U.S. judge orders release of 5 of the 6 'Bosnian Algerians' detained in Guantanamo

[TonyStarks]

BELGRADE, Feb. 1 (Xinhuanet) -- The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Monday asked the US administration to release four Bosnian citizens held in the US military detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reports from Sarajevo said.

The government said in a statement that the four men, all Algerians with Bosnian citizenship, were arrested in October 2001 by the Bosnian police on suspected involvement in planning attacks on US and British embassies in Sarajevo and connection with al-Qaida. But the four were freed soon due to lack of evidence.

The Bosnia government arrested the four again in January 2002 at the request of the US government and transferred them to the US prison in Guantanamo.

In 2003, Bosnia's human rights tribunal announced that the Bosnian authorities trampled on human rights when the four were transferred to the United States without enough evidence. Enditem

[Algerian_Mafia]

algerians with bosnian citizenship? wow you learn something new everyday!

[Al-khiyal]

ISN SECURITY WATCH (Monday, 19 June 2006: 09.48 CET) – Bosnia and Herzegovina formally has acknowledged to the Council of Europe that it allowed US forces to seize six Algerian-born men and transfer them to Guantanamo even after a local court acquitted them due to lack of evidence.

Bosnia is the only one of the council's 46 members to acknowledge it had breached the European Convention on Human Rights by participating in an extrajudicial seizure of individuals by the US.

The Council of Europe's human rights committee has accused more than 20 countries of colluding with the CIA's controversial "extraordinary rendition flights" and secret prisons.

On 7 June, the committee released a report saying that "European states played an active or passive role in the network run by the CIA and were not unwitting victims of the operation.”

The report named Poland and Romania for running secret CIA prison. It also said Germany, Turkey, Spain, and Cyprus were "staging points" for illegal CIA rendition flights. Ireland, Britain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy were named as being "stopovers" for flights involving the illegal transfer of detainees. The report named Sweden, Bosnia, Britain, Macedonia, Germany, and Turkey in connection to illegal CIA activities in relation to specific individual cases.

The US has conceded that some terror suspects have been flown overseas for interrogation, but that the host countries had guaranteed they would not be tortured.

Last month, EU investigators said they believed 30 to 50 people had been handed over by the US since the 11 September 2001 attacks on Washington and New York. In April, a parliamentary report said the CIA ran more than 1,000 secret flights in and out of Europe since 2001.

In April last year, lawyers for six Algerian men arrested in Bosnia and detained at the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp as "enemy combatants" sued the US government, claiming that their clients have been abused and tortured during their detainment.

All six men have Bosnian citizenship.

The six Algerians were accused in late 2001 of planning an attack against the US and British embassies in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. In January 2002, a Bosnian court cleared them of all charges, citing lack of evidence. But just hours before releasing them from custody, Bosnian authorities were pressured to hand them over to US authorities. The US then transferred them to Guantanamo.

Unlike other Guantanamo detainees, the case of the “Algerian Group” is unique in that the six were not captured in combat in Afghanistan.

In February last year, their wives organized protests in Sarajevo, calling on the Bosnian authorities to demand their release from Guantanamo.

In March last year, Bosnian authorities sent an official request to the US for the release of the six men, but US authorities rejected the request. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the US still considered the men potential security threats.

All six Algerian men fought on the Bosnian Muslim side in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. After the war, they married Bosnian women, gained Bosnian citizenship, and worked for Muslim humanitarian organizations.

Bosnia confirms illegal handover of Algerians

[phylay]

ARAJEVO, 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.

Ya hasra 3la ennif DZ

[Al-khiyal]

Mohamed Nechla

November 21, 2006 · Since 2004, the U.S. military has been holding tribunals to determine whether the suspected terrorists held at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are enemy combatants. The hearings are closed to the public and have been widely criticized as flawed and unfair.

NPR has obtained audio recordings of some of the tribunals from lawyers for six of the detainees. Some of the detainees' voices were heard earlier in a story on Morning Edition. Now, we listen in on the hearing for another detainee, Mohamed Nechla.

Nechla's hearing took place on the afternoon of Oct. 19, 2004. An Algerian by birth, Nechla had been held at the military detention camp for almost three years. He had been interrogated but never charged. The tribunal was his opportunity to hear and address some of the accusations against him.

In the recordings, Nechla is heard telling the military panel that in the fall of 2001, he and five other Algerians were arrested in Bosnia on suspicion of plotting to blow up the U.S. and British embassies in Sarajevo. The six men had lived in Bosnia for about a decade, were married and had children. Nechla says the men spent three months in prison, until Bosnia's Supreme Court acquitted them and ordered their release from jail.

"When we came out of prison, we were surprised that we were handed over to the American forces that are present in Bosnia," Nechla said. "We were bound by our hands and our feet, and we were treated the worst treatment. For 36 hours without food, sleep, water or anything."

At his tribunal, Nechla heard the accusations against him: that he is a suspected terrorist with ties to an Algerian armed Islamic group, and that he is suspected of having links to al-Qaida. Other allegations against Nechla include having an alias.

Nechla asks for four witnesses to appear at his hearing. Three are other Guantanamo detainees with whom he was arrested. The fourth is his supervisor at the Red Crescent Society in Bosnia. The tribunal president says there's been a problem locating the supervisor in Sarajevo.

The military panel questions Nechla about his schooling, his friends, work and the organizations he belonged to. The panel asks him if he was associated with al-Qaida or had ever traveled to Afghanistan. Nechla professes his innocence regularly to the military officers, and he challenges them on the tribunal process. Only a small fraction of the detainees who went before the tribunal have been found not to be enemy combatants.

"So I just want to ask, have you found anyone innocent yet?'" Nechla asks through a translator. "And if you haven't, there's no need for these tribunals. Just say everyone is an enemy combatant."

Listening in on detainee hearings

Audio: Mohamed Nechla hearing, October 19th 2004

Article contains links to additional audio material relating to other Algerian prisoners, plus link to declassified documents in the case of the 'Algerian Six'

[FORTUNATO]

Actually They Are More Than Six, Imagine Most Of The Students In Ex Yougoslavia Join The Bosnian Forces, And They Fight Very Well Against Serbs, But After These Bosnians Got Freedom, They Send/sold These Poor Student To Us Army, Simple Because They Has A Arabic Written Pass...

[Al-khiyal]

STUTTGART, Germany, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- A German public broadcaster reports the rendition of four U.S. terror suspects from Bosnia to a Cuban prison was organized by U.S. troops in Germany.

ARD aired a report Monday saying the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart organized the flights of six Algerian prisoners seized in Bosnia to Turkey, and then on to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in January 2002.

While the men never set foot in Germany, conspiracy to commit human rights violations in Europe is a crime under European law, Deutsche Welle reported.

The broadcaster said it had viewed EUCOM documents backing up the allegations, which Manfred Nowak, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said was reason enough for an inquiry by German authorities.

"Of course this would be a case for the German prosecutor's office, as it happened in Germany and was coordinated from Germany," Nowak said.

EUCOM officials declined to comment on the report, Deutsche Welle said.

German link alleged in U.S. renditions