Spain drops extradition request to Britain for ex-Guantanamo pair
MADRID (AFP) — Spain is to withdraw a request to Britain for the extradition of two former Guantanamo Bay detainees, citing their poor state of health, the country's top anti-terrorist judge said Thursday.
Spanish authorities had sought the two men, Jamil el-Banna, 45, and Omar Deghayes, 38, on charges of being members of an Al-Qaeda cell.
The two were foreign citizens legally residing in Britain before their detention at the US naval base on Cuba.
They were released from Guantanamo in December. On their return to Britain, they were immediately held under a European Union arrest warrant issued by Spain.
Medical examinations carried out in Britain concluded that their years at Guantanamo had caused serious damage to their physical and psychological health.
Guantanamo "caused a serious deterioration in the mental state of the accused and today ... it is impossible, even inhuman, to pursue the European arrest warrants," Judge Baltazar Garzon said in his ruling.
He said he has therefore decided "to cancel the European arrest warrants dated December 19, 2007."
El-Banna, a Pakistani national, is suspected of helping to recruit people to extremist training camps in Afghanistan and Indonesia.
Deghayes, who is Libyan, is suspected of ties to a man who was later convicted of a bomb attack which killed 43 people in the Moroccan city of Casablanca in May 2003 and another man involved in the Madrid train bombings, which killed 191 people in March 2004.
