[NYTr] Captive at Gitmo Gulag Seeks to Block His Transfer to Algeria

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

ssent by MichaelP


[This points to flaws in the legal concepts of nationality on the one 
hand and sovereignty on the other. Persons released from Gitmo must
leave ( ie must be rendered to some other country ) - but if the only
country that will have you because you're a citizen also threatens to
torture you what then? What happened to being a citizen of the world?-M]

AP via Findlaw - Dec 6, 2007
http://news.lp.findlaw.com/ap/o/51/12-07-2007/e35100280d85ce00.html


Judges question whether Gitmo detainee is entitled to have transfer 
blocked for now

(AP) - WASHINGTON-A federal appeals court is zeroing in on the problem of 
Guantanamo Bay in reverse: detainees in U.S. custody who want out but do 
not want to be sent home.

Ahmed Belbacha is not happy to be at Guantanamo Bay, but neither is he 
happy about the alternative he says was chosen for him by the U.S. 
government, Algeria, where Belbacha says he would be tortured.

Belbacha's lawyer, David Remes, asked a three-judge panel to block any 
plans  the  Bush  administration might have for moving his client into 
Algerian  custody  until the Supreme Court decides a case covering all 
Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

On  Wednesday,  the Supreme Court debated whether the detainees at the 
U.S.  naval  prison  in  Cuba  have  the  right to take their cases to 
federal courts. A decision is expected in the spring.

There are other Guantanamo Bay cases with similarities to Belbacha's.

In  October,  a  federal  judge blocked the Pentagon from transferring 
detainee Mohammed Abdul Rahman to Tunisia. The government has notified the 
court  it  intends  to  appeal  the  judge's decision in favor of Rahman, 
who says he would be tortured there.

Jamil  el-Banna  has  been facing the possibility of being returned to 
Jordan, where he says he was tortured in the 1990s and would be again. 
El-Banna  also  has lived legally in England, and negotiations between the 
United  States  and Britain are under way for his possible return there 
instead of to Jordan. He was taken into custody five years ago.

Lawyers  for  another  detainee, Abu Abdul Rauf Zalita, are seeking to 
block  his transfer to Libya, arguing he would face torture if he were to 
be  returned  there. Zalita says he married an Afghan citizen, and after 
the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he and his pregnant wife fled to 
Pakistan where he was handed over to U.S. authorities for a bounty.

Guantanamo  Bay  is  not  the  only  place where people in custody are 
resisting  being  sent  somewhere  else. Two naturalized U.S. citizens 
held  in  Baghdad  and  an  Afghan held at the Bagram military base in 
Afghanistan   are  resisting  efforts  to  turn  them  over  to  local 
authorities.  On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether it 
will hear the cases of the two naturalized U.S. citizens.

In  Belbacha's  case, the U.S. military has classified him as an enemy 
combatant,  while  saying  he  is  eligible  for  transfer  subject to 
appropriate  diplomatic  arrangements for another country to take him. 
Remes,  his  lawyer,  says  he  went  to  court  after  hearing from a 
confidential  source  the  U.S. government planned to turn him over to 
Algeria.

Belbacha  was  brought to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 from Pakistan. He had 
been  an  accountant  at  the  government-owned oil company Sonatrach. 
Recalled  for  a second term of military service in the Algerian army, 
Belbacha  says  he  was  targeted  with death threats by terrorists in 
Groupe  Islamique  Armee, then at the height of a violent campaign for an 
Islamic Algeria.

Belbacha never reported for duty, but he says the GIA visited his home at 
least twice and threatened him and his family. He left the country, 
traveling  to  France,  England, Pakistan and Afghanistan before being 
sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Belbacha's lawyer faced a tough reception at the U.S. Court of Appeals for 
the District of Columbia Circuit, where Judge A. Raymond Randolph seemed 
unwilling to block a possible transfer to Algeria.

Randolph,  an  appointee  of  President  George H.W. Bush, the current 
president's  father, wrote the opinion in February closing the door on the 
detainees' access to federal courts, prompting prisoners' lawyers to take 
their cases to the Supreme Court.

Another  judge  on the Belbacha case, Judge Thomas Griffith, expressed 
doubts  about  intervening  in  a  possible transfer based on the mere 
possibility that the Supreme Court will decide in the detainees' favor 
months down the road.

"Are   we  supposed  to  divine"  how  the  justices  will  rule  from 
Wednesday's Supreme Court arguments? asked Griffith, who was appointed to 
the appeals court two years ago by President George W. Bush.

The judges questioned the Justice Department lawyer about how imminent 
Belbacha's departure from Guantanamo Bay might be.

"Is  there  any  current  plan  to transfer this individual?" Randolph 
asked.

"We  can't  comment,"  Justice  Department  lawyer  Catherine  Hancock 
replied.

The   third  member  of  the  panel,  Chief  Judge  Douglas  Ginsburg, 
speculated  about  a possible alternative to Algeria, referring to the 
cases  of  five  Chinese  Muslims given refuge in Albania because they 
feared being put to death or tortured if returned to China.

Picked  up during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Uighur Muslims are 
suspected by their government of being members of a group waging a 
separatist campaign in China's northwestern Muslim region.