Ahcene Zemiri

Ahcene Zemiri and Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili were returned to Algeria on January 20, 2010, as their country of origin and citizenship. Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, reported that it was not clear whether the two men had been sent home as free men, or whether they were transferred to Algerian security custody. She noted that two other Algerians, former detainees, had been granted asylum in France, because they had reason to fear a return home.

In 2009, Justice Edmond Blanchard ruled that since the men were not Canadian citizens, and their connection to Canada was "tenuous", the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not apply to them. In a different case, the Supreme Court of Canada had ruled that the Canadian government should publish classified documents which the United States had shared about the Canadian citizen Omar Khadr.

While some detainees had reported seeing Canadian officials, the government originally denied it. These accounts were not confirmed until July 2008, after the Canadian Supreme Court ordered the release of certain materials related to the case of the Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, then still a detainee at Guantanamo. The Canadian government was reviewing the role of its CSIS agents, as it was concerned they may have colluded with the US during interrogation under torture. In addition, the US Supreme Court had held that the government was illegally detaining persons at Guantanamo in the period when the CSIS agents had interviewed residents there.

On July 27, 2008, Michelle Shephard, writing in the Toronto Star, reported that Canadian security officials had interviewed Zemiri and two others at Guantanamo in addition to Khadr.

In January 2007, the press reported that Ahmed Ressam, who had been convicted in 2001 of planning the Millennium bombing and alleged that Zemiri was involved in the plot, wrote a letter in November 2006 to the U.S. District Court Judge John C. Coughenour. He said he wanted to "clarify" his allegations against Zemiri and recanted his previous accusations. Coughenour was the Judge who sentenced Ressam.

Lawyers from the firm Fredrikson & Byron of Minneapolis agreed to serve pro bono to represent Ahcene Zemiri and met with him in 2005. In the petition for habeas corpus, they asserted that their client had not been a member of the Taliban, al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups; "had no military or terrorist training, and has neither caused nor tried to harm American personnel or property."

In 2004, Zemiri was interrogated at Guantanamo by officials of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), after the Canadian government had been informed of his detention. They also interviewed Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian, who also were Canadian residents before being captured in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo.

In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), the United States Supreme Court ruled that detainees had the right to review of their cases before an impartial tribunal to determine if they were enemy combatants. The Center for Constitutional Rights organized a program of finding United States lawyers who would agree to serve as the lawyers for Guantanamo captives, while serving writs of habeas corpus on their behalf in federal district court to challenge their detention.

To respond to the Court, the Bush administration established Combatant Status Review Tribunals, and from the fall of 2004 through 2005, conducted reviews of detainee cases. In part because of the allegations by Ressam that Zemiri was involved in the LAX plot, although he denied it, the U.S. designated Zemiri as an unlawful enemy combatant and recommended his continued detention.

Zemiri was transferred by the Americans to Guantanamo in 2002. Ahmed Ressam, who had been convicted in 2001 of planning the Millennium bombing of the Los Angeles Airport, alleged that Zemiri was involved in the plot.

Ahmed Ressam, the terrorist convicted in 2001 of planning the foiled Millennium bombing of the Los Angeles Airport, alleged that Zemiri had been involved in the plot. In late 2006, he recanted his accusation entirely. In January 2010, Zemiri was freed from Guantanamo Bay and repatriated to Algeria.

In about June 2001, the couple moved to Afghanistan. As fighting increased, in November, they decided to leave because Karina was pregnant. They decided to separate, as they had heard that women and children were being permitted to enter Pakistan safely. They did not see each other again until 2010, years after their son Karim was born. Karina Zemiri believes that bounty hunters picked up her husband and sold him to the Americans, as was commonly done.

He settled in Montreal in 1994 and became a legal resident. He married Karina Dereshteanu, a Canadian woman, in 1997.

Ahcene Zemiri (born 1967), also known as Hassan Zumiri, is an Algerian citizen who was for seven years a legal resident of Canada, where he lived in Montreal. He and his Canadian wife moved to Afghanistan in July 2001. They were separated when trying to leave in November 2001 and Zemiri was arrested and turned over to United States forces. He was transferred to the United States Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2002, where he was detained for eight years without charge.