Several human rights groups on Friday raised concern over the US government’s intent to repatriate a Guantanamo prisoner to Libya, despite his fear that he will be tortured. “The US is ignoring Abdul Rauf al-Qassim’s credible fear of torture by relying on a promise of no torture from Libya, a country with a documented record of torture,” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch.Qassim, 40, was arrested in late 2001 in Pakistan on US suspicion he trained at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, said HRW and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which coordinates legal defence for prisoners held at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When Qassim challenged his detention in federal court in 2005, the US government announced he would be sent back home to Libya, and repeated attempts to have the decision legally revoked have failed. The US Supreme Court last month refused to take up Qassim’s case.
“The fact of Abdul Rauf’s detention at Guantanamo - and the US government’s false and unsubstantiated allegations that he was associated with a group hostile to (Libya’s Moamer) Kadhafi regime - put him at grave risk of indefinite detention, torture and death if forcibly returned to Libya,” CCR said.