Guantanamo cell is better than freedom, says inmate fighting against release

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: London Times

An inmate of Guantanamo Bay who spends 22 hours each day in an isolation cell is fighting for the right to stay in the notorious internment camp.

Ahmed Belbacha fears that he will be tortured or killed if the United States goes ahead with plans to return him to his native Algeria.

The Times has learnt that Mr Belbacha, who lived in Britain for three years, has filed an emergency motion at the US Court of Appeals in Washington DC asking for his transfer out of Guantanamo to be halted. He was cleared for release from Camp Delta in February and his lawyers believe that his return to Algerian custody is imminent.

Mr Belbacha says that if he returns to Algeria, he faces the threat of torture by security services and murder by Islamist terrorists.

Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2169795.ece

[Ian David]

1. Misleading headline. He's not choosing between Gitmo and "Freedom" n/t

[Buzz Clik]

2. No kidding. "I'd rather be in a cage than released and sent to be tortured."

[The Stranger]

3. Excellent point -- he is forced to be either tortured by the U.S. Neocons or by the Algerians.

Of course, Algeria doesn't have quite the Constitutional history as the U.S., nor the same history of human rights struggle, nor does Algeria advertise itself as "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

[Boojatta]

4. I don't know whether or not Algeria advertises itself that way.

However, there have certainly been people who advertised it that way. Consider Canadian history: members of the "FLQ" (Front de liberation du Quebec) negotiated for exile rather than a trial. They specified that they wanted to go to either Cuba or Algeria.

People who claimed to be pursuing liberation made the decision to specify those two countries as options they were interested in.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Yep, those SAP's at Gitmo really get results that can be publicized.

[woo me with science]

6. Here's hour one for Limbaugh today.

I anticipate lots of jokes about rice pilaf.