【AP】French doctors say ex-Gitmo inmate is OK

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French doctors say ex-Gitmo inmate is OK
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-05-16-gitmofrance_N.htm
09.05.17

PARIS (AP) — French doctors for a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who recently ended a more than two year hunger strike have said he's in stable condition, the man's lawyer said Saturday.

Robert Kirsch, a Boston attorney representing Lakhdar Boumediene, said the 43-year-old Algerian is resting at a medical facility in France and is expected to be discharged sometime next week. Boumediene arrived in France on Friday, after being held for seven years in at the U.S. camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

French authorities agreed to take him in a gesture to President Obama, who has promised to close the prison camp by January and faces the thorny problem of where to send dozens of prisoners who fear face mistreatment if returned to their homeland.

In a few days, Boumediene "will go to an apartment that has been rented and he'll start to resume normal life," Kirsch told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his home in Concord, New Hampshire.

"The word is when he got to Paris the doctors said he was OK," Kirsch said, adding that Boumediene lost more than 40 pounds (18 kilograms) during his two-and-a-half year long hunger strike and now weighs about 130 pounds (59 kilomgrams).

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Boumediene, suspected in a bomb plot against the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, was arrested along with five other Algerians in 2001 in Bosnia.

"It really is a case of an innocent guy and a horrible mistake," Kirsch said of his client.

Speaking Friday after Boumediene's arrival in France, Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said Boumediene "was deemed innocent of all charges relating to the participation in eventual terrorist activities by judicial decisions in several countries, including the United States."

"Now that he is free, we hope that Lakhdar Boumediene can resume a normal life," he said.

Neither Chevallier nor Kirsch would disclose where Boumediene was being treated or which French city he plans to relocate to. But Kirsch said Boumediene's wife and daughter were on hand when his plane touched down in France on Friday and that family members were visiting him in the hospital.

Once released, Boumediene plans to undergo vocational training provided by the French government to help him get a job, Kirsch said. "He's looking for some sort of charitable work," the lawyer said, adding: "He wants to provide for his family."

French officials have declined to comment on Boumediene's status in the country, but Kirsch said "he will very quickly be obtaining the papers he needs to work" and may later apply for French citizenship.

Kirsch said he was present when Boumediene ended the hunger strike he began on Christmas Day, 2006, to protest his detention at Guantanamo Bay. He had been force-fed at the prison camp through a nose tube.

Boumediene ate his first solid post-strike meal — of rice and beans — on Wednesday after it was confirmed he was to be transferred to France on Friday, Kirsch said.

Obama has promised to close the prison at Guantanamo and has urged allies to take some of the 60 inmates who could face abuse, imprisonment or death if returned to their homelands. In a statement Friday, Human Rights Watch said the matter affected prisoners from Algeria, China, Libya, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.

France promised to take one Guantanamo prisoner when Obama attended a NATO summit in April, and said last week it would accept Boumediene.

In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case called Boumediene vs. Bush that foreign Guantanamo Bay detainees have rights under the American Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

On a 5-4 split, the majority said the U.S. government was violating the rights of prisoners there and that the system the Bush administration put in place to classify suspects as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

Boumediene was released as Obama announced that he is reviving Bush-era military tribunals for a small number of Guantanamo detainees, with several new legal protections for terror suspects. The system is expected to try fewer than 20 of the 241 detainees now being held at the detention center.

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Associated Press writer David Tirrell-Wysocki in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.

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