Ex-Guantanamo prisoners go on trial in France

Benchellai said a lawyer was an 'unimaginable' luxury at Guantanamo. Picture / Reuters.

PARIS - Six Frenchmen who were released from the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay over the past two years will stand trial in France on Monday over "associating with criminals in relation to a terrorist organisation".

The six men, aged between 24 and 38, were captured during the US-led war in Afghanistan late in 2001 and held by American forces on suspicion of fighting for the ousted Taleban regime. Some of them returned to France in July 2004 and some in March 2005.

The French trial comes amid a heated debate on the Guantanamo camp in Cuba after the US Supreme Court last week struck down as illegal the military tribunal system set up by the United States to try Guantanamo prisoners.

The Frenchmen have said they suffered psychological and physical torture in Guantanamo and were deprived of water and food.

The men are judged for their trips to Afghanistan between 2000 and 2001, where prosecutors say five of them participated in al Qaeda training camps. The sixth man, Imad Kanouni, received fundamentalist religious training there.

Prosecutors have highlighted that the father and brother of one of the accused, Mourad Benchellali, were convicted last month of planning attacks in France in 2002.

Benchellali has admitted to attending a training camp in Afghanistan, but said friends dragged him into it.

"(My brother said his friends) 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 wrote in the International Herald Tribune daily last month.

Referring to his Paris trial, he said: "I have a court date, I'm facing a judge, and I have a lawyer - unimaginable luxuries in Guantanamo."

If found guilty, the Frenchmen risk 10 years in prison.

Defence lawyers say the French trial is an anomaly because the men had already spent between 18 months and two years in Guantanamo, before being detained on their arrival in France.

One accused, Brahim Yadel, was still in French prison, while the others have been released under judicial controls.

The verdict is expected in several weeks.

- REUTERS