Out of Guantanamo, and into the fire

Bridgethought of the Day: Injustice always blows back ... eventually...

Here's a great article about a horrible subject:

The recent conviction, in a Tunisian court, of former Guantanamo detainee Abdullah bin Omar undermines claims by the Bush administration that it has found adequate ways of repatriating wrongly arrested detainees to their home countries.

A former railway engineer, bin Omar, who is 51, left Tunisia because of religious persecution in 1989. Taking his wife and children with him, he moved to Pakistan, where he was seized at his home by Pakistani police in May 2002. He later claimed, as did numerous other detainees, that, as a result of bounty payments offered by the Americans for Al-Qaeda or Taliban suspects, he was sold to US forces for $5,000.

Held for five years without charge or trial in Guantanamo, bin Omar was accused of traveling to Pakistan "under Osama bin Laden's protection," of running a guest house for fighters in Afghanistan, and of having various connections with Al-Qaeda. He maintained, however, that he had never even visited Afghanistan, and had not been "a member of any type of group or organization while he lived in Pakistan." The allegations had evidently evaporated by early 2007, when he was cleared for release by a military review board.

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