Redha al-Najar (born 1966) is a citizen of

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

who was held in US custody in the

Bagram Theater Internment Facility The Parwan Detention Facility (also called Detention Facility in Parwan or Bagram prison) is Afghanistan's main military prison. Situated next to the Bagram Air Base in the Parwan Province of Afghanistan, the prison was built by the U.S. during ...

. He is notable for being one of a very small number of the detainees held in Bagram to have had a

writ of habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a legal procedure invoking the jurisdiction of a court to review the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and request the individual's custodian (usually a prison official) to ...

submitted on his behalf. ''

Time magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps as ''TIME'') is an American news magazine based in New York City. It was published weekly for nearly a century. Starting in March 2020, it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York Cit ...

'' reports he was captured at his home in

Karachi Karachi is the capital city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Sindh, Pakistan. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, largest city in Pakistan and 12th List of largest cities, largest in the world, with a popul ...

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

in May 2002. Time reports he spent two years in the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

's black sites, before being transferred to Bagram. Al-Najar is represented by

Barbara Olshansky Barbara Olshansky is an American human rights lawyer. ''The Case for Impeachment'' Olshansky is author with Dave Lindorff of ''The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office''. Olshansky and Lindor ...

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

's International Human Rights Clinic, Tina Monshipour Foster of the

International Justice Network The International Justice Network (IJNetwork) is a non-profit organization dedicated to protection of human rights and the rule of law throughout the world. They provide direct legal assistance to victims of human rights abuses through a global net ...

, and Sylvia Royce in association with the International Justice Network. Al-Najar was not allowed to send a letter until 2003. On 15 January 2010, the Department of Defense complied with a court order and published a heavily redacted list of Detainees held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. There were 645 names on the list, which was dated 22 September 2009. One of the names was Ridha Ahmad Najjar. icHistorian

Andy Worthington Andy Worthington is a British historian, investigative journalist, and film director. He has published three books, two on Stonehenge and one on the war on terror, been published in numerous publications and directed documentary films. Art ...

, author of ''

The Guantanamo Files The Guantánamo Bay files leak (also known as The Guantánamo Files, or colloquially, Gitmo Files) began on 24 April 2011, when WikiLeaks, along with ''The New York Times'', NPR and ''The Guardian'' and other independent news organizations, began ...

'', asserted that this was another transliteration of Redah al-Najar, who he said was captured in May 2002 in

. Worthington reported he was held in the

's "

dark prison The Salt Pit and Cobalt were the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It was located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the A ...

", and several other CIA black sites, including the " Panjshir prison", and two prisons named " Rissat prison" and " Rissat prison 2". al-Najar's incarceration was not revealed to the

International Committee of the Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a humanitarian organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, and is a three-time Nobel Prize laureate. The organization has played an instrumental role in the development of rules of war and ...

and he was "...forced to spend 22 hours each day with one or both wrists chained to an overhead bar, for two consecutive days, while wearing a diaper." On 9 December 2014, the

United States Senate The United States Senate is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and ...

Intelligence Committee published the names of 39 individuals tortured by the

in its archipelago of black sites. An individual named Ridha Ahmad Najar was listed as one of individuals the CIA tortured. On 15 December 2014, the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' published an op-ed by

Tina M. Foster Tina Monshipour Foster in 2008 Tina Monshipour Foster is an Iranian-American lawyer and director of the International Justice Network. Legal career Prior to working in the field of human rights, Foster worked at Clifford Chance LLP in New ...

, one of Najar's lawyers. In the article she wrote about how a whole section of the Intelligence Committee's report was devoted to Najar. She listed all the torture techniques the CIA used on him, and asserted the CIA had tortured him for nearly 700 days. On 15 June 2015, he was

repatriated Repatriation is the return of a thing or person to its or their country of origin, respectively. The term may refer to non-human entities, such as converting a foreign currency into the currency of one's own country, as well as the return of mi ...

to Tunisia by the US Government.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Najar, Redha al- Tunisian extrajudicial prisoners of the United States Living people Bagram Theater Internment Facility detainees Bagram captives' habeas corpus petitions 1966 births Tunisian expatriates in Pakistan