Ex-Guantanamo prisoner walks free

ALCALA DE HENARES, Spain - A Spaniard held for two years in the US military camp at Guantanamo Bay before being handed over to Spain walked out of prison on bail on Tuesday, judicial sources said.

Hamed Aderrahman Ahmad was the first detainee to be transferred from the prison camp where the United States is holding about 600 people, captured since US forces invaded Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks.

Judicial sources said investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzon had ordered Abderrahman released on bail of 3000 euros ($5670). He has to report daily to a police station and weekly to court and is forbidden from leaving the country.

Abderrahman embraced those waiting for him outside the Alcala de Henares jail, near Madrid, and thanked the judge whose investigation into al Qaeda's Spanish activities had brought him back to Spain.

Garzon had charged him with belonging to al Qaeda and once the United States handed him over to Spain in February, he ordered him jailed pending trial.

"I am innocent. I am not a terrorist," Abderrahman told reporters outside the jail. "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all."

Abderrahman, from Spain's African enclave of Ceuta, was arrested by the Pakistani army in November 2001.

In his first court appearance he said he had wanted to join the Taleban movement in Afghanistan but denied the charge of belonging to al Qaeda, court sources said then.

Lawyer Marcos Garcia Montes said the release was provisional but he expected his client to be cleared of all charges shortly.

"The judge will certainly decide in a few days that there are no charges to answer," Garcia Montes told Reuters.

Spain has also asked for three more detainees to be sent to Spain for its investigations.

The Guantanamo detentions have brought criticism from human rights groups as none of the prisoners have been tried and the United States calls detainees enemy combatants rather than prisoners of war, denying them rights set out in the Geneva Conventions.

On Monday, the United States told Guantanamo prisoners they had the right to go to court to challenge their detention and ask for a hearing on their "enemy combatant" status.

- REUTERS