US seeks to transfer disabled Guantanamo prisoner to Iraq amid torture fears, rights group warns

The US is violating the Non-Refoulement principle by sending a dual Afghan-Iraqi national Guantanamo prisoner to an Iraqi prison, rights group CAGE has warned.

CAGE said the lawyers of 64-year-old Nashwan Al-Tamir – known as Abd Al-Hadi Al-Iraqi – have filed a 27-page habeas corpus application to prevent his transfer, with the case due to be heard on Friday.

Al-Tamir is the oldest and most severely disabled prisoner in Guantanamo Bay. He was arrested in 2006 in Turkiye and separated from his wife and four children during a medical trip to address a degenerative spinal disease he suffers from. He was then handed over to the CIA, who tortured him at black sites before transferring him to Guantanamo Bay in 2007.

In 2022, after years of detention, Al-Tamir pleaded guilty before a Guantanamo military commission, often described as a “kangaroo court”, to charges related to being a field commander fighting the US forces in Afghanistan.

In early 2025, reports emerged that the US had secretly planned to transfer him to an Iraqi prison, in breach of the plea agreement and the well-established principle of “non-refoulement”.

“After suffering two decades in Guantanamo it is beyond reason that Nashwan Al-Tamir is being sent by the US to Iraq to continue his imprisonment. Iraq contains some of the most notorious prison camps in modern history, including Abu Ghraib where the aftershock of prisoner abuse, humiliation and torture occurred not long ago,” CAGE’s International Senior Director and former Guantanamo Bay Prisoner, Moazzam Begg, said.

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