Lotfi Bin Ali

UNESCO reported in 2019 that Lofti said he would prefer to live in actual detention in Guantanamo rather than in hostile Kazakhstan.

Vice magazine, who visited him in October 2015, ten and a half months after his transfer to Semey, Kazakhstan, said his local doctors didn't speak Arabic, and no translators were available. It reported that there were no cardiologists in Semey, and the security conditions agreed to by the USA and Kazakhstan, when he was transferred, did not permit him to leave Semey.

Vice News described the men transferred to Kazakhstan as only nominally being free. Vice News interviewed al-Lutfi shortly after the May 7 2015 death of his friend Asim Thabit Abdullah Al-Khalaqi, who was transferred to Kazakhstan at the same time he was. Al-Lufti had been in regular contact with him via Skype, and had last spoken to him just three days before his death. He told Vice News that Kazakhstan security officials regularly inspected the former captives' living quarters, initially doing so almost every day:

Vice magazine profiled Lofti in October 2015. It reported Kazakh authorities still hadn't issued him with identity documents, meaning he had to rely the Red Crescent Society to manage his affairs.

Lotfi Bin Ali is a Tunisian whom the United States held in extrajudicial detention for over thirteen years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps, in Cuba. He was one of five men transferred to Kazakhstan in 2014. He was extensively quoted following the death by lack of medical care of one of the other captives transferred to Kazakhstan. In a September 2016 profile in The Guardian, he described exile in Kazakhstan as being very isolating, and, in some ways, almost as bad as Guantanamo.

On December 30, 2014, Lotfi and four other men were transferred to Kazakhstan, where they were kept under onerous security conditions. Fox News said that al Lufti and the four other men were the first to be transferred to Kazakhstan. Carol Rosenberg, of the Miami Herald, noted that al Lufti arived in Guantanamo with serious heart disease, and his transfer had first been recommended in 2004, because his heart disease made him a low risk. Three Yemenis, Asim Thabit Abdullah Al-Khalaqi, Muhammad Ali Husayn Khanayna and Sabri Mohammad al Qurashi and fellow Tunisians Adel Al-Hakeemy, were also transferred. Reuters said that the 2009 reviews by the Joint Review Task Force had reclassified all five men as "low risk".

On April 25, 2011, whistleblower organization WikiLeaks published formerly secret assessments drafted by Joint Task Force Guantanamo analysts. His two-page Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessment was drafted on June 27, 2004. It was signed by camp commandant Jay W. Hood. He recommended release due to Lotfi's serious health problems, but noted the Criminal Investigative Task Force regarded him as a high risk.

Scholars at the Brookings Institution, led by Benjamin Wittes, listed the captives still held in Guantanamo in December 2008, according to whether their detention was justified by certain common allegations:

According to his Guantanamo weight records he was 76.5 inches (194 cm) tall, and weighed 225 pounds (102 kg) upon his arrival. His weight showed a sudden drop in late fall of 2005 and he weighed 218 pounds (99 kg) on November 27, 2005. On December 10, 2005, his weight had dropped to 192.5 pounds (87.3 kg). On both December 12 and 13 his weight was recorded as exactly 173.4 pounds (78.7 kg). On December 16, his weight was recorded as exactly 163.9 pounds (74.3 kg). By December 29, his records showed he had gained 29 pounds (13 kg). By January 27, 2006, his weight had risen to 201.4 pounds (91.4 kg), and his weight oscillated around that weight for the rest of 2006.

Lotfi's health is poor. A 2004 medical summary stated he had chronic heart disease that had required the placement of a mechanical heart valve; that he had kidney stones; latent tuberculosis, depression and high blood pressure. It stated he needed to have his blood tested, twice a month, to ensure he was receiving the right dose of anti-coagulants.

Originally, the Bush Presidency asserted that captives apprehended in the "war on terror" were not covered by the Geneva Conventions, and could be held indefinitely, without charge, and without an open and transparent review of the justifications for their detention. In 2004, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that Guantanamo captives were entitled to being informed of the allegations justifying their detention, and were entitled to try to refute them.

I don't want to listen to this bullshit about his health problems. Since he arrived here on the 31st of December last year and until today, all we have been doing is taking care of his health... We have so many poor and elderly people, so many large families that live much worse than he does. What is he, a national hero of Kazakhstan? Why should he enjoy special treatment and privileges?