PARIS — A Paris appeals court on Tuesday overturned the terrorism convictions of five former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, ruling that French police agents were out of line in questioning them at the U.S. prison camp.
France is among the few Western countries to prosecute nationals who have returned home from Guantanamo — and the ruling marks the latest high-profile foreign disavowal of the secretive center that President Barack Obama’s administration wants to shut down for good.
The appeals court ruled that agents from the French counterterrorism agency DST who questioned the five inmates at Guantanamo in 2002 and 2004 had overstepped their roles. Overturning a lower court’s conviction, the appeals court said DST could not act as both a spy agency and a judicial police service, the body French law says is authorized to interrogate detainees.
State prosecutors said they would appeal to the highest French court, the Court of Cassation.
The men, who were arrested in Afghanistan in 2001, each spent a total of 2 1/2 to 3 years in custody at Guantanamo and in France, to which they were repatriated in 2004 and 2005.
Legal experts said the ruling could send a message to any future U.S. court that prosecutes Guantanamo inmates by showing how a foreign court feels about the admissibility of evidence taken from interrogations there.
“I hope that American courts are brave enough to demand that the government come forward with the records about the torture and coercion that was conducted by our intelligence agencies,” said Martha Rayner, a law professor at Fordham University, by telephone from New York. She said her office represents two Guantanamo inmates.
All seven French citizens who were at Guantanamo were sent home in 2004 and 2005. One was immediately released; another was acquitted in trial; the five others were convicted for participating in a terrorist group in Afghanistan.
