Paris Court Convicts Ex-Gitmo Detainees Despite Prosecutor’s Condemnation of U.S.
A Paris court has convicted five former Guantanamo detainees for criminal association with a terrorist enterprise and sentenced each of them to one year in prison.
The court followed the recommendation of prosecutor Sonya Djemni-Wagner, who urged a conviction even though she said she disagreed with the “Guantanamo system” and the suspects’ “abnormal detention there,” the Associated Press reports.
A decision in the case had been expected in September 2006, but the court delayed it to get more information about secret interrogations of the suspects by French intelligence officers at the U.S. base.
Djemni-Wagner asserted that the men were improperly held at Guantanamo, the AP story says. “None of them should have been held on that base, in defiance of international law, and have had to go through what they went through,” she said.
Updated 2:06 p.m. CST to correct the date on which the decision was originally expected.
