Redha al-Najar is a citizen of

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

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 t ...

. 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 submitted on his behalf. ''

Time magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Mar ...

'' reports he was captured at his home in

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former cap ...

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...

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

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

's black sites, before being transferred to Bagram. Mr. al-Najar is represented by Barbara Olshansky of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

's International Human Rights Clinic,

Tina Monshipour 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 Ne ...

of the International Justice Network, and Sylvia Royce in association with the International Justice Network. Mr. al-Najar was not allowed to send a letter until some time in 2003. On January 15, 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 On January 16, 2010, the United States Department of Defense complied with a court order and made public a heavily redacted list of the detainees held in the Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Detainees were initially held in primitive, tempora ...

. There were 645 names on the list, which was dated September 22, 2009. One of the names was Ridha Ahmad Najjar. Historian Andy Worthington, 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 are the code names of an isolated clandestine CIA black site prison and interrogation center outside Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It is located north of Kabul and was the location of a brick factory prior to the Afgh ...

", and several other CIA black sites, including the "

Panjshir prison The Do Ab prison is a prison in Panjshir, Afghanistan. The International Committee of the Red Cross reported 270 captives held in the prison were released on January 3, 2002. They reported that some of the captives had been held in the prison for ...

", 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; french: Comité international de la Croix-Rouge) is a humanitarian organization which is based in Geneva, Switzerland, and it is also a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signato ...

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." The United States government is expected to file its response to a petition for a writ of certiorari on behalf of Mr. al-Najar in the Supreme Court on December 5, 2014. On December 9, 2014, the

United States Senate The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and pow ...

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 December 15, 2014, the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'' published an op-ed by Tina M. Foster, 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 that the CIA tortured him for nearly 700 days. On June 15, 2015, he was repatriated to Tunisia by the US Government.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Najar, Redha 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