Guantanamo Detainee Released to Join Relatives in France

By Peter Finn and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 15, 2009

A Guantanamo Bay detainee who lent his name to a landmark Supreme Court case was released from custody today and flown out of the military base in Cuba to join relatives in France, according to government and diplomatic sources.

His release came on a day when President Obama is expected to announce that he will resume military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay, but with greater legal protections for defendants than had been given in the past.

France agreed this month to accept Lakhdar Boumediene, a 43-year-old Algerian who was arrested with five compatriots in Bosnia in 2001. The six were accused of involvement in a plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo. But a U.S. federal judge ordered five of the six released last November after he said the evidence against them was not credible.

Three of the six were flown in December back to Bosnia, where they were naturalized citizens. The fate of Sabir Lahmar, 39, who was ordered released but does not have Bosnian citizenship, remains undetermined.

(More here.)