When Guantánamo is safer than home

Abdul Ra'ouf Omar Mohammad Abu Al-Qassim has been held without charge at the US detention facility in Guantánamo Bay for more than five years. During that time, the Libyan national faced false and unsubstantiated charges linking him to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an organization hostile to the country's leader, Muammar Al-Qaddafi. Now the US wants to send him back home, and Al-Qassim has become the first "enemy combatant" to publicly fight his departure from Guantánamo. The US government publicly declared its intention to transfer Al-Qassim back to Libya in December 2006, and again in February 2007, after allegations linking him to the LIFG proved false. Human rights organizations claim that if Al-Qassim is forcibly returned to Libya, he faces the risk of indefinite detention, torture and possible death because of the erroneous links to the LIFG. Human Rights Watch, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), whose lawyers represent Al-Qassim, have sought to block his imminent return. Several Libyan nationals could be transferred from Guantánamo as early as next week, according to a recent report from the Washington Post. "There are some indications that there will be a flight of Libyans leaving Guantánamo, and we're very concerned Al-Qassim will be on that plane," said Jen Daskal of Human Rights Watch. Calls to the US Department of Defense seeking comment were not returned. Daskal also revealed the name of another Libyan detainee named Omar Mohammad Khalifh, who faces a similar situation as Al-Qassim. There are about 80 to 90 Guantánamo detainees waiting to be released, of which at least 34 are designated for release to a country that maintains a poor human rights record, according Shayan Khadidal, a lawyer with CCR who represents Al-Qassim. CCR, a New York-based human rights legal group, represents between 250 and 270 of the 380 detainees currently being held. Al-Qassim was reportedly seized by bounty hunters in Pakistan and handed over to the US during the invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 2001. He claims he was conscripted into the Libyan army when he was 18 years old, but deserted after he began to experience psychological problems. During the next 10 years, Al-Qassim lived as a refugee to avoid being sent back to Libya. He married an Afghani woman and settled in the Afghan capital of Kabul until the US bombardment in October 2001. He fled with his pregnant wife to seek refuge in Pakistan until he was turned over to military authorities and brought to Guantánamo, where he was detained without trial. His wife and daughter remain in Afghanistan. The only thing linking Al-Qassim to the LIFG is that he once lived in a house in Pakistan with some men accused of being members of the organization, according to Khadidal. "He denied ever being a member of the group, and he was living in the house because he had no other options," said Khadidal. "The reality is that he was captured by some folks and sold to the US under the pretense of being a terrorist." The LIFG was founded in 1995 by Libyan nationals who had fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. In December 2004, the US designated the group as a terrorist organization because of its links to the archetypal terrorist group al-Qaida, as well as its intention to overthrow the Qaddafi government. Al-Qassim's attorneys are currently pursuing another strategy to block the detainee's transfer to Libya. Since his wife, Rahima, and 5-year-old daughter, Khiria, are both Afghani, Al-Qassim is formally applying for Afghani citizenship in hopes of ultimately being sent there. Attempting to secure internationally recognized refugee status for innocent detainees at Guantánamo has met with significant opposition, as the US maintains a draconian military panel to evaluate the status of detainees. However, one Algerian and two Somali detainees have UNHCR status, which protects them against forced repatriation. "The US has taken the position that every single person in Guantánamo is an enemy combatant and they will not revisit the issue," said Daskal. Washington and Tripoli have maintained positive diplomatic relations ever since Libya abandoned its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction programs and joined the Bush administration's "war on terror" following the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In May 2006, the US renewed diplomatic relations with the former state sponsor of terrorism after more than 25 years. Libya has been implicated in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 of Lockerbie, Scotland, an attack which killed 270 people. In 1997, another Libyan terrorist bomb killed 170 people on a French airliner over Africa. Although the thaw between the US and Libya has yielded a US embassy in Tripoli, Qaddafi's regime remains a modern-day authoritarian dictatorship and reportedly utilizes severe repression to quell opposition. According to a 2006 US State Department report, "security personnel routinely tortured prisoners during interrogation or as punishment," including through "chaining prisoners to a wall for hours, clubbing, applying electric shock, applying corkscrews to the back, pouring lemon juice in open wounds." While in Libya, Fred Abrahams of Human Rights Watch visited five prisons and interviewed 24 prisoners, of which a number complained about having torture used against them. "The Libyan position is very clear, 'we don't torture,'" said Abrahams. "The problem is we have documented cases where they do."