US lawyer in bid to block transfer of detainee
A lawyer for one of the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has asked a District Court in the US to block the Bush administration from sending the detainee to Egypt, asserting that he would be tortured there.
The case, reports The New York Times, is one of the rare instances in which the practice known as rendition, in which a prisoner is transferred to the custody of another government, may be openly considered by a federal court. The motion was filed on behalf of the detainee, Mamdouh Habib, and asserts that he was tortured in an Egyptian prison for nearly six months in 2001 before being transferred to Guantánamo. The administration has given little information about whether or when it engages in the practice, which could violate international law if a government had reason to believe that the government receiving the prisoner might use torture. Full report in The New York Times