Federal Court Blocks Transfer of Guantánamo Convict to Prison in Iraq

Politics|Federal Court Blocks Transfer of Guantánamo Convict to Prison in Iraq

A federal judge on Saturday temporarily prevented the U.S. government from transferring a disabled prisoner to Iraq from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, while the judge considered the prisoner’s claim that he would be at risk for abuse and inadequate health care there.

The prisoner, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, 63, is the oldest of the 15 detainees at Guantánamo and has a paralyzing spine disease that has required six surgeries at the base. He is serving a sentence on a war crimes conviction, and the United States had negotiated an agreement for him to finish it in Iraqi custody at a prison in Baghdad.

On Jan. 3, Mr. Hadi filed a lawsuit to stop the transfer, invoking his rights to humane treatment. He used his birth name, Nashwan al-Tamir, not the alias under which the United States has held him, Hadi the Iraqi.

In a three-sentence order Saturday night, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court in Washington wrote that the government was “hereby enjoined from transferring Mr. al-Tamir to Iraq without his consent until the pending claims are resolved.” It was accompanied by a 61-page memorandum, which was under seal and therefore not publicly accessible.

The judge issued the order two days before U.S. forces could have secretly flown Mr. Hadi to Iraq. The Defense Department sent Congress a classified notice on Dec. 13 that it would transfer him after 30 days.

The order means that Mr. Hadi has no means of leaving the offshore prison until the judge decides the larger question of whether the Iraqi prison has inadequate health care and whether it would be dangerous for him in particular to be repatriated. The State Department has found no other country to take him.