6 Kidnapped Algerians Languish in Gitmo Gulag

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6 Kidnapped Algerians Languish in Gitmo Gulag

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The Washington Post - Aug 21, 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/20/AR2006082000660_pf.html

At Guantanamo, Caught in a Legal Trap

6 Algerians Languish Despite Foreign Rulings, Dropped Charges

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service

SARAJEVO, Bosnia -- On Jan. 18, 2002, six men suspected of plotting
to attack the U.S. Embassy were seized here by U.S. troops and flown
to Cuba, where they became some of the first arrivals at the
Pentagon's new prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The seizure was ordered by senior U.S. officials in defiance of
rulings by top courts in Bosnia that the men were entitled to their
freedom and could not be deported. Today, more than four years later,
the six remain locked up at Guantanamo, even though the original
allegations about the embassy attack have been discredited and
dropped, records show.

In 2004, Bosnian prosecutors and police formally exonerated the six
men after a lengthy criminal investigation. Last year, the Bosnian
prime minister asked the Bush administration to release them, calling
the case a miscarriage of justice.

The men came from Algeria to Bosnia during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
Most were former Muslim fighters who became humanitarian aid workers
after the war. They remain imprisoned because the U.S. military still
classifies them as "enemy combatants" in the fight against terrorism.
A review of thousands of pages of military and civilian court
documents, however, shows that many reasons given for the designation
are based on flawed or dubious evidence.

The case illustrates how difficult it will be to meet President
Bush's stated goal to close Guantanamo as quickly as possible. About
450 detainees remain. While some face military commissions that could
sentence them to long prison terms, most are expected to be released
to their home countries.

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. So far, the Algerian government has balked.

The detainees and their lawyers say they are caught in a trap. They
contend that the Pentagon knows the men are not guilty but is
unwilling to let them go free because that would be an acknowledgment
of a grave error.

"The Americans did not want to return me to Bosnia. Why? Because the
Americans claimed to have evidence against me. I can't be returned
and found innocent," Mustafa Ait Idr, one of the six Algerians, told
a military tribunal at Guantanamo in October 2004, according to a
transcript of the hearing.

"So now I am sitting here in Cuba and I do not know why. I do not
know what is happening outside; I do not know. But what I do know is
that this is a game."

A Post-Sept. 11 Roundup

In early October 2001, the United States was still reeling from the
shock of the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. intelligence agents around the
globe worked frantically to chase down leads about Islamic radicals
who might pose a threat.

Bosnia was seen as a potential haven. Large numbers of Muslim
volunteer fighters had remained in the country, marrying Bosnian
women, after the war. Some worked for Islamic charities, which U.S.
investigators believed were often fronts for money-laundering rackets
by terrorist groups.

One foreign fighter whom intelligence operatives wanted to find was
an Algerian known only by the nickname Abu Maali. A veteran of
conflicts in Algeria, Afghanistan and the Balkans, he was thought to
be close to al-Qaeda.

On Oct. 8, 2001, Bosnian police detained an Algerian, Belkacem
Bensayah, who they believed might be Abu Maali. While searching his
home, they found a piece of notepaper that listed, in a handwritten
scrawl, what appeared to be a phone number in Pakistan and the name
"Abu Zubeida."

The scrap of paper was considered a vital piece of evidence. It
seemed to match the name of one of al-Qaeda's top leaders, a
Palestinian named Abu Zubaydah, who had fought in the Balkans and was
at the time serving alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Bensayah told police he had never before seen the note, which was
found inside a borrowed library book, "The Tragedy of Immorality."
Bosnian and U.S. investigators didn't believe him.

Later, U.S. investigators asserted they had phone records indicating
Bensayah had called Afghanistan 70 times after Sept. 11 and accused
him of being "the top al Qaeda facilitator" in Bosnia, court
documents show. The phone records have not been publicly disclosed.

