Innocent men, imprisoned and tortured. Any apology?
"Algerian says US didn't probe him on terrorism" by Daria Sito-Sucic, Reuters | December 19, 2008
SARAJEVO - An Algerian man who spent nearly seven years in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay said his interrogators never questioned him on the main terrorism allegation against him.
Tracks back to one of our own agents does it?
Mustafa Ait Idir, who was freed this week and returned to his adopted homeland of Bosnia, was accused of planning to go to Afghanistan to fight against US forces. "They've never asked anything about charges which were brought against us. They've never asked about Afghanistan," he said in an interview.
"They only questioned me about Islamic organizations working in Bosnia. . . . I've spent many years in the worst place on earth for doing nothing."
Opponents of Guantanamo - the US prison in Cuba that the president-elect, Barack Obama, has vowed to close - say hundreds of inmates have been held there for years on flimsy legal pretexts. Only 22 have been charged: one pleaded guilty, two were convicted at trial, and 19 cases are still pending.
Ait Idir was one of six men arrested in Bosnia in October 2001 and sent three months later to Guantanamo, despite having been freed by a Bosnian court for lack of evidence.
Held as enemy combatants, they were never formally charged. Last month, a federal judge ruled that five of the men should be released "forthwith."
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