By Noiselle Champagne
NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - Lawyers for a Mauritanian suspectedof involvement in the September 11 attacks and held atGuantanamo Bay have threatened to sue U.S., Jordanian andMauritanian officials they accuse of responsibility for historture.
Lawyers for Mohamed Ould Sillahi say the 38-year oldMauritanian engineer was arrested in November 2001 and sent toJordan, where he was tortured for eight months before beingtransferred to Guantanamo and tortured again at the camp.
Sillahi's legal team -- three lawyers based in the UnitedStates, one in France and one in Mauritania -- said he had beenheld for over six years without being notified of charges andrefused access to his non-American lawyers.
"If our client is not freed, we will take all necessaryaction in the coming weeks," Sillahi's Mauritanian lawyer,Brahim Ould Ebetty, told Reuters in Nouakchott. "We will issuea legal case against the authors of his arrest in Mauritaniaand of his torture in Jordan and Guantanamo."
They said he been subjected to "all forms of pressure andcruel and barbaric moral and physical torture."
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Sillahi hadbeen accused by a senior al Qaeda operative of helping assemblethe cell which launched the September 11, 2001 attacks in theUnited States.
But the newspaper said a senior U.S. military prosecutorhad refused to proceed with the prosecution because he believedkey incriminating statements from Sillahi had been obtainedunder torture.
Mauritania, an Islamic Republic straddling black and ArabAfrica on the western edge of the Sahara desert, has long beenan ally in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
Sillahi's lawyers say he is one of few detainees inGuantanamo to have been handed over by his home country. He wasarrested while former President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, astrong U.S. ally overthrown in 2005, was still in power.
A senior judicial official in the former French colony saidthe government was talking with the U.S. embassy in Nouakchottabout Sillahi's case and had requested that he and anotherMauritanian at Guantanamo be returned home.
"Since 2005 we have had our own anti-terrorist legislationwhich is capable of dealing with this dossier," Daha OuldTeith, judicial affairs advisor at the foreign ministry, toldReuters.
"We want the families of these two Mauritanians to haveopen access to the prisoners and for they themselves to benefitfrom a fair trial," he said.
U.S. President George W. Bush has said he would like toclose Guantanamo, which holds about 275 detainees, but which hehas called a necessary tool in the war on terrorism.
Rights groups and some governments have said holdingsuspects for years without trial violates international law.
(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say onthe top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/ )
(Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall; Writing by NickTattersall)
