal case,' he said."
The article points out that even though the Bush administration has declined to discuss any real evidence they may have against the men that Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant Commander is a commissioned officer rank in many navies. The rank is superior to a lieutenant and subordinate to a commander...
J.D. Gordon stated:
- "There was no mistake in originally detaining these individuals as enemy combatants. Their detention was directly related to their combat activities as determined by an appropriate Defense Department official before they were ever transferred to Guantanamo."
Release
On 21 October 2008 US District Court Judge Richard J. LeonRichard J. Leon
Richard J. Leon is an American lawyer and current federal judge. He has served as a judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia since 2002.-Early life and education:Leon was born in South Natick, Massachusetts...
ordered the release of the 5 Algerians held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the continued detention of a sixth, Belkacem Bensayah. The Court ruled: "To allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with this court's obligation; the court must and will grant their petitions and order their release. This is a unique case. Few if any others will be factually like it. Nobody should be lulled into a false sense that all of the ... cases will look like this one."
Three of the six men were released and flown to Bosnia late in the fall of 2008, leaving three behind in Guantanamo, two rejected by Bosnia and fearing for their lives in Algeria, one, Belkacar, still detained as a terrorist.
On March 3, 2009, El Khabar
El Khabar
Elkhabar is a daily newspaper in Algeria published seven days a week in the tabloid format. It's one of the most widely read Algerian newspapers....
reported that the Bush administration forced the men to sign undertakings that they would not sue the US government for their kidnapping, before they would be released.
External links
- Algerians, freed from Guantanamo, still paying the price
- (dead link) Bosnia: Algerian Trial Jeopardised, Institute for War and Peace ReportingInstitute for War and Peace ReportingInstitute for War & Peace Reporting is an international media development charity, established in 1991. It runs major programmes in Afghanistan, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, the Balkans, Congo DRC, Tunisia and Uganda...
, December 7, 2001