CUBA: Four French Muslims returned from the US prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, yesterday after 2½ years in detention without being charged or tried, writes Lara Marlowe in Paris
The four, Mourad Benchellali, Nizar Sassi, Brahim Yadel and Imad Kanouni, were captured by US forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan late in 2001 and transferred to Camp Delta. As "foreign combatants", the Bush administration said, they had no right to the protections afforded prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.
But on June 28th the US Supreme Court ruled that Guantanamo prisoners had the right to challenge their detention in US courts. French commentators said this decision accelerated the liberation of prisoners because the Pentagon feared it would be inundated by lawsuits.
By the Pentagon's count, 590 prisoners from about 40 countries remain in Guantanamo. The poor relations between Washington and Paris help to explain why 135 prisoners from other countries were freed before the French men. The release was agreed in principle by the French Justice Minister, Mr Dominique Perben, and his US counterpart, Mr John Ashcroft, in May.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Madagascar, President Jacques Chirac said: "Long, intense negotiations have made it possible to send back to France four out of the six or seven of our citizens who were held in Guantanamo." Mr Chirac said the nationality of the seventh remained uncertain.
The Franco-US agreement was earlier reported to concern six, not four, prisoners. It is not clear why Khaled Ben Mustafa, from Lyons, Ridouane Khalid, from Paris, and Mustaq Ali Patel are still being held. Patel was born in India and gained French nationality by marrying a woman from Réunion island, whom he later abandoned.
Mr Jacques Debray, the lawyer who represents two of the freed prisoners, said he encountered "a terrible silence, a wall of indifference" on the part of French authorities.
The four prisoners were handed over to French custody in Guantanamo and flown in a Hercules military transport aircraft to an airbase at Evreux. From there, they were driven in two convoys to the headquarters of the French domestic intelligence agency, DST, for questioning. They can be held 96 hours without charge.
In 2002 the "anti-terrorist" judge, Mr Jean-Louis Bruguières, issued warrants for them on suspicion of "associating with lawbreakers in relation with a terrorist undertaking." Vénissieux, in the eastern suburbs of Lyons, is home to Mr Benchellali (23) and Mr Sassi (25), the Guantanamo prisoners whose fate has been most publicised in France. Their families say they went to Pakistan to study the Koran.
"There's no celebration for the moment," said Mr Ounsi Hassine, a friend of the Benchellali family and president of the Guantanamo prisoners' support group.
The eldest son, Menad, is in prison, accused of belonging to the "Chechen network" that plotted to attack Russian targets in Europe. He provided the false passports which Mourad and Nizar Sassi used to travel to Pakistan.
If Mourad Benchellali goes home to Vénissieux, he will find only his three sisters in the family flat. His father, mother and a second brother were arrested in January for providing support to Menad. French authorities want to deport Chellali to Algeria.
Mr Brahim Yadel (33) is the most likely of the four to be imprisoned, because he was sentenced in absentia for involvement in a plot to attack the 1998 World Cup.
In a "verbal note" dated April 30th, the US reportedly sought guarantees from French intelligence services that the freed prisoners would not be allowed to travel to the US and would be kept under surveillance.
The third condition laid down by the US - that the returned prisoners "be treated humanely" - provoked cynical smiles here.
"Sometimes their mail didn't arrive for months," said Mr Hassine. "Letters that seemed to allude to torture were blacked out by censors. It cast a chill over human rights associations here in France when we saw what happened at Abu Ghraib [prison in Iraq] and the Americans said, 'Yes, these are Guantanamo methods'."