By The Editorial Board

From The New York Times | Original Article

In a perverse move, the Defense Department announced on Thursday that it had sent two of the longest-held detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, both Algerian citizens, back to Algeria against their will.

Nearly five years into Barack Obama’s presidency, 162 detainees remain at Guantánamo. More than half have been cleared for transfer since 2010. Many of these men would happily return to their countries of origin. Belkacem Bensayah and Djamel Ameziane, however, did not want to.

Both men had been imprisoned without charge at Guantánamo since early 2002. Mr. Bensayah’s lawyer said his client would rather have stayed at Guantánamo than be returned to Algeria, where he feared being targeted by militants. Mr. Ameziane, who is a member of Algeria’s ethnic Berber minority, fled the country more than 20 years ago to avoid a civil war and had repeatedly asked the United States government not to send him back because he feared persecution. According to his lawyer, he is currently being held in secret detention and faces a possible criminal trial for unspecified offenses.

Mr. Ameziane’s saga began shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when he was rounded up by Pakistani authorities near the Afghanistan border and transferred to American forces. In 2005, he filed a petition for release, but the case was postponed indefinitely, even though the government never alleged that he was engaged in terrorist activities. In late 2008, the Bush administration admitted that there were no longer any “military rationales” for detaining him and cleared him for transfer.

The Obama administration continued to block his release to anywhere but Algeria, even after Luxembourg expressed interest in resettling him. During a 2009 hearing, Federal District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle told government lawyers she was “appalled” at the situation.

“I don’t know why in the world the only thing that the government can see here is Algeria,” she said. “I think it’s our duty to try to do something about these people down there and not just say, O.K., go to where you came from.”

In a speech in May, Mr. Obama rightly observed that Guantánamo “has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law.” He does not help matters by forcibly returning detainees to countries where they reasonably fear for their safety.