A Fate Worse Than Guantanamo

In fact, the Tunisian government had disavowed such solitary confinement in 2005 as cruel and outmoded. "It's illegal!" exclaimed Hajji's overworked defense lawyer, producing a tattered copy of the Tunisian Criminal Code and pointing excitedly to the provision that permits solitary confinement only for punitive purposes and not for more than 10 days.

Both his lawyer and the International Committee of the Red Cross have been able to visit Hajji. His family members, who are allowed one 15-minute visit per week, must report the content of their conversations to police as soon as they leave the prison.

Less is known about Lagha, who had no legal representation during his more than five years at Guantanamo Bay. He returned on the same flight as Hajji. Since June 21, I'm told, he has been facing charges of participating in a terrorist organization abroad, but he was not given access to a lawyer until Aug. 9. He told his new attorney that he had been moved out of solitary confinement only two days before the lawyer's visit.

Two of Lagha's brothers made the long trip from the family home in southern Tunisia to the capital to see him while I was there. They had thought that their brother was dead, they told me, and hadn't even known he was being held at Guantanamo Bay until they learned of his release on al-Arabiya TV.

I asked Robert F. Godec, the U.S. ambassador to Tunisia, what the Bush administration is doing to track the two men's cases. He said that he had "specific and credible" assurances from the Tunisian government that they would not be abused, adding that "we follow up on these assurances." But he would not say whether the treatment of Hajji and Lagha had lived up to Tunisia's pledges; nor would he say whether any U.S. official had met with the two since their return home. This is disturbing: All we have are promises from a notoriously abusive regime, yet U.S. officials will not even say whether they are following up on those assurances by talking to the detainees themselves.

My organization, Human Rights Watch, has long urged the Bush administration to close Guantanamo Bay. As we continue to hope for an end to this chapter, we must remember that the United States is expressly prohibited under international law -- in the form of the 1984 Convention Against Torture -- from forcibly sending anyone back to a country where there are substantial grounds for believing they would be tortured.

Haphazardly shipping detainees such as Hajji and Lagha to countries with widely known records of torture is hardly the way to go about closing Guantanamo Bay. The administration could shut down the camp responsibly by alerting the detainees and their lawyers about pending home-country returns and giving them an opportunity to challenge such transfers, including the reliability of any diplomatic assurances of humane treatment, before a federal court. Most Guantanamo detainees won't want to do anything to slow their return home, but such a process would add an invaluable protection for those who can demonstrate a credible fear of torture or abuse back home.

Guantanamo Bay needs to be emptied, but it must be done justly and humanely. Otherwise, Washington could end up condemning the detainees to a fate worse than Guantanamo. This would only further fray the tattered global reputation that the United States so desperately needs to repair.

jennifer.daskal@hrw.org

Jennifer Daskal is senior counterterrorism counsel

at Human Rights Watch.