| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Court Bars Detainee Transfer to Algeria |
| 2008-01-02 |
| A federal appeals court Monday blocked the Bush administration from transferring a detainee at Guantanamo Bay to Algeria, where the prisoner says his life would be in danger from the government and al-Qaida. The appeals court is stopping any transfer while it considers Ahmed Belbacha's request that he not be returned to his home country. Belbacha was brought to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 from Pakistan. He had been an accountant at the Algerian government's oil company, Sonatrach. Belbacha said that after he was recalled for a second term of service in the Algerian army, 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 said 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 taken into custody and sent to Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. military has classified Belbacha as an enemy combatant, saying he associated with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The U.S. government said he is eligible for transfer subject to appropriate diplomatic arrangements for another country to take him. Belbacha's lawyer, David Remes, said he went to court after hearing from a confidential source that Belbacha was to be sent to Algeria. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 Why is the Federal court allowed to intervene? Because it gave itself that power. That sort of stuff happens when government is not accountable, by law [which they make up or ignore as they choose] or by fact, to the people. They've been doing a lot of that stuff for fifty years. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-01-02 10:57 |
| #2 This guy has the smell of GIA about him. Instead of being "threatened" by them he was one of them. When he was called up by the army, he concocted a bulls*it story about being targeted by the GIA. Hello!!! Algiers has an army, was every one in the army "threatened". In 1999 he went to France, but France was coming down hard on GIA . So he did a runner to the UK. There he applied for asylum, however he had more urgent concern than his asylum application: "Mr Belbacha claims that in July 2001 he was persuaded by friends to go to Pakistan to undertake religious study. While there he crossed the border into Afghanistan." Bingo, proof positive he was an Islamic fundamentalist, and everything else was taqiya. "When the US-led invasion began in response to the September 11 attacks he crossed back into Pakistan. He claims that in December 2001 he was apprehended by villagers near Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, and sold to the authorities for a bounty." Send him back to Algiers and let them do to him what the GIA has been doing to the ordinary people. Why is the Federal court allowed to intervene? He is not a US citizen. |
| Posted by: tipper 2008-01-02 08:38 |
| #1 Maybe he could move in with Alec Baldwin or Vanessa Redgrave, depending on his choice of climate. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2008-01-02 06:54 |