Abdul Aziz Naji was a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp who was involuntarily transferred home to Algeria last week after seven years in custody. Why "involuntarily?" He didn't want to leave Gitmo, not because it was awesome, but because he was worried about being tortured or killed when he returned home.
Yesterday, his lawyers (via Marcy Wheeler) said neither they, nor his family, could reach him:
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many Guantanamo detainees, said Naji's lawyers and family have been unable to locate or contact him since he was repatriated by the U.S. government.
Naji's lawyers warned the government that sending him back to Algeria would expose him to danger because the Algerian authorities thought he might be a member of the GIA, a near-defunct terrorist group that has declared war against the Algerian government -- but he was transferred anyway.
The backdrop to Naji's disappearance is the snickering of conservative bloggers who used his story as an example of how Gitmo was teh awsm after all.
Anyway, as Wheeler said, I'll be on a panel she has organized at Netroots Nation tomorrow about closing Gitmo, and if you're in Las Vegas you should come along.