Police turned their attention to an acquaintance of their lead
suspect, another Algerian, Saber Lahmar. A worker for a Saudi aid
agency in Bosnia, the Saudi High Committee for Relief, Lahmar had
another intriguing connection: His father-in-law had recently been
hired as a janitor at the U.S. Embassy.

On Oct. 16, U.S. intelligence officers listened in on a wiretap they
had placed on Lahmar's phone. According to court records, they heard
him speaking "in code" about what they thought was a plan to attack
the U.S. and British embassies in Sarajevo.

The next day, U.S. diplomats and officials from the CIA and FBI met
with their Bosnian counterparts. The Americans told the Bosnians that
they had closed the embassy for security reasons and made clear they
wanted more arrests, according to Bosnian officials present at the
meeting.

Over the next week, Bosnian police arrested Lahmar and four other
Algerians: Ait Idr, Hadj Boudella, Mohamed Nechle and Lahkdar
Boumediene. Most of the men have said they were friends who had met
through their charity work.

Srdjan Dizdarevic, president of the Bosnian chapter of the Helsinki
Committee for Human Rights, said U.S. officials exerted heavy
pressure to round up suspects, threatening to withdraw U.S.
peacekeeping troops if Bosnian officials didn't act.

"There was not a single piece of credible evidence against the
Algerians," Dizdarevic recalled. "The Bosnian authorities couldn't
find anything, and the Americans didn't turn over anything to back up
their claims. But the threats from the Americans were enormous. There
was a hysteria in their behavior."

Vijay Padmanabhan, a lawyer in the State Department's legal office
for political and military affairs, confirmed that U.S. officials met
with the Bosnians to discuss the embassy closing.

"We didn't threaten or intimidate the Bosnians into arresting these
men," he said. "We provided the Bosnian government with intelligence
information, and they took what they felt was the appropriate action
based on that information." He declined to provide further details.

Court Orders Ignored

After finding the note in the library book, investigators had trouble
finding evidence that would stand up in court.

Phone records revealed no calls from Bensayah's home to the phone
number attributed to Abu Zubaydah, according to Bosnian judicial
documents. U.S. officials declined to provide Bosnian investigators
with transcripts of their own wiretaps, saying that could compromise
spying methods.

On Jan. 17, 2002, the Bosnian Supreme Court ordered the release of
the six Algerians, ruling that there was not enough evidence to
warrant their detention. The same day, the Bosnian Human Rights
Chamber issued a separate decision that the men had the right to
remain in Bosnia and could not be deported.

By then, rumors had swirled for days that U.S. peacekeeping troops
would seize the Algerians anyway.

As dusk fell, an angry crowd of more than 150 people surrounded the
prison in Sarajevo. A Muslim radio station urged listeners to turn
out to protect the men. Scuffles broke out with police, who dispersed
the crowd.

Shortly before dawn on Jan. 18, the Algerians were officially
released from Bosnian custody. But instead of gaining their freedom,
they were handed over by Bosnian police to U.S. military personnel.

"The only way out was to deliver them" to the Americans, said Alija
Behmen, Bosnia's prime minister at the time, in an interview. "We
were not interested in introducing a new period of instability in
Bosnia."

Other officials said the decision caused lasting harm to efforts to
solidify the rule of law in a fragile nation trying to recover from
civil war.

Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said it was
especially disturbing that the Bosnian and U.S. governments ignored
the order of the Bosnian Human Rights Chamber. Nowak noted that the
United States had played an instrumental role in creating the human
rights court as part of the international effort to rebuild Bosnia.

"There was a clear order not to deport them from Bosnia. The U.S.
government totally ignored it," Nowak said. "It's implausible to say
they are enemy combatants. They were fighters during the Bosnian war,
but that ended in 1995. They may be radical Islamists, but they have
definitely not committed any crime."

Shifting Allegations

At Guantanamo, the Algerians entered a military justice system where
the rules allow hearsay and other uncorroborated evidence to be used
as justification for keeping an inmate imprisoned.

The men waited more than 2 1/2 years before they got judicial
hearings. In October 2004, a U.S. military tribunal held a hearing to
examine the evidence against Hadj Boudella and decide whether he
should be classified as an enemy combatant.

