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17 May 2009 Washington Post -- A Guantanamo Bay
detainee who lent his name to a landmark Supreme Court
case was flown out of the military base in Cuba
yesterday to France, the U.S. and French governments
announced.
France said this month that it would accept Lakhdar
Boumediene, a 43-year-old Algerian who was arrested
with five compatriots in Bosnia in 2001. The six
Algerians were accused of involvement in a plot to
bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, but the Justice
Department later dropped the allegation and a U.S.
federal judge last November ordered five of the six
released. Boumediene has relatives in France, which
led the government there to accept him as a gesture to
the Obama administration.
"The French have just taken an amazing leadership role
here," said Robert Kirsch, one of Boumediene's
civilian lawyers. On Wednesday, Kirsch and a French
diplomat flew to Guantanamo Bay and met with
Boumediene, who was given the necessary travel papers
to enter France, the lawyer said. Boumediene, who has
been on a hunger strike, asked the diplomat to bring
French food for the visit. But because Boumediene's
stomach would not be able to tolerate French cuisine,
Kirsch and the diplomat brought beans and rice from a
restaurant on the military base.
The Supreme Court ruled in a 5 to 4 opinion in June
that detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison
have the right to petition federal district courts to
review their detention. The case known as Boumediene
v. Bush extended the constitutional privilege of
habeas corpus to the detainees, who now number 240.
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