Spain relaunches probe into Guantanamo torture charges

Spanish justice on Friday relaunched a probe into torture charges brought by four former Guantanamo Bay detainees which looks into the role of former US president George Bush.

In its decree, the national court asked prosecutors to look into whether it would be “pertinent to carry out legal action against those presumed responsible for the facts relevant to the investigation”.

It added that among those cited in charges filed by the plaintiffs are Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney and ex-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The court further decided to relaunch a request for judicial assistance sent to the United States and to Britain on May 26, 2009, which had so far yielded no response.

In February, the national court said it would investigate the case brought by Lahcen Ikassrien, a Morrocan who has lived in Spain for 14 years.

Since then, the case brought by three other ex-Guantanamo detainees — Hamed Abderraman Ahmed, nicknamed “the Spanish Taliban,” Palestinian Jamil Adullatif El Banna and Libyan Omar Deghayes — has been added.

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon agreed in 2009 to probe the charges brought by Ikassrien and the other detainees, who said they tortured during their detention in Guantanamo between 2002 and 2005.

But Garzon was suspended in 2010 while awaiting trial on charges of abuse of power over a move to probe Franco-era crimes, and the file was sent to another magistrate.

Garzon had found in his preliminary conclusions that there was “an authorised and systematic plan of torture and bad treatment of people detained without proof and without basic rights that all detainees should enjoy under international conventions”.

Ikassrien was found not guilty by Spanish justice of the offence of “integration in the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda”.

Some 171 people remain detained at Guantanamo, 10 years after the the first detainee was locked up, despite pledges by US President Barack Obama to close the prison.