March
6, 2008
Spain:
Ex-detainees too damaged for trial
By Daniel Woolls, Associated Press
Published in The Miami Herald
MADRID -- A Spanish judge dropped terror charges Thursday against
two former Guantánamo Bay detainees who recently returned
home to Britain, saying their mental health had deteriorated so
badly they were suicidal and it would be cruel to prosecute them.
In a 10-page order, Judge Baltasar Garzon said he was abandoning
an extradition request and the original indictment he issued in
2003 against Palestinian-Jordanian Jamil el Banna, 45, and Libyan-born
Omar Deghayes, who is 38.
The men spent more than four years at the U.S. camp for terror
suspects in Cuba without being charged or tried.
They returned to Britain in December under a deal between the
United States and Britain, but were briefly detained under an
international arrest warrant issued by Garzon, who accused them
of belonging to an al Qaeda cell in Spain from 1999 to 2001.
They were freed from detention in Britain but since then have
been awaiting the results of extradition proceedings.
Garzon said Banna spent more than five years in secret prisons
in Gambia and Afghanistan and later Guantánamo Bay, and
had undergone torture and mistreatment that led to "progressive
deterioration of his mental health.''
Deghayes met a similar fate in jails in Islamabad, Pakistan, and
Bagram, Afghanistan, and then in Guantánamo, the judge
wrote.
Those experiences caused ''grave deterioration of the mental health
of the suspects'' and this ''makes it impossible, because it would
be inhumane,'' to proceed with the arrest warrants and the rest
of the case, Garzon wrote.
''It's good. It's happy news,'' Deghayes said from his home in
Brighton, on England's southern coast. "I always knew they
would realize their mistake and give up the case.''
''I still have problems with immigration as the authorities have
taken away my resident status, but this is a relief, of course,''
Deghayes said.
Garzon said he was acting on the basis of medical examinations
of the suspects that were carried out by British physicians and
made public on Feb. 12.
These doctors -- identified as Derek Fluxman and Helen Bamber
of Harrow Road Health Centre in London -- concluded that Banna
suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, severe depression,
diabetes, hypertension, back pain and other physical ailments.
Deghayes also suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, severe
depression, blindness in his right eye and fractures to his nose
and right index finger, the judge said, citing the British physicians.
The doctors concluded both suspects showed suicidal tendencies,
Garzon said.
Garzon had accused the suspects of belonging to an al Qaeda cell
led by Imad Yarkas, who is serving a 12-year jail term in Spain
on terrorism charges.
The cell allegedly sent people to terrorist training camps in
Afghanistan and recruited for the cause of radical Islam, according
to Garzon.
The judge wrote that after indicting Banna and Deghayes in 2003
and asking U.S. authorities to extradite them, he never heard
from the Americans.
''Unfortunately, and incomprehensibly, the extradition request
was not even rejected,'' Garzon said. "It was just ignored.''
Clive Stafford Smith, founder of campaigning group Reprieve, who
represented Banna and Deghayes, said Garzon had acknowledged "these
guys have suffered enough. They have been psychologically scarred
from what happened to them in Guantánamo and before.''
''This is obviously a humane and sensible response from the Spanish
authorities, albeit belated,'' Stafford Smith said.
Copyright
2008. The Miami Herald. All rights reserved.
