Spain judge seeks extraditions
From CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
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Inmates have benn held at Guantanamo Bay since 2001.
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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A Spanish judge is seeking the extradition of four terrorist suspects in custody at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the grounds they are believed to be members of the Spanish branch of al Qaeda, a court official says.
Only one of the four men sought is a Spaniard, but all four had visited Spain in the late 1990s when they came under police surveillance as part of the ongoing investigation into Islamic terrorist activities in Spain, the court official told CNN Tuesday.
Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, an investigating magistrate who last September 17 indicted Osama bin Laden and 34 other al Qaeda suspects, has prepared the court order seeking the extradition of the four men under a bilateral extradition treaty between Spain and the United States, the court official said.
The court order considers Guantanamo to be under U.S. jurisdiction, although it is a military zone, and seeks the extraditions "without delay."
But the court's extradition request must go first to the Spanish government, which then would decide whether or not to forward it to the U.S. administration.
In an exclusive on-camera interview with CNN last month, Garzon criticized what he called the lack of legal due process guarantees, like access to defense lawyers, for prisoners being held in U.S. military custody at Guantanamo since the war in Afghanistan in 2001.
"Perhaps the clearest example is Guantanamo," Garzon said "where some 660 people are still deprived of each and every one of their fundamental rights of any human being who is under arrest."
The four men sought for extradition in the court order were detained in Afghanistan and then brought to Guantanamo. Two Spanish police officers questioned them at Guantanamo last July, the court official said.
The court order links them to the alleged leader of the Spanish branch of al Qaeda, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, who has been in jail in Spain since November 2001. He is among the 35 suspects named in Garzon's 700-page indictment last September.
The court order seeks the extradition, from Guantanamo, of Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, alias Hmido, who was born in the Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta. The other three men were identified as Lahcen Ikassarien, alias Chej Hasan, a Moroccan citizen; Jamiel Abdul Latif al Banna, alias Abu Anas, and Omar Deghayes.
Three of the four -- except Jamiel Abdul Latif al Banna -- are mentioned in the 700-page indictment..
The indictment -- which CNN has had access to -- says that Barakat Yarkas, the suspected al Qaeda ringleader in Spain, allegedly recruited and sent to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan two of the men sought in the extradition order, Lahcen Ikassrien and Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed.
Garzon also issued international arrest warrants, to Interpol, for the four men sought in the extradition. The arrest warrants were a necessary legal step toward extradition, even though they are already in U.S. military custody.
Spain's Justice Ministry was not expected to receive the court's extradition request until sometime in January. There would first have to be an official translation -- into English -- of the 700-page indictment that Garzon wrote in Spanish, the court official said.
The Justice Ministry had not received the court's extradition request by Tuesday. Once it does, the ministry would be expected to forward it to the Spanish Prime Minister's cabinet, for a decision on whether to send it to the American government, a Justice Ministry spokesman told CNN on Tuesday.
