An Iraqi man who pleaded guilty to commanding insurgents who committed war crimes in Afghanistan filed a lawsuit in federal court Friday seeking to stop his transfer from the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in Iraq.
The petition, filed by his lawyers, made public the transfer negotiations that had been ongoing for some time Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi63, into Iraqi government custody despite protests from him and his lawyers that he could be subjected to abuse and inadequate medical care.
Mr. Hadi, who says his real name is Nashwan al-Tamir, is the oldest and most disabled prisoner in public detention due to a paralyzing spinal disease and six surgeries at the base. In 2022 he pleaded guilty to charges of war crimes, accepting responsibility for the actions of some of the forces under his command, in an agreement to his sentence expires in 2032. The deal included the possibility of him serving his sentence in the custody of another country that is more suitable for providing him with medical care.
His lawyers said the US plan was for the Iraqi government to house him in Karkh prison outside Baghdad, the former site of a US detention operation called Camp Cropper that held hundreds of prisoners for years before it was returned to Iraqi control in 2010.
“Due to his conviction here and the myriad problems with the Iraqi prison system, Mr. al-Tamir cannot be safely housed in an Iraqi prison,” the lawyers said in their 27-page filing. “Furthermore, he does not believe that the Iraqi government can provide him with the medical care he needs for conditions that were exacerbated by inadequate medical care while he was at Guantánamo.”
The lawsuit seeks to thwart the deal, which is part of the Biden administration’s effort to reduce the prison population before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office. Among them four prisoners two Malaysians who, like Mr. Hadi, pleaded guilty to war crimes, were returned to their homeland in less than a month. Unlike Mr. Hadi, none of the four men, including a Tunisian citizen ia Kenyan citizen, opposed extradition to the homeland.
It is not known when the Pentagon intends to extradite Mr. Hadi to Iraq. But the Defense Department notified Congress of the plan on December 13. If the administration complies with the legal requirement to notify Congress 30 days in advance, he could be transported from Guantánamo the week of January 12.
Government lawyers have agreed to fast-track the challenge. They notified Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that they would like to respond to the preliminary injunction issue by Wednesday.
State Department and Justice Department spokesmen declined to discuss the case.
Mr. Hadi was represented in the petition by Benjamin C. McMurray and Scott K. Wilson, federal public defenders in Utah. It was also signed by Susan Hensler, a lawyer who works for the Ministry of Defense and has been representing him since 2017.
The lawyers cited a 2023 State Department Report on concerns about human rights abuses in Iraq which specifically mentioned “difficult and life-threatening prison conditions”. They asked the court to temporarily ban his transfer while the hearing is ongoing. “The continuing violation warrants a preliminary injunction against the immediate transfer of Mr. al-Tamir to an Iraqi prison to serve his sentence.”
Mr. Hadi was born in Mosul, Iraq, in 1961. He fled Iraq in 1990 to avoid being drafted into Saddam Hussein’s army for what became the first American invasion of Iraq, then settled in Afghanistan. In 2003 and 2004, at the start of the US invasion, Taliban and Qaeda forces under his command illegally used civilian cover in attacks that killed 17 US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. His forces, for example, had a fighter posing as a taxi driver in a taxi loaded with explosives.
At Guantánamo, he relied on a wheelchair and a four-wheeled walker and was held for years in a cell equipped for the disabled.
His lawyers said in their filing that US officials informed them of the plan to repatriate Mr. Hadi “a week before Christmas,” adding that “government officials informed the veterans that they had concluded that Iraq was the ‘only’ option.”
Both the prisoner and lawyers opposed the transfer, the filing said, citing U.S. obligations under international and constitutional law not to send someone to a country where they could be subjected to abuse.
Scott Roehm of the Center for Victims of Torture, an advocacy group, said it was his understanding that “senior State Department officials had previously determined that Mr. al-Tamir could not be sent to an Iraqi prison without violating the ban on torture. “
“The State Department’s own human rights reports, which are consistent with that decision, reveal that Iraqi prisons are rife with serious human rights violations, including torture,” he said. “If the government now takes a different view, it must explain why by publishing its analysis.”
