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Ex-Guantánamo detainee sentenced in Morocco

 

A detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily recreation period at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in this December 2006 file photo. By Guantánamo ground rules, a Defense Department employee reviewed this image in advance of release.
A detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily recreation period at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in this December 2006 file photo. By Guantánamo ground rules, a Defense Department employee reviewed this image in advance of release.
BRENNAN LINSLEY / ASSOCIATED PRESS

(AP) -- A former Guantánamo detainee has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a criminal court in his native Morocco, his lawyer said Friday.

Said Boujaadia, 39, was found guilty of multiple counts of terrorism-related charges by the Sale criminal court near this capital city.

The charges included planning acts of sabotage targeting foreign interests in northern Morocco, funding and participating in a criminal group and illegal emigration, said Morocco's official MAP news agency.

Defense lawyer Toufik Msaef said he would appeal the Thursday verdict because of mistakes in the prosecution's case.

A prosecutor told the court that Boujaadia confessed to having traveled to Chechnya for training before heading to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban, according to MAP.

His lawyer said he never confessed to any crime, and expressed confidence that his client would be acquitted during an appeal.

During his seven-year detention at Guantánamo, Boujaadia had appeared briefly at a military commission hearing -- a pretrial hearing for Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan, of Yemen.

The Moroccan, who testified in exchange for a guarantee of immunity at the war court, neither helped nor hurt Hamdan's case. But he said they were captured on the same day in November 2001, separately and several hours apart, at a checkpoint in Afghanistan.

U.S. authorities transferred him to Morocco in May.

Hamdan went on trial over the summer and was convicted by a U.S. military panel of being a war criminal for working as bin Laden's $200-a-month driver in Afghanistan until the time of his capture. The jury sentenced Hamdan to 66 months in prison, which, with time served, means he could be set free by New Year's Day.

Nearly a dozen other former Guantánamo detainees have been transferred back to Morocco, but Msaef said none has been sentenced there, in part because most prosecution cases are based on elements handed over by the U.S. military that are deemed shaky.

The Miami Herald's Carol Rosenberg contributed to this report from Miami.

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