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Demonstrators in front of the White House in Washington, DC are demanding the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp
Photo: STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP
After almost 20 years in prison, the USA has transferred a prisoner from the Guantánamo camp to Algeria.
The US Department of Defense said it was Algerian citizen Sufiyan Barhoumi.
In 2002 he was taken to the camp at the US military base in Cuba on charges of conspiring with the Islamist organization al-Qaeda.
It said his detention was no longer necessary.
The Algerian government has assured the US Department of Defense that Barhoumi will be treated humanely there and that security measures will be taken to reduce the risk that he could pose a threat in the future.
Barhoumi was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and taken to the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The US eventually found that he was linked to various extremist groups, but was not a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban, according to a prison review board report.
Therefore, in 2016, the committee approved his release.
US authorities attempted to prosecute Barhoumi in 2008, but efforts were halted due to legal challenges to the original version of the military commission system established under President George W. Bush.
The U.S. Department of Justice said then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter under former U.S. President Barack Obama denied Barhoumi's release on January 12, 2017, "due to a variety of concerns shared by multiple agencies," with no further details to call.
"Our government owes Sufiyan Barhoumi and his mother years of their lives"
Barhoumi, who lost four fingers in a landmine blast in Afghanistan, offered to plead guilty in 2012 in the hopes he could receive a set sentence and go back to his elderly mother, according to his attorney Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Constitutional Rights.
"Our government owes Sufyian and his mother years of their lives," Kadidal said.
"I'm over the moon that he will be home with his family, but I will greatly miss his constant good humor and sensitivity to the suffering of others in the extremely depressing environment of Guantánamo."
According to US figures, there are now 37 of the up to 800 prisoners in Guantánamo.
Some of them have been held there for almost two decades without trial or charge.
The prison was set up by the United States to arrest foreign suspects in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States that killed around 3,000 people.
The United States blames an al-Qaeda network for the attacks.
Guantánamo became a symbol of the once excessive "war on terror" policy of the USA, which was initiated by then-President George W. Bush after the attacks.
The camp's inmates were subjected to what critics have said amounted to torture.
Efforts to relocate Guantanamo prisoners have been scaled back under ex-US President Donald Trump.
US President Joe Biden's administration is again planning to reduce the number of inmates at Guantanamo as part of an effort to close the facility.
jso/AP/Reuters