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Europe
French Court Summons Ex-Guantanamo Chief in Torture
2015-04-03
*Sigh*
[AnNahar] A French court on Thursday summoned former Guantanamo prison chief Geoffrey Miller over accusations of torture by two ex-detainees, in a move their lawyer said would open the door to further prosecutions.

Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, both French citizens, were tossed in the calaboose
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
 by U.S. forces in Afghanistan before being transferred to the notorious prison set up in Guantanamo Bay to hold terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks. They were held there from the end of 2001 until 2004 and 2005 respectively, before being sent home.

A French probe into their case began after they filed a complaint in court.

"The door has opened for civilian and military officials to be prosecuted over international crimes committed in Guantanamo," their lawyer William Bourdon said.

"This decision can only... lead to other leaders being summoned."

Despite promises by U.S. President Barack Obama
teachable moment...
to close the prison, which is located in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay -- an area on the east of the island under U.S. control since a treaty signed in 1903 -- it remains open and still houses detainees without charge.

The U.S. presence at Guantanamo Bay, where it also has a naval base, is one of the major stumbling blocks in Washington and Havana's historic move towards normalizing ties.

In an expert report submitted to a French judge last year, lawyers for Sassi and Benchellali accused Miller of "an authorized and systematic plan of torture and ill-treatment on persons deprived of their freedom without any charge and without the basic rights of any detainee."

Miller, who was commander of the prison from 2002 to 2004 and is now retired, "bears individual criminal responsibility for the war crimes and acts of torture inflicted on detainees in US custody at Guantanamo," according to the report.

Just before Miller became commander of Guantanamo in late 2002, president George W. Bush's administration approved so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, including placing detainees in stress positions, stripping them, isolating them for extended periods of time and exposing them to extreme heat and cold. Miller then implemented these methods.

And even though then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld withdrew permission for the most controversial of these interrogation techniques shortly thereafter in January 2003, "under ... Miller's command at Guantanamo, these techniques continued to be used in certain cases," the detainees' lawyers said last year.

"These acts constitute torture and violate, at a minimum, the Geneva Convention's prohibition on coercive interrogations."

Sassi and Benchellali are not the only detainees alleging torture during their time at the prison. Former Syrian detainee Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al Janko had wanted to sue the U.S. government for damages stemming from his treatment while held at Guantanamo for seven years until his 2009 release.

In his complaint, Janko cited years-long solitary confinement, lengthy bouts of sleep deprivation, "severe beatings," threats against him and his family, sexually explicit slurs against his female relatives, deprivation of adequate medical and psychological care, as well as "continuous" humiliation and harassment. But last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, as well as another by a U.S. rights group.
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Europe
France orders 5 former Gitmo inmates back to court
2010-02-17
France's highest court on Wednesday overruled a lower court's acquittal of five former inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison and ordered an appeals court to rehear the case centering on terrorism charges.

The Court of Cassation did not immediately explain its reasons for the ruling, but a copy of its decision will be available Thursday, a spokesman for the court said.
The French got their political mileage by tweaking Bush and the Americans. Now they realize they have unrepentant trained islamic terrorists on the loose who have access to potential recruits, subways, airliners, public buildings, sports stadiums. Reality is a bitch.
The high court said a new appeals court panel will be created to handle the case, said the spokesman on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

A defense lawyer representing two of the men criticized the ruling, saying it amounted to a "sinister page in the history of the judicial system" and "a great cruelty on a human level."

France is among the few Western countries to prosecute nationals who have returned home from Guantanamo. The acquittal had been a high-profile foreign disavowal of the prison, which President Barack Obama wants to shut down.

The Paris criminal court in 2007 convicted the five -- Ridouane Khalid, Brahim Yadel, Khaled ben Mustafa, Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali -- of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise," a broad charge often used in terror cases in France.

During the original 2007 trial, the suspects had acknowledged having spent time in military training camps in Afghanistan, but said they had never put their combat skills to use.

But last February, a Paris appeals court ruled that agents from the French counterterrorism agency DST who questioned the five inmates at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2004 had overstepped their roles, and overturned the convictions. The court ruled that DST could not act as both a spy agency and a judicial police service, which questions detainees under French law.

The men, who were arrested in Afghanistan in 2001, each spent a total of 2.5 to 3 years in custody at Guantanamo and in France, to which they were repatriated in 2004 and 2005. All seven French citizens who were at Guantanamo were sent home in 2004 and 2005. One was immediately released; another was acquitted in trial; the last five were convicted for roles in a terror group in Afghanistan.

