Kuwait court acquits ex-Guantanamo Qaeda detainees

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KUWAIT - A Kuwaiti court on Sunday cleared five Kuwaitis of charges of belonging to Al Qaeda and ordered the former inmates of the US’s Guantanamo Bay prison freed immediately, judicial sources said.

They said the five, who returned to the Gulf Arab state in November, were also cleared of charges of fighting a friendly state, a reference to the United States. ”The Criminal Court ruled today that the five detainees who were held at Guantanamo are innocent and it ordered that they be set free immediately,” one judicial source said.

The prosecution plans to appeal the ruling, the sources added. Adel Al Zamel, Saad Al Azmi, Mohammad Al Daihani, Abdullah Al Ajmi and Abdulaziz Al Shimmari were among some 500 prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay since the 2001 US-led war that ousted Afghanistan’s Taleban rulers following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

“This ruling underscores what we were sure of all along, that our sons are innocent,” Khaled Al Odah, head of a detainees support committee, told Reuters after the verdict. “They have been imprisoned unjustly for years at the American base and there’s a stark breach of international and humanitarian laws by the American administration,” he added.