El-Masri said he was released five months later in Albania without any explanation, and is now demanding an apology from the US government and $75,000 in compensation.
Transfer blocked
|
"It's the first time the judiciary has given a detainee any substantive right, in this case it is the right not to be tortured by the Tunisian government"
Joshua Denbeaux, Rahman's lawyer |
Meanwhile on Tuesday a US federal judge blocked the Pentagon from transferring a Guantanamo Bay detainee to Tunisia where he allegedly faces torture, in a landmark ruling in the treatment of detainees.
District Judge Gladys Kessler granted a preliminary injunction to halt a move by the defence department to transfer Mohammed Abdul Rahman to Tunisia.
Rahman, who has a heart condition, was convicted in absentia in Tunisia and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was captured in Pakistan and allegedly handed over for a bounty.
Gordon England, the deputy secretary of defence, cleared Rahman for transfer after a military panel heard his case in 2005.
Unprecedented
The October 2 ruling, kept under seal until Tuesday, is an unprecedented direct intervention in the case of a Guantanamo Bay detainee, a human rights group and Rahman's lawyers said.
Jennifer Daskal, senior counter-terrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch, said: "This is the first time since congress tried to strip court jurisdiction over detainees that a court stepped in and said to the administration, 'Hey wait. You can't do what you say you want to do.'"
Some 330 men accused of links to al-Qaeda or the Taliban remain held at the US military prison in Cuba.
Joshua Denbeaux, Rahman's lawyer, praised the ruling.
"It's the first time the judiciary has given a detainee any substantive right, in this case it is the right not to be tortured by the Tunisian government," he said.