Former Guantánamo detainee Saeed Bakhouch was sentenced by a court in Algeria to three years in prison on terrorism charges, Bakhouch’s lawyers told The Intercept.
The May 13 sentencing, on charges made under Algeria’s broad Article 87 anti-terror laws, which can carry the death penalty, came despite assurances from the U.S. State Department that he would be treated “appropriately” and “humanely” after being repatriated after his stint in Guantánamo.
Bakhouch was the most recent Guantánamo detainee to be transferred out of the military prison under the Biden administration, never having been charged with a crime. Bakhouch, his American lawyer Candace Gorman said, was a victim of torture at the hands of the U.S. and slowly deteriorated over his 20 years of arbitrary detention until his release in April 2023.
So why did the US’s lawyer promise his lawyers this wouldn’t happen if they had no way to guarantee it? And why couldn’t anyone at the State Department at least write a letter expressing any kind of concerns over this to Algeria?
The notion that the US is powerless to do anything to a country we’ve provided with millions of dollars of military aid and investment is naive bullshit. If we so much as raised an eyebrow they’d have let this guy go in a heartbeat, the Biden administration just doesn’t want a “White House helps suspected terrorist get out of prison” headline in an election year, human rights and the reputation of our lawyers be damned.
We don’t know exactly what the US promised. The article quotes only that:
That doesn’t sound like the US promised they would prevent Algeria from trying and convicting him under their own laws.
His lawyers claim that the US responsibility doesn’t end when he’s back in Algerian custody, but that’s exactly how international law works. The US is giving him back, and he’s now in Algerian hands to so with as they see fit. The US can push for things, but then we get to the US exerting political power over a foreign nation to do something, bypassing their own legal systems, something we can all agree is something the US needs to stop doing.
But now it’s okay for the US to leverage it’s political power regardless of local terrorism laws? Because in this instance it’s “good”? Who defines what is “good” or “bad” when exerting that pressure for a country to ignore it’s own laws?