Oh, Yeah, This Is Going to End Well

The decision this week by the British government to request the return of five Guantánamo detainees with British ties was welcome news for Bush administration officials eager to cut the detention center’s population.

But officials quickly suggested that several of the men might be too dangerous to be set free…

The episode illustrates why the administration has had such a difficult time reducing the detention center’s population. The effort has been hampered by a laundry list of diplomatic, legal and political challenges, including the unwillingness of some countries to accept detainees and concerns about human rights abuses in others, officials and critics of the administration say. …

The transfer of detainees to countries with poor human-rights records is one of the most contentious issues. The administration has said in court papers that it obtains diplomatic assurances that any country that receives former detainees would “treat the detainee humanely and in a manner consistent with its international obligations.”

But human rights groups have countered that there is no check on such promises and have worked to draw public attention to planned transfers to countries including Libya and Tunisia. …

In the recent case of a Tunisian detainee, Abdullah Bin Omar al Hajji, his lawyers sent a series of e-mail messages to government officials in May and June trying to stop a planned return to Tunisia, a court filing shows.

The lawyers told the officials he had apparently been convicted in absentia in Tunisia for affiliation with a nonviolent political party at a time when human rights monitors had said such trials were not fairly conducted. …

On June 15, one message shows, the lawyers demanded to see their client when they were to arrive at Guantánamo on June 17. But that day, he was shipped back to Tunisia. Not long after, according to an affidavit by his Tunisian lawyer, he was put in jail, where he was slapped and threatened with rape and told that his wife, too, would be raped.

The Tunisian government has denied that he was mistreated. Government officials admit al Hajji was slapped and threatened with rape and that he was told that his wife would be raped, too. But when asked to rectify their statements and their actions, Tunisian officials seemed genuinely baffled by the demand, asking only in reply, “Was that wrong?”