The five were each sentenced to a year in prison. Because they had served more than that time before the trial, they did not return to prison after the sentencing.
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Europe
New trial for France's 'Guantanamo six'
2007-12-05
A Paris court Monday heard details of a controversial French secret service mission to Guantanamo at the start of the retrial on terrorism charges of six former inmates at the US base.

At the end of the original trial last year, Judge Jean-Claude Kross refused to hand down a verdict, saying he needed to know more about the Guantanamo mission -- whose very existence France initially denied. Mourad Benchellali, 26, Nizar Sassi, 27, Khaled Ben Mustapha, 35, Redouane Khalid, 39, Brahim Yadel, 37, and Imad Achab Kanouni, 30, were captured in 2001 during the US-led war to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan and handed over to US forces. Held for up to three years at the Guantanamo detention centre in Cuba, they were charged upon their return to France in 2004 and 2005 with "criminal conspiracy in relation to a terrorist enterprise. But defence lawyers argue that any information derived from their questioning by French intelligence officials in Guantanamo, outside of any legal framework, should be classed as inadmissible evidence.

On Monday judge Kross read out several reports by the DST domestic intelligence agency, declassified for the purposes of the trial, which he said "give us a knowledge of the DST's activities" in Guantanamo "and the framework in which all of this happened."

The DST files describe the six defendants' links to well-known Islamist circles including figures cited in several terrorism cases, but say they have committed no offence prosecutable in France. In a note dated February 2004, former DST chief Louis Caprioli wrote: "In case of a repatriation, there is no guarantee they will be placed under investigation and jailed, since they are linked to no activities in France liable for prosecution."

Lawyer William Bourdon welcomed the declassification of the intelligence reports. "We hope the court will draw the consequences of the extreme disloyalty with which the French secret services behaved towards the French detainees Guantanamo," he told reporters. "We hope that the court will recall the law: by saying that no one can be convicted if the proof was secured by disloyal means. Acquittal is the only outcome."

During their initial 10-day trial last year, some of the six admitted to staying in Afghan camps linked to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but all denied fighting US forces or planning attacks in Europe.

Last year the French state attorney called for all but Kanouni to be found guilty, but asked for lenient, one-year prison sentences, saying their "abnormal detention" in Guantanamo should be taken into account. Though none is currently in detention, all six spent periods in pre-trial custody and could therefore expect to avoid jail. All but Yadel -- held up for professional reasons -- were present for Monday's hearing. The trial is set to run until December 12.
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Europe
French Gitmo detainees want US general quizzed
2007-11-06
Two French ex-detainees at the Guatanamo Bay prison camp have asked French judges to question US General Geoffrey Miller, the camp’s former commander, as part of a probe into allegations of torture and illegal arrest. Lawyers William Bourdon and Jacques Debray representing the two former prisoners asked investigating judges last month to “summon General Geoffrey Miller as quickly as possible” and consider charges if he fails to cooperate, according to a letter seen by AFP.
Two chances of the good general appearing, slim and none.
The two ex-prisoners, Nizar Sassi and Mourad Benchellali, have filed a complaint for illegal arrest, arbitrary detention and torture after they were captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and sent to Guantanamo in early 2002.
Standard al-Q tactics; complain of torture.
They were transferred to France in July 2004 and went on trial in 2006 on terrorism charges. Hearings in that trial are due to resume next month.
Nice speedy hearing. I sense the hand of Carla del Ponte.
The lawyers argued that Miller, who ran the detention camp of prisoners taken in the US-led “war on terror” from its 2002 opening until 2003, had a “personal responsibility” in the management of Guantanamo “in total violation of international law and French law.”
Just more leftie harrassment. Let's see how quickly Sarko handles this.
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Europe
French prosecutor seeks jail for 5 Gitmo hard boyz
2006-07-12
Jail. Sorta. Suspended. Y'urp-peon sentencing guidelines.
PARIS - A French public prosecutor called on Tuesday for five former Guantanamo Bay inmates to be jailed for a year for their links to Al Qaeda and said there was not enough evidence to convict a sixth defendant.

