Daily Times

GENEVA: A Pakistani man held at the US-run Guantanamo Bay detention facility since 2006 should be released immediately and given a right to compensation, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said on Wednesday.

The detention of Ammar al Baluchi is arbitrary, breaches international human rights law and has no legal basis, according to a written opinion by the group of five independent experts, who report to the UN Human Rights Council. The United States has said Ammar al Baluchi’s detention is lawful.

Al Baluchi, a Kuwait-born citizen of Pakistan also known as Abdul Aziz Ali, is the nephew and an alleged co-conspirator of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“Mr al Baluchi has been subject to prolonged detention on discriminatory grounds and has not been afforded equality of arms in terms of having adequate facilities for the preparation of his defence under the same conditions as the prosecution,” the experts said.

The US judicial system normally affords detainees the guarantees of due process and a fair trial, but he had been denied those rights, an act of discrimination based on his status as a foreign national and his religion, they said.

His detention contravened at least 13 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights, the group added. The five members of the group are José Antonio Guevara Bermúdez from Mexico, Elina Steinerte from Latvia, Leigh Toomey from Australia, Seong-Phil Hong from South Korea and Sètondji Roland Adjovi from Benin.

US military spokeswoman Navy Commander Sarah Higgins reaffirmed the US view that it has the right to detain him, but declined for now to offer a broader rebuttal. “The US government has the legal authority to detain al Baluchi. Until we have time to analyse the basis of their claim, we will delay further comment,” Sarah Higgins informed media. In December, another expert mandated by the UNHRC, the UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, said he had information that al Baluchi was still being tortured, years after Washington banned “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

Published in Daily Times, March 2^nd 2018.