Guantanamo's forgotten prisoner

Former British resident Ahmed Belbacha is beyond any doubt the forgotten man of Guantanamo. A tragic figure, who although declared innocent after eight years of false imprisonment, cannot leave as he has no country to return to.

For all Barack Obama's much-vaunted election pledges to close Guantanamo Bay, Belbacha, along with his fellow prisoner Shaker Aamer, continues to languish in the US camp despite having been cleared of any wrongdoing and being deemed eligible for release.

Belbacha's case, perhaps more than any other, exposes the appalling absurdity and cynicism of the so-called war on terror.

He is one of an estimated 55 men cleared for release from Guantanamo but caught in a tortuous catch-22 situation.

Kidnapped, tortured and abused, these men have been incarcerated in the US Caribbean gulag for years on end on trumped-up charges.

The US is now attempting to wash its hands of them.

Although technically free to go, they cannot return home for fear of torture or death.

No other country is willing to offer them asylum as they have been falsely branded "the most dangerous men on Earth" and "terrorists" by the Bush regime.

Belbacha's story is at once heartbreaking and infuriating, yet it seems to have attracted little media attention.

Born in Algiers in 1969, Belbacha was resident in Britain between 1999 and 2001, having fled persecution in his homeland.

Cleared for release from Guantanamo in 2007, he should now be free and able to begin the process of trying to piece together his shattered life.

Yet it emerged this week, to compound his agony, that a court order preventing his deportation to Algeria, where he has been convicted in abstentia and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, has been revoked.

As if his ordeal to date had not been horrific enough, Belbacha now has the Damoclean sword of imminent deportation to Algeria hanging over his head.

A qualified accountant in Algeria, he worked for the state oil company Sonatrach for many years but was recalled from his position to complete his national service.

As a result he was threatened with death by the armed militant organisation Groupe Islamiste Arme.

In 1999, as the threats escalated, Belbacha fled the country and sought asylum in Britain. He lived in Bournemouth, studied English and found work in the service industry, at one point working at the Swallow Royal Hotel during the Labour Party conference.

However, Belbacha's application for asylum was rejected in 2001 and he decided to visit Pakistan to take advantage of free education programmes and study the Koran.

His intention was to return to Britain after six months and continue his asylum claim.

Unfortunately for him, as has been documented in so many cases of those wrongly detained at Guantanamo and Bagram air base, he was overtaken by the events of September 11 2001.

Months before September 11, Belbacha and a friend decided to visit Afghanistan and spent several months there, staying in an Algerian guesthouse.

After the US invasion he decided he had to leave and attempted to make his way back to Pakistan and from there Britain.

He eventually made it back to Pakistan, but after crossing the border he was seized in a small village and "sold" to US forces for a bounty.

These bounties have been well-documented and led to the "arrest" of potentially hundreds of innocent men.

It is reported that the Pakistani government and the Afghan Northern Alliance received up to $5,000 per "suspect."

Pakistani former president general Pervez Musharraf bragged in his memoir that "we have captured 689 [alleged terror suspects] and handed over 369 to the United States.

"We have earned bounties totalling millions of dollars.

"Those who habitually accuse us of not doing enough in the war on terror should simply ask the CIA how much prize money it has paid to the government of Pakistan."

Amnesty International estimates that 85 per cent of those held at Guantanamo had been handed over in this manner.

After months of abuse and torture at the hands of the CIA in Kandahar, Belbacha was transferred to Guantanamo in May 2002.

Two months earlier, unbeknown to him, his final asylum appeal was thrown out in Britain - in the main because he had failed to attend the hearing.

In 2007 after five years of incarceration in Guantanamo without charge, the US authorities cleared him for release but only on condition that he be accepted by a country willing to grant him asylum.

If no such country comes forward he will be repatriated to Algeria and certain imprisonment, if not death.

His is a case layered with irony upon cruel irony.

Forced to flee Algeria after being threatened with death by Islamic terrorists, he was kidnapped and tortured by the US which claimed he was an Islamic terrorist.

Now the US has satisfied itself that he poses no threat, it wishes to send him back to Algeria where he will be at the mercy of the same terrorists he fled a decade ago.

In November the Algerian state convicted Belbacha after what campaigners describe as a "show trial."

The specific charge against him remains obscure, but it is believed it relates to his having spoken out against the regime.

Belbacha's case has been taken up by Reprieve and is supported by Amnesty International UK.

The revocation of the court order this week means the campaign to find Belbacha a safe haven has even greater urgency.

So far, private individuals have offered support. He has been offered a room in a flat in Bournemouth and the Massachusetts town of Amherst has invited him to live there, but without a state officially offering him asylum, his fate remains in the balance.

Reprieve has launched an emergency motion requesting that the court reinstate the order preventing his repatriation, but there is no guarantee it will be successful.

Reprieve's legal director and Belbacha's attorney Cori Crider said: "At this moment, Ahmed Belbacha is completely vulnerable. There is zero doubt about the torture he faces - after a secret trial with secret charges where he seems not even to have had a lawyer. 

"Will we now dump a man cleared in 2006 in Algeria, after all he has said? He has waited long enough for refuge."

Amnesty International has said it continues to be profoundly concerned by human rights violations in Algeria.

In its 2009 report, Amnesty states: "Terrorism suspects were detained incommunicado and subjected to unfair trials."

It reports that human rights defenders and journalists as well as religious converts and migrants continued to face persecution in the north African state.

Amnesty director Kate Allen urged the British government to intervene.

"Ahmed Belbacha has become the forgotten Guantanamo prisoner," she said.

"What alarms us is the fact that the government is refusing to offer a place of safety to this man, even though he's at risk of bring sent to Algeria where he could be summarily imprisoned and tortured.

"Do ministers really want to have it on their consciences that Ahmed Belbacha was tortured because they refused to help him?"