European Governments Asked to Help US Close Guantanamo (Deutsche Welle)

[struggle4progress]

Civil Rights | 11.11.2008

... “We have to remember that the US does not admit they’ve made a mistake,” said Cori Crider, a staff attorney for the London-based charity Reprieve, which offers legal counsel to 35 or so of the detainees. “They hand over the prisoner along with his file. These untested, unproven allegations follow our clients back to their home countries ...

Together with other human rights NGOs, Amnesty International is calling on European governments to help prevent further human rights violations by taking in those nationals most vulnerable to persecution if returned to their home countries.

“There are at least 50 detainees that the US will not or does not want to charge but they cannot transfer them to their home countries,” said <Daniel Gorevan, a campaign manager with Amnesty International>. Nationals of China, Algeria, Tunisia, Russia and Uzbekistan were pointed out as especially at risk.

As proof of this heightened risk, Crider told the story of Abdullah bin Omar al Hadi, one of her clients who was released from Guantanamo and returned to Tunisia, despite his lawyer’s warning to the US that al Hadi would be tortured upon his return. On the day of his arrival, al Hadi was taken to the Ministry of Interior in Tunis, arrested, hit, drugged and threatened with the rape of his wife and daughter ...

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3780756,00.html