By Kevin Kim
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

TUNIS, Tunisia – A Tunisian court convicted a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner for three years on terrorism charges Wednesday. Lotfi Lagha, a Tunisian national, had been charged with criminal association with the aim of harming or causing damage in Tunisia. Lagha plans to appeal the guilty verdict, but his lawyers allege that the Tunisian authorities had beaten him during detention.

Earlier this month, a federal judge in Washington made an unprecedented decision in blocking US military’s plans to transfer a Guantanamo Bay detainee to Tunisia because the detainee may be tortured in his home country. Judge Kessler of the US District court for the District of Columbia said sending the detainee to Tunisia would be “profound miscarriage of justice” that would amount to a death sentence. Two former Tunisian detainees sent home had already reported having been abused and tortured. Human rights group report that the Tunisian security forces use sleep deprivation, electric shocks, submersion of the head in water, beatings and cigarette burns.

Yet US authorities repatriated Lagha in June after he spent five years in the detention center at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Abdullah al Hajji Ben Amor, another former detainee who faces trial at the end of October, was returned home at the same time as Lagha. Both Lagha and Hajji alleged that they were mistreated by the Tunisian authorities while in detention.

Lagha was arrested in 2002 on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan but it remains unclear why he was there. Lagha also alleged mistreatment while in US custodies. He told his lawyers that US medics cut his frostbitten finger unnecessarily and against his will while in the center.

Currently, ten Tunisian detainees remain in Guantanamo Bay and at least eight of them have been convicted of crime in Tunisia even though they were not present at their trials.

Tunisia denies all allegations on human rights abuses.

For more information, please see:

Reuters – Tunisia jails ex-Guantanamo prisoner for three years – 24 October 2007

Guardian Limited – Ex-Gitmo detainee convicted in Tunisia – 24 October 2007

Arab News – US judge blocks Guantanamo detainee transfer to Tunisia – 11 October 2007

BBC News – US judge blocks Guantanamo move – 10 October 2007

AFP – US judge blocks repatriation to Tunisia of Guantanamo detainee – 10 October 2007