Sonya Djemni-Wagner condemned the men’s detention at the U.S. military camp on the Caribbean island of Cuba but told a terrorism trial at the main Criminal Court in Paris that the men had to pay for their actions. “I do not approve of Guantanamo and I cannot but take into account the detention they endured there. But that detention does not wipe out the wrong they did,” Djemni-Wagner told the court. “Whatever they did, these men did not deserve the fate that was reserved for them, which is unworthy of a democracy,” she said.
Ah, shuddup and jug 'em. Save the politicizing for your next campaign.
Should presiding judge Jean-Claude Kross and his two assessors follow her recommendation, the accused will be freed even if convicted because they have spent between 12 and 18 months in French prisons on their return from Guantanamo.
And 12 months equals five years in Y'urp detention time.
The prosecutor said five defendants had gone to Afghanistan via London, had been taken in hand by aides to Osama bin Laden and underwent military training in Al Qaeda camps.
Sounds like five years in American jug time to me ...
Djemni-Wagner said investigators had failed to prove the guilt of the sixth defendant, Imad Achab-Kanouni, 29. He denied going to Afghanistan to join Al Qaeda training camps, saying he went there only to receive fundamentalist Islamic instruction.
Which is one and the time, but the French court can't bear to admit that ...
Djemni-Wagner requested terms of four years in prison, three of them suspended, for Khaled ben Mustapha, Mourad Benchellali, Nizar Sassi and Redouane Khalid. She further sought five years in jail, with four suspended, against Brahim Yadel, the only one of the six men held in custody throughout the trial.
I mean, why make an example?
Lawyers for all six men say their clients should be freed as the case against them was based on secret interviews conducted by French intelligence agents while the men were held at Guantanamo Bay.
Make sure their friends all know they sang like canaries ...
French courts have already ruled detention in the U.S. military facility illegal in their effete opinion, and a report that French intelligence agents had interviewed the men at Guantanamo disrupted the trial on its second day.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week it had made no secret of three administrative visits to the camp.
"We done it in the open!"
Presiding judge Kross refused to suspend hearings and said he would take the matter into account at the end of the trial.
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Europe
GTMO Frenchmen go on trial in Paris
2006-07-04
Six French former inmates of the U.S. military detention center in Guantanamo Bay stood trial in a French court on Monday, denying accusations of links with a network plotting terrorism attacks.
"Non! Non! Certainement pas!"
The six, who have all spent lengthy periods in detention in Cuba and in France, face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. The prosecution alleges the men joined a terrorism network based in Britain and the Afghan-Pakistan border, having passed through Britain en route to al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. But the accused said they only went there out of curiosity. "I wanted to take some risks," Nizar Sassi, one of the defendants, told the court. "It was cool. It was a chance to live my passion for weapons."
"Yer honor, if you buy my lame story you are proving everything my imam told me about kufrs to be absolutely true."
Khaled ben Mustapha said he had gone to Kabul to look for a house for his family, adding: "Going to Afghanistan doesn't make you a terrorist." A third accused, Imad Kanouni, said he wanted to learn more about religion while traveling. "Afghanistan was in fashion," he told the court.
"Jihad was the new black in the Fall 2001 collections, yer honor!"
Prosecutors say five of the six men trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan between 2000 and 2001 and that Kanouni had fundamentalist religious training there. Defense lawyers say, at most, their clients were guilty only of naivety in remaining in Afghanistan when U.S. forces arrived after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. Presiding trial judge Jean-Claude Kross said the six men, aged between 24 and 38, were captured in mid December as they tried to flee the advance of U.S forces and their Afghan allies. Some were handed over by villagers for a prize of up to 5,000 euros ($6,399). Pakistani forces later handed them over to the U.S. military who transferred them to Guantanamo Bay, convinced they had fought for Afghanistan's ousted Islamist Taliban regime. Benchellali has admitted attending a training camp in Afghanistan, but said friends dragged him into it. The six were held at Guantanamo without charge or trial along with hundreds of other "enemy combatants", and they have complained of insults, physical and psychological torture, and deprivation of food and water.
Right on schedule, right out of the Al-Q playbook. Has Andrew Sullivan filed an amicus brief yet?
Sassi, Mustapha, Kanouni, Mourad Benchellali and Redouane Khalid spent several months in French jail before being released under judicial controls. A sixth man, Brahim Yadel, had remained in custody. The verdict is expected in mid-July.
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Europe
Six Frenchmen released from Guantanamo to be tried
2006-07-02
Six Frenchmen released from the US base in Guantanamo are to face trial in Paris for allegedly being recruited to fight in Afghanistan. Imad Achab Kanouni, Khaled Ben Mustapha, Redouane Khalid, Brahim Yadel, Mourad Benchellali and Nizar Sassi all face charges of "associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist enterprise". The latter two are also indicted on counterfeiting charges. Their trial starting Monday is expected to run to July 12.

