Mourad Benchellali

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Mourad Benchellali is a French citizen, who was captured and detained in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.^[1]

Benchellali is the younger brother of Menad Benchellali, an alleged graduate of the Derunta training camp, who it is claimed, received chemical weapons training.^[1] Benchellali and Nizar Sassi are alleged to have traveled to Afghanistan on forged passports.^[2]

Benchellali is reported to have directed Mourad, and a friend, Nizar Sassi, to go Afghanistan. ^[3]

Benchellali was transferred from US custody to French custody in July 2004.^[4] Under French law, security detainees like Benchellali can be held, without charge, for up to three years.

[edit] Accounts of his detention

Benchellali has published a book describing his experience traveling to Afghanistan, his capture, and detention.^[5] Following the first three suicides at Guantanamo the New York Times published an op-ed by Benchellali, entitled "Detainees in despair".

In the op-ed Benchellali described how he came to spend two months in an al Qaeda training camp:

"In the early summer of 2001, when I was 19, I made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation. His friends, he said, were going to look after me. They did — channeling me to what turned out to be a Qaeda training camp. For two months, I was there, trapped in the middle of the desert by fear and my own stupidity."

Benchellali said that his training didn't make him an enemy of the United States, that as soon as his course was finished he made his way to the Pakistan border, so he could fly back to France. But, by the time he got there he learned of the al Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, and that, as a result, the border was closed. He crossed the border through an unguarded mountain pass, but was soon captured by Pakistani authorities.

Benchellali concluded his op-ed with:^[5]

"I believe that a small number of the detainees at Guantánamo are guilty of criminal acts, but as analysis of the military's documents on the prisoners has shown, there is no evidence that most of the 465 or so men there have committed hostile acts against the United States or its allies. Even so, what I heard so many times resounding from cage to cage, what I said myself so many times in my moments of complete despondency, was not, "Free us, we are innocent!" but "Judge us for whatever we've done!" There is unlimited cruelty in a system that seems to be unable to free the innocent and unable to punish the guilty."