Redha al-Najar

Redha al-Najar is a citizen of Tunisia who was held in US custody in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility.[1][2] He is notable for being one of a very small number of the detainees held in Bagram to have had a writ of habeas corpus submitted on his behalf.

Redha al-Najar
Born1966 (age 56–57)
ArrestedKarachi, Pakistan
CitizenshipTunisia
Detained at CIA black sites, Bagram
ISN1466
Charge(s)No charge (extrajudicial detention)
StatusHeld in Bagram

Time magazine reports he was captured at his home in Karachi, Pakistan in May 2002.[1] Time reports he spent two years in the CIA's black sites, before being transferred to Bagram.

Mr. al-Najar is represented by Barbara Olshansky of Stanford University's International Human Rights Clinic, Tina Monshipour Foster of the International Justice Network, and Sylvia Royce in association with the International Justice Network.[3][4]

Mr. al-Najar was not allowed to send a letter until some time in 2003.[5]

On January 15, 2010, the Department of Defense complied with a court order and published a heavily redacted list of Detainees held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility.[6][7] There were 645 names on the list, which was dated September 22, 2009. One of the names was Ridha Ahmad Najjar. Historian Andy Worthington, author of The Guantanamo Files, asserted that this was another transliteration of Redah al-Najar, who he said was captured in May 2002 in Karachi, Pakistan. Worthington reported he was held in the CIA's "dark prison", and several other CIA black sites, including the "Panjshir prison", and two prisons named "Rissat prison" and "Rissat prison 2". al-Najar's incarceration was not revealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross and he was "...forced to spend 22 hours each day with one or both wrists chained to an overhead bar, for two consecutive days, while wearing a diaper."[8] The United States government is expected to file its response to a petition for a writ of certiorari on behalf of Mr. al-Najar in the Supreme Court on December 5, 2014.

On December 9, 2014, the United States Senate Intelligence Committee published the names of 39 individuals tortured by the CIA in its archipelago of black sites.[9][10] An individual named Ridha Ahmad Najar was listed as one of individuals the CIA tortured.

On December 15, 2014, the Washington Post published an op-ed by Tina M. Foster, one of Najar's lawyers.[11] In the article she wrote about how a whole section of the Intelligence Committee's report was devoted to Najar. She listed all the torture techniques the CIA used on him, and asserted that the CIA tortured him for nearly 700 days.

On June 15, 2015, he was repatriated to Tunisia by the US Government.[12]

References
  1. Mark Thompson (2009-01-05). "Another Gitmo Grows in Afghanistan". Time magazine. Archived from the original on January 13, 2009. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
  2. Jesse J. Holland (2008-12-10). "Tunisian man sues for freedom from US detainment". WTOP News. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
  3. "Stanford Law School's International Human Rights Clinic Files Lawsuit on Behalf of Tunisian Man Detained at U.S. Air Base Prison in Bagram, Afghanistan". Stanford Law School. 2008-12-10. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
  4. Barbara Olshansky, Tina Monshipour Foster (2009-01-02). "Redha al-Najar v. Robert M. Gates -- 1:08-CV-02143 (JDB)" (PDF). United States Department of Justice. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
  5. "Tunisian Disappeared in 2002 Discovered in Bagram". International Justice Network. Archived from the original on 2009-01-29. Retrieved 2009-01-12.
  6. "Bagram detainees" (PDF). Department of Defense. 2009-09-22. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-01-24.
  7. Andy Worthington (2010-01-19). "Dark Revelations in the Bagram Prisoner List". truthout. Archived from the original on 2010-01-23. ...al-Najar was also held in the "Dark Prison," the Panjshir prison, "Rissat," and another prison identified as "Rissat 2,"...
  8. Dominic Rushe; Ewen MacAskill; Ian Cobain; Alan Yuhas; Oliver Laughland (2014-12-10). "Rectal rehydration and standing on broken limbs: the CIA torture report's grisliest findings". The Guardian. Retrieved 2014-12-11. In April 2006, during a CIA briefing, President George W Bush, expressed discomfort at the "image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself". This man is thought to be Ridha al-Najjar, who was forced to spend 22 hours each day with one or both wrists chained to an overhead bar, for two consecutive days, while wearing a diaper. His incarceration was concealed from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
  9. Swati Shara (2014-12-09). "List of the 119 prisoners detained in CIA's secret prisons program". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 2014-12-13. Retrieved 2014-12-11.
  10. Inel Tarfa (2016-10-09). "Scarring Below the Surface: Torture, the CIA and Tunisian Nationals". Archived from the original on 2016-10-15. Lotfi Arabi Gherissi and Ridha Najjar were originally taken captive in Pakistan in 2002, before being transferred to the secret CIA prison called Cobalt in Afghanistan.
  11. Tina M. Foster (2014-12-15). "My client, a CIA torture victim". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2014-12-15. Retrieved 2014-12-17. An entire section of the U.S. Senate intelligence committee's executive summary of the CIA torture report focuses on the sadistic abuse of one of my clients. The excerpt, titled "CIA Headquarters Recommends That Untrained Interrogators in Country . . . Use the CIA's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on" Redha al-Najar, contains detailed descriptions of the specific methods of torture my client was subjected to while in CIA custody.
  12. "US: Ex-Detainees Describe Unreported CIA Torture". Human Rights Watch. 3 October 2016. Retrieved 5 October 2022.
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