All the suspects except Yadel, who remains in detention, were freed by French authorities in the months following their repatriation from Guantanamo in July 2004 and March 2005. A seventh Frenchman who was held in Guantanamo and turned over to French authorities has since been cleared of any wrongdoing and faces no charges.

The prosecution alleges that the six on trial were recruited from 1998 by an Algerian Rachid Boukhalfa, also known as Abu Doha, who is being held in a British prison. Boujhalfa, an Algerian, is suspected of having planned al-Qaeda attacks in the United States. The six went to Afghanistan between March 2000 and August 2001. Prosecutors allege they underwent guerrilla training in an al-Qaeda camp near Kandahar. They were captured by US troops after the 2001 invasion and sent to Guantanamo when the notorious US base there was converted in January 2002 to detain fighters deemed "illegal combatants".
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Europe
Detainee in 'wrong place at wrong time'
2005-02-26
Mustaq Ali Patel is one of the last three French detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His family members say they cannot figure out why he is there in the first place.
Something to do with explosives, was it? Or a hand saw?
Cousins of the Indian-born former imam say Patel, 45, was just a victim of bad luck and bad timing who had settled in Afghanistan in the early to mid-1990s long before the US-led invasion of the country. Patel was one of seven French citizens captured in the US-led campaign that toppled the hardline Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Four have returned to France, and all spent more than two years at Guantanamo. "As a family, we all believe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said one cousin, Luqman Dawod, a British citizen who arrived from Manchester on Wednesday to meet one of Patel's French lawyers.
Downtown Konduz, holding a rocket launcher? Wrong place. November, 2001? Wrong time.
"We don't believe he has done anything wrong."
"He's a good, responsible lad. Always keeps his weapons clean, never plays with his grenades."
Haroon Patel, another cousin, who runs a convenience store in Manchester, said: "He is not a terrorist, he was a good person." They said they did not know when Patel was detained.
"He just turned up there one day. Nobody knows how he got there. But we know he's innocent, by Gum!"
French officials said this month that US authorities indicated the "possibility" that Patel and two other French nationals Ridouane Khalid and Khalid Ben Mustafa could soon be handed over to France. "They've said that time and time [again], but I don't hold my breath any more," said Dawod.
Okay, then. We won't. Will that cause you to hold your breath?
Four other French citizens once held at Guantanamo Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel returned to France in late July and are being held as part of an investigation into suspected terror-related networks. Patel's case appears different, his lawyer said. "As for Mr Patel, from what I know, we're looking at a series of bad coincidences and slightly disastrous random events," said French lawyer William Bourdon.
"Now, they might seem unlikely, esecially the part about the gypsies and the trained bear, but..."
"He was in Afghanistan long before the Taliban" ran the country, he said. Bourdon, who also represents Sassi and Benchellali, said they had indicated "harassment, humiliation and insults" at Guantanamo but did not suffer sexual abuse that some other former detainees have recounted. Patel's cousins said he had drifted out of contact with the family about 10 years ago and no relatives knew he was in Afghanistan until they received a letter from him through the mail early last year.
"Dear Mom, How are you? Well, here I am in Guantanamo..."
Patel became a citizen of France through marriage to a French woman. The cousins said they have lost contact with her but say she is believed to live in La Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. His mother, who lives in India's Gujarat state, has not heard from her son in more than 20 years but calls the British cousins about once a week to find out if they have more information, they said. Dawod, 25, said the only other letter the family had received delivered via the Red Cross indicated that "he has not been in good shape mentally", but there were no details. The cousins, who are heading the legal effort in France, said they could not confirm news reports saying that Patel had been an auto parts vendor in Afghanistan.
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Europe
France Won't Free Ex-Guantanamo Prisoners
2004-08-04
 A French court on Wednesday rejected a request by four former Guantanamo prisoners to be freed from jail while awaiting trial in France, judicial officials said. The men, who were released from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on July 27, have been placed in various Paris-area prisons while authorities here investigate them. Defense lawyers argued that jailing was unjust and lodged an attempt to have them released. A Paris court gave an initial rejection of the request Wednesday, though it has until Aug. 20 for a final decision, officials said.
The four - Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel - were captured in the U.S.-led campaign that toppled the hard-line Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Each spent more than two years at Guantanamo. "Their only wish today is to be freed and released to kill again their families," said Jean-Baptiste Rozes, the lawyer for Yadel.
French authorities here struggled for months to secure the men's return home from Guantanamo and are still negotiating the cases of three other Frenchmen held at the lockup in Cuba. Anti-terrorism judges have placed the four men under investigation, a step toward formal charges, for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise." Investigators suspect they frequented groups that planned terror attacks in Europe. Several of the men confessed to training in military camps where they learned to use explosives and weapons, officials said.
Sassi, 22, and Benchellali, 24, are also under investigation for using false documents. The two are childhood friends who grew up in a tough suburb outside the central city of Lyon and went to Afghanistan together in June 2001 with stolen passports, officials say. They were arrested in December of that year and brought to Guantanamo. The two have described mistreatment at the hands of U.S. authorities at Guantanamo, such as being threatened with dogs, struck in their cells or given sleeping medications, their lawyers have said.
Of course, no one has ever been abused in a French prison. Well, there was that whole Devil's Island thing, but we don't talk about that.
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Europe
French Gitmo Gunnies to Remain in Jug
2004-08-01
A judge ordered four Frenchmen, returned to France after more than two years at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be kept in jail, judicial officials said Sunday.
"Can we go home now?"
"Non."
The four — Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel — were handed to French authorities Tuesday.
"We're done with 'em. You can have 'em back!"
"Oh, merci a heap!"
Authorities here struggled for months to secure their release and are still negotiating the return of three other Frenchmen held at the lockup in Cuba. On Sunday, a judge ordered the four suspects jailed provisionally in France — a decision defense lawyers plan to challenge.
"Hey! Youse can't do that!"
After four days of questioning by investigators, the men were transferred to various Paris-area jails. They were still wearing clothes provided by U.S. authorities on their release — white T-shirts, baggy jeans and white curly-toed slippers tennis shoes, according to lawyers. The ruling followed a decision by anti-terrorism judges to place the men under investigation, a step toward formal charges. They are all being investigated for "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise," authorities said. Investigators suspect they frequented groups that planned terror attacks in Europe. Several of the men confessed to training in military camps where they learned to use explosives and weapons, officials said.
Oui. You might want to look into that, mightn't you?
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Europe
Guantanamo inmates back in France
2004-07-27
Four French nationals captured by US troops in Afghanistan have been transferred home from the US military base in Guantanamo Bay. The detainees - among seven Frenchmen seized during the war against the Taleban in late 2001 - arrived at the Evreux air base, west of Paris. President Jacques Chirac said the handover was as a result of "long discussions" with Washington. The men are expected to appear before a French anti-terrorism magistrate. Nearly 600 prisoners from the US "war on terror" are still held at Guantanamo naval base in Cuba.

