WASHINGTON (AFP) — A federal judge barred the US government from repatriating Mohammed Rahman, a Tunisian detainee at the US war-on-terror camp in Guantanamo, Cuba who says he fears abuse or torture in his home country, a court source said Wednesday.
US authorities until now had refused to step in to block other detainee transfers.
According to Human Rights Watch, a total of about 50 detainees originally from China, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Uzbekistan, do not want to return to their countries of origin.
Held for years at the US naval base in Cuba, Rahman learned in May the United States no longer suspected him of terrorism and planned to send him to Tunisia, judge Gladys Kessler said in a ruling issued last week but made public late Tuesday.
In 2005 Tunisia tried him in absentia and sentenced him to 20 years in jail largely with evidence supplied by the United States -- the same elements on the basis of which the United States then decided to free him.
His attorneys argued that his release would be tantamount to a death sentence due to what they say is his fragile health and the possibility he could be tortured.
The US government said it repatriates no detainee without having received assurances the detainee will be treated well.
But Kessler said that "given... the dire irreparable harm Rahman fears, it is imperative that the court protect its jurisdiction until the Supreme Court issues a definitive ruling.
"The government suffers absolutely no harm from entry of the preliminary injunction (to stay his transfer), whereas the failure to grant Rahman the interim relief he seeks -- relief necessary to ensure his survival until the Supreme Court rules -- would be irremediable," she stressed.
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