Caged Prisoners leave Algiers cold

Algeria Interface, 21 March 2003

The Algerian authorities have shown not the slightest concern nor paid a single visit to Algerians being held arbitrarily in custody at the Guantanamo Bay US naval base.

Algiers, 21/03/2003 - Abdelkader Ait Idir is a worried man. The last letter he received from his brother Mustapha, interned at Guantanamo Bay, was back in October. It was written in Bosnian to his wife in Sarajevo and several passages had been scored out.

"It was the first time we'd received such a blatantly censured letter. I'm really worried. News has stopped coming from Mustapha and we're told a detainee is in hospital after attempting to commit suicide. But that's their propaganda, we don't believe a word," says Abdelkader, a building entrepreneur, who has found himself spokesperson for the families of the Algerian Guantanamo Bay detainees.

How many Algerians are being held at the air base in Cuba? Twenty-four says Abdelkader Ait Idir, who got the figure from a Qatar-based human rights lawyer.

Abdelkader speaks for the families of six Algerian men the Bosnian authorities handed over to the US. They are his brother, 33-year-old Mustapha Ait Idir, Boudelaa El Hadj, Nechla Mohamed, Lahmar Saber, Bensayah Belkacem and Lakhdar Boumediene all in their mid-30s to early 40s.

Acquitted and imprisoned
With the exception of Ait Idir, who quit Algeria for Italy in 1993, the other five left in the late 80s and early 90s to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. They then went their different ways before fate brought them together in post-war Bosnia. All were working for humanitarian organisations. Ait Idir and Boumediene were IT consultants and the others were on the administrative staff.

In November 2001 the Bosnian police swooped were arrested following US allegations they had planned terrorist attacks on the US and UK embassies in Sarajevo. They were detained in custody for three months before the Bosnian Supreme Court acquitted them. But at four o'clock on the morning of the very day they were to be released, and with their families looking on, they were hooded and taken away to an unknown destination.

"I only found my husband was being held at Guantanamo Bay a month later," says Mohamed Nechla's Algerian wife Soraya, who has now returned to the southern town of Laghouat. "The Red Cross located him. They said, we've seen you husbands, they're well, we can't tell you anything else. Write to them and we'll pass on our letters.

Soraya was to receive her first letter only five months later. "My health is good, do not worry," he wrote, which was what all six wrote.

"None of them ever go into detail about the way they're treated, so we just don't know how they really are, if they have to write what they do, or if they do just to reassure us," adds Soraya.

Letters are photocopied and relatives pass them round. They are short and so devoid of detail they are all much alike. In a letter he sent his Bosnian wife one year ago Belkacem Bensayah he wrote: "I don't what I'm accused of. They are going to release me soon, I have not done anything and all Bosnia knows it, I am innocent. Look after yourself and our daughters and bring them correctly, your faithful, loving husband."`

Interrogators not interested in charges
The most talkative of the Bosnian Algerians is doubtless Mustapha Ait Idir. He has complained about the treatment meted out in prison and that his US custodians never interrogate him on the terrorist acts he was supposed to be planning. "All that interests them is the aid organisations they worked for," says Abdelkader Ait Idir, "who funded them and especially the Arabic community in Bosnia."

In the face of the total indifference from Algerian officials Abdelkader has given up his job and devoted himself to his brother's cause.

Of all the people he has written to only the US ambassador to Algeria, Janet Sanderson, answered him with the advice that he should seek information from the Algerian authorities.

Islamist MP, Aribi Hassan, of the Islah party has, however lent him support and has held press conferences with the families of the Guantanamo detainees in the Algerian parliament. He is currently in the US, where he is planning to visit detainees.

According to the Washington Post suicides at the navy base are on the rise. There have been 19 since January 2002. Yet no Algerian official has ever paid them a visit, unlike other nationals. "I wrote to the Algerian embassy in the US, but I was told they were also Bosnians and nobody visited the prisoners," said Abdelkader.

The indifference of the Algerian embassy in the US mirrors that of the government in Algiers. Although the US allows all prisoners to be visited by officials from their home country, the Algerian government has never taken up the opportunity. "They show no interest," say US officials, "when we ask them." The wife of one of the Algerian prisoners confirms. "Even the most dictatorial regimes at least go through the motions of being interested in their citizens.," she says. "But I suppose it's understandable. I mean when you're behind the forced disappearances of 7,000 people in your own country you're not going to be bothered about a handful of prisoners locked up in cages in Cuba!"

Daikha Dridi