The four touched down on French soil on Tuesday, only to be taken directly into custody by police working for France's counter-intelligence agency, the DST. "Long and intensive discussions have resulted in the return to France of four nationals detained in Guantanamo," President Chirac told reporters on a visit to Madagascar. They "will of course be handed over to (French) justice authorities," he was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

Officials named the four as Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel.

A lawyer for two of the freed detainees expressed concern about his clients. "The last we heard suggested they were in a poor psychological condition," lawyer Jacques Debray said. The BBC's Caroline Wyatt in Paris says the case of the seven French Guantanamo detainees has failed to arouse much public sympathy in the country - although there has been widespread indignation over what many French people see as abuse of prisoners' human rights at the base. While the French authorities have been keen to remove the men from US custody, they are equally keen to interrogate them themselves, our correspondent adds.

The four are expected to appear before France's chief anti-terrorism judge, Jean-Louis Bruguiere, in the coming days. In France terror suspects can be held for questioning for up to four days, after which they must either be released or placed under investigation.

Correspondent Hugh Schofield says that if they are placed under investigation and ordered to be detained until trial, the whole process - judging by past experience - could take years. The French foreign ministry says discussions are continuing with the US authorities "with a view to obtaining as quickly as possible the release of the other [three] French prisoners at Guantanamo". Those remaining in Guantanamo are Ridouane Khalid, Khaled Ben Mustafa and Mustaq Ali Patel, officials said. Before the latest transfers, 594 detainees were being held at Guantanamo.

