Three Gitmo Detainees Returned to Bosnia

Dec. 16, 2008— -- Attorneys for three former detainees at Guantanamo said their clients had been returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina, nearly a month after a federal court in Washington found that the United States had no lawful basis for imprisoning them.

These are the first releases from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay to result from a court ruling.

The Associated Press and local media report that an unscheduled flight had delivered the men to police in Bosnia. According to the reports, police were seen rushing the men out of the building, putting them into armored vehicles and taking them to state police headquarters.

The men were arrested by Bosnian police in October 2001 on suspicion of plotting to attack the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. In January 2002, Bosnian police delivered them to U.S. military personnel stationed in Bosnia, who in turn, sent them to Guantanamo, a detention facility created by the Bush administration.

In a statement, the men's lawyer said, "We welcome the release of these three men but continue to focus on having all of our clients returned home to their families."

The lawyer, Robert Kirsch, of Wilmer Hale in Boston, has represented the three men, Mustafa Ait Idir, Hadj Boudella and Mohamed Nechla, since 2004.

The two other men ordered released, Saber Lahmar and Lakhdar Boumediene, remain at Guantanamo.

"Now, after seven years of indefinite detention by the U.S. military, these men will be returned to their wives and children. They have long insisted that their detention was a grave error that implicated the highest levels of the Bush administration, and we couldn't be more pleased to have this corrected and see these men return home," said another attorney for the men, Stephen Oleskey.

"We trust that the Bosnian authorities will allow these three men to be reunited with their families right away and enable them to begin the process of putting this dreadful ordeal behind them," he said.

The release was ordered in November by U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon, who was the first to rule that the government had insufficient evidence to hold a Guantanamo detainee.

In the ruling, Leon urged the government not to appeal but to instead find a country to accept the men. They are native Algerians, he said, who were captured in Bosnia.