Prosecutors accused him of being "associated with al Qaeda" and
having connections to other Islamic radical groups, including the
Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, known by its initials in French, GIA.
It was also noted that Boudella had been arrested on suspicion of
plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, although there was
no mention that Bosnian officials had exonerated him of that claim.

The basis for the new accusations, some of which were classified, was
not disclosed at the hearing. Tribunal members acknowledged they were
just as confused as the detainees about the origin of some of the
allegations.

"At this point, we don't know why you are being accused of being a
member of the Armed Islamic Group," one military officer, whose name
was redacted from the tribunal transcript, told Boudella. "Do you
have any idea why you are being connected with this group?"

"I don't know," Boudella replied. "I've been here for three years and
these accusations were just told to me."

In his defense, Boudella asked if the military tribunal could submit
as evidence the Bosnian Supreme Court ruling that ordered his release
from the Sarajevo jail, as well as a subsequent Bosnian human rights
court decision awarding him $6,000 in damages on grounds that the
Bosnian government had illegally deported him to Guantanamo. The
documents, he said, would prove his innocence.

U.S. military officers said they had searched for the documents but
that they were "unable to be located." At the time, however, the
documents were readily available both on the Internet and in U.S.
District Court files in Washington, according to the American defense
lawyers representing the Algerians.

At the conclusion of the tribunal in October 2004, Boudella -- like
the five other Algerians who were in separate hearings that month --
was declared an enemy combatant.

Since then, the military has conducted annual reviews of the six
men's status.

Each time, court officers have upheld the original decision.

Records from tribunal sessions in December 2005 show the U.S.
military is no longer accusing the Algerians of conspiring to attack
the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. No explanation for the change is given.

The military has listed other factors in its decision to label the
men a security threat.

One detainee was judged a threat in part because he was a karate
expert and had taught martial arts to Bosnian orphans, tribunal
records show. He was also classified as potentially dangerous because
he was familiar with computers.

Another detainee was flagged because he had performed mandatory
service in the Algerian army more than a decade ago, as a cook.

Boudella was accused by the U.S. military of joining bin Laden and
Taliban fighters at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, the mountain hideout
where the al-Qaeda leadership escaped from U.S. forces 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.

One fresh allegation filed against Boudella last year was that he
wore a ring "similar to those that identified the Red Rose Group
members of Hamas," the radical Palestinian movement, according to
tribunal records.

Boudella's wife, Nadja Dizdarevic, responded in an interview that the
ring is a common anniversary band worn by thousands of Bosnian
Muslims. She said she obtained an affidavit from the jeweler in
Sarajevo where he bought the ring and submitted it to the U.S.
military in hopes that they will drop the charge at his next hearing.

"If it is a mark of belonging to Hamas, then 98 percent of the
Bosnian Muslims belong to Hamas," she said. "For every claim they
make against him, I have proof to show them they are wrong, so they
have to invent something new."

The Defense Department declined to answer specific questions about
the case, saying that some evidence against the men remains
classified.

But a Pentagon spokesman defended the decision to apprehend the six
Algerians.

"There was no mistake in originally detaining these individuals as
enemy combatants," said Navy Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon. "Their detention
was directly related to their combat activities as determined by an
appropriate Defense Department official before they were ever
transferred to Guantanamo."

State Dept. Responds

On Feb. 2, 2005, Bosnian Prime Minister Adnan Terzic wrote a letter
to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking that the Algerians
be returned to Bosnia.

"I took it for granted that it was the responsibility of this
government to try to bring these people back," Terzic said in an
interview.

Rice responded on March 17 that it was not possible to free the six
Algerians because "they still possess important intelligence data"
and pose a threat to the security of the United States.

Three months later, the State Department offered a somewhat different
explanation. In a letter to U.S. Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.),
Matthew A. Reynolds, 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."

Bosnian officials said they received no such offer. They express
frustration over the lack of action.

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.

[News researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.]

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