AP News, November 15th, 2007
A Tunisian court on Thursday convicted a former prisoner at the United States prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on terror charges, the Justice Ministry said.
Abdullah bin Omar was handed a 7-year prison sentence on charges of "belonging in times of peace to a terrorist organization operating in a foreign country," an official at the Justice Ministry said.
Bin Omar, a Tunisian citizen who spent five years at the detention facility in Cuba and was released in June, consistently denied the charges or any links to terrorism.
His lawyers had asked for an acquittal.
One of them, Samir Ben Amor, said he would appeal the decision to Tunisia's highest court.
A Tunisian court had convicted bin Omar in absentia in 1995, handing him a 10-year sentence for his alleged involvement with the so-called Tunisian Islamic Front, a group thought to be the armed branch of the banned Islamist party, Ennahdha.
He appealed that decision following his June 18 transfer to Tunisia.
Documents from the trial ending Wednesday alleged bin Omar had prepared for attacks — whose aim would have been to "change the state through violence," replacing the government with a "fundamentalist regime."
The documents also alleged bin Omar requested the help of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, whom he met in Sudan. During the proceedings, bin Omar denied having ever met bin Laden in person.
Bin Omar, whose name was given in Tunisian court documents as Abdallah Ben Amor Hajji, was arrested in 2002 in Pakistan, where he had lived since 1991 with his wife and children.
During the trial, he complained he had been the victim of "bad treatments and harassment" during his detention in Cuba.
The U.S.-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch alleged Tunisian authorities had mistreated bin Omar and another former detainee at Guantanamo Bay, breaking a pledge to U.S. officials not to do so.
In a September statement, the group cited the men's lawyers as saying the two had been held in solitary confinement and mistreated — despite assurances by the Tunisian government to the U.S. that they would not be harmed upon their return to the country. The Tunisian government denied the allegations.
Two diplomats from the United States' embassy in Tunisia and an official from the Britain-based human rights group, Reprieve, attended Wednesday's proceedings.
