PARIS, 26 March 2005 — A French court yesterday ordered the imprisonment of a Frenchman who was released by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay this month, his lawyer said.
Ridouane Khalid, who arrived back from the base in Cuba on March 7 with two other French citizens, had been released under judicial controls because he was suffering from hepatitis.
But the Paris court said Khalid, 36, should be sent back to prison as he risked causing “trouble to public order”.
Khalid, who was taken to prison after the court hearing, is being held in detention in France along with five other French ex-Guantanamo inmates. They are being investigated for “criminal association with a terrorist enterprise”.
Khalid was arrested in Afghanistan in late 2001 and spent more than three years at the US base. He told reporters after his return to France that he went to Afghanistan for “noble” and religious reasons, not with military aims.
“The chamber ... considers Guantanamo has not happened, that three and a half years of US investigations under a regime condemned by the international community have not been enough,” Khalid’s lawyer Paul-Albert Iweins said.
The court also ruled that another former Guantanamo inmate, Khaled ibn Mustapha, who arrived back in France with Khalid, must remain in prison.
A third French detainee who returned this month, Moustak Ali Patel, was released without charge after his arrival.
Their release from Guantanamo followed a visit to France last month by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The trip was aimed at repairing ties between the two countries strained by the US-led war in Iraq, which France strongly opposed.
Four other French citizens, captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan by the US military, were released from Guantanamo Bay and returned to France last July. They remain in detention.
Three years after the United States opened its prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, 65 detainees have been handed over to their home countries. None have been convicted of any crime.
