JURIST - Paper Chase: Freed Guantanamo detainees facing Afghanistan trial

[JURIST] Five Afghan detainees freed from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] last week have been taken to Pul-i-Charkhe prison outside the capital Kabul and will likely face trial, Al Jazeera reported Tuesday. The five were among a group of nine detainees released [JURIST report] on Thursday and flown back to their home countries - three to Sudan, five to Afghanistan and one to Morocco. Relatives of the Afghans have expressed concern at their renewed detention, saying they should be released if the US itself found no evidence against them. Rights activists say that local Afghan trials of ex-US detainees are problematic because very often the courts rule based on evidence said to be little more than "allegations" submitted by US officials [JURIST comment]. Al Jazeera has more.

One of the Sudanese prisoners released Thursday was Sami al Haj [advocacy website], a cameraman for Al Jazeera arrested by Pakistani authorities in 2001 while he was attempting to cross the border into Afghanistan; he was later turned over to the US. He had been on a hunger strike since January 2007 to protest the conditions and the indefiniteness of his confinement. On Monday he told a crowd in Khartoum that he had survived 2,340 days in the "most heinous prison mankind has ever known". AP has more.

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