Mazen Mahdi – Arab News – BAHRAIN, 15 October 2005
Ten Saudis being held by US authorities at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba will file cases in US federal courts in the next couple of weeks against US President George W. Bush demanding to know the cause of their detention and requesting a preliminary injunction to release them, according to Bahrain Center for Human Rights Vice President Nabeel Rajab.
They will be joining twenty-eight others of their compatriots who had filed similar cases in the past, as an estimated 121 Saudis remain detained there out of 520 prisoners, mainly Arabs, who continue to be held there without being charged for suspicion of being fighters for Al-Qaeda or having direct links to them.
Mazen Mahdi – Arab News – BAHRAIN, 15 October 2005
Ten Saudis being held by US authorities at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba will file cases in US federal courts in the next couple of weeks against US President George W. Bush demanding to know the cause of their detention and requesting a preliminary injunction to release them, according to Bahrain Center for Human Rights Vice President Nabeel Rajab.
They will be joining twenty-eight others of their compatriots who had filed similar cases in the past, as an estimated 121 Saudis remain detained there out of 520 prisoners, mainly Arabs, who continue to be held there without being charged for suspicion of being fighters for Al-Qaeda or having direct links to them.
Rajab said that the ten are expected to file the cases during the next two weeks after the US Center for Constitutional Rights assigned lawyers for each of them.
“We are urging family members of the detainees to contact us because one of the hurdles that continue to impede our efforts has been the fact that we have not been able to get in touch with the families of the detainees,” he said.
Rajab added that the lawyers had met with the ten detainees urging their families to continue their efforts to ensure the release of their relatives despite rumors of expected deals to return many of them to their countries.
In June and early July US lawyers and representatives of the CCR met with some of the Saudi detainees’ families in Bahrain as part of the lawyers preparations to meet their clients for the first time in August in an effort they described as a “trust building move” amid allegations that some military interrogators in Guantanamo had misrepresented themselves as lawyers.
The CCR, which cooperates closely with the BCHR to locate families of the detainees in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, represents more than 40 of the Saudi detainees through volunteer lawyers.
According to CCR lawyer Tina Foster, the majority of the detainees are Arabs with the largest group of them coming from Saudi Arabia followed by Yemen. There are more than 10 Kuwaitis and six Bahrainis in addition to Arabs from other countries being held at Guantanamo.
US figures suggest that 200 or so detainees had been returned to their home countries, the majority of them of European and Australian origin.