In another development, the Pentagon has announced that it will begin to review the cases of the remaining detainees this week. The military is preparing hearing rooms inside trailers in the Camp Delta prison at Guantanamo, a Pentagon spokeswoman said. The US military set up the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" following a Supreme Court ruling enabling inmates to challenge their detention through the US legal system. During the review process detainees:
can testify and request affidavits from witnesses

will not have defence lawyers, but a "personal representative" instead - a military officer who is not bound by rules of confidentiality and can pass on any incriminating evidence provided by the detainees for use in future trials

will not have access to classified information in their files. However, their representative is supposed to give them an unclassified explanation of the case against them, the US navy secretary said.
Pentagon officials reckon that the tribunals are going to get through probably three detainee cases a day, hoping to complete the reviews in two to three months.
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Europe
A chemical attack was in preparation in France
2004-01-10
Scuse the Henglish. This is a translation from the French article
Looks like the pressure is being applied pretty heavily on France. What’s the betting that Chirac's order on the hijab will be rescinded within a month
It is the conclusion which would have reached the policemen of the DST, some days after the interpellations intervened in the region of Lyons within the framework of the inquiry on the "Chechen fields". The detainees it dedicated as well "to the recruitment of future fighters", according to Le Monde.

L be policemen of the DST (Direction(management) of the surveillance of the territory), which(who) called to several persons this week in region of Lyons within the framework of the inquiry on the support for the " Chechen fields ", are convinced that a chemical attempt was in preparation in France, according to the daily The World was dated Sunday - Monday. The newspaper asserts that the policemen are convinced that " the family of the imam Chellali Benchellali dedicated itself actively to the preparation of highly toxic products for their distribution(broadcasting) as well as for the recruitment of future Islamist fighters ". The justice also suspects Chellali Benchellali - an imam of district who is the father of Mourad, held(detained) in Cuba, and by Ménad, imprisoned in France to have supplied a logistic support for the members of an operational terrorist group dismantled in December, 2002 to Romainville and to Courneuve ( Seine-Saint-Denis). The Benchellali family and his(her) close relations would have supplied false papers, money(silver), explosives and places of residence to the members of this network which prepared probably one or several attempts, certainly chemical, in Paris against Russian targets, according to the judicial sources.

Besides, a girl of Chellali Benchellali was placed in police custody on Friday within the framework of this inquiry, while the imam of Vénissieux (Rhone) and five other persons called on Tuesday are placed under the blow of an arrest warrant to be presented on Monday to a committing magistrate in Paris, as it was learnt on Friday from judicial sources. A seventh person who had been stopped(arrested) on Tuesday by the DST (Direction(management) of the surveillance of the territory), Fatna Merabet, the wife of the new imam of Vénissieux in suburb of Lyons, should be set again at liberty at the conclusion of her police custody, as it was clarified the same sources. When a person is called in more of 200km of the place of the instruction, she can be maintained in detention at the conclusion of her police custody for a duration of four days under the blow of an arrest warrant. It is the case of the six concerned persons whose police custody of 96 hours(o’clock) expires on Saturday morning. They will be presented on Monday to the antiterrorist committing magistrates with the aim of their indictments. On the whole, nine persons, among which a woman, had been indicted the end of December, 2002 in this said file " Chechen fields ".

Among them, Ménad Benchellali, indicted for " criminal conspiracy in connection with one terrorist company ". His brother Mourad, him, is at present detained on the American base of Guantanamo in Cuba. It(he) had left France to study the Koran in Pakistan in June, 2001. Chellali Benchellali, his wife Hasfa and their third son, Hafed, the new imam of the big mosque of Vénissieux, Mourad Merabet, and a 27-year-old young man, Abdelwahed Regad, who was used(employed) as controller quality on a hallal slaughterhouse, as well as the sixth person will be transferred on Monday in Paris. These arrests on rogatory commission of the committing magistrate Jean Louis BruguiÚre provoked of numerous demonstration to Vénissieux where from is also native another prisoner of Guantanamo, Nizar Sassi. The representative - mayor of Vénissieux, André Gérin congratulated himself for his part of these interpellations and wished the lock of the Moslem places of prayer situated in cellars and feet of buildings of the conglomeration of Lyons. AP
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