Adel Fattough Ali al Gazzar

Religious missionary Adel Fattough Ali al Gazzar was seized during his journey across the Muslim world after being severely wounded by a US airstrike in Afghanistan in 2001. He was released to Slovakia in January 2010.  On 13 June 2011, he flew to Egypt to reunite with his mother, wife and children and was arrested.

Adel Fattough Ali al Gazzar travelled to Pakistan in 2000 to undertake a religious mission to preach the Koran. After 9/11 and the advent of the war in Afghanistan, he learned – as did the rest of the world – of the many families that were displaced and distraught by the onset of war. Desiring to ease their suffering as best he could, Adel signed up with the Red Crescent and volunteered to go into Afghanistan to help the refugees. Within two hours of crossing the border to a refugee camp, the area was hit by a US airstrike. 

Adel’s leg was injured and he spent the next month convalescing in a Pakistani hospital before being sold to the US military for a bounty. In the midst of his recovery, he was transferred to a US prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the routine included severe beatings, exposure to freezing temperatures, sleep deprivation for days on end, and the suspension of prisoners by their wrists. 

Adel endured this torture for eleven days before being transferred to Guantánamo Bay. He had received no medical attention during his time in Kandahar, and as a result, his leg was infected with gangrene so severe that it had to be amputated. 

Realizing that they had made a mistake, the US authorities cleared Adel for release. The US deemed it unsafe for Adel to return to Egypt, and he began the long wait for a third country to accept him. That wait lasted eight years until 2010, when Adel was finally released from custody at Guantánamo. 

However, his release from Guantánamo did not signal freedom. Rather, he was transferred to Slovakia where he was illegally imprisoned in an immigration detention centre for more than six months. Though he had done nothing wrong and, indeed, had been completely exonerated by the Americans, Adel was only able to secure his release after going on a hunger strike to protest against the manner in which he was being held.

Adel wanted nothing more than to return to Egypt. He had not seen his family, including his wife and four children, for a decade. Efforts by his family to visit him in Slovakia were thwarted. A few months later, he watched along with the rest of the world as revolution broke out in Egypt, and he was finally able to contemplate returning home to his family.

Excited by the prospect of a new, democratic Egypt, Adel returned home, but was arrested upon arrival at the airport on false, politically-motivated charges. He was allowed only a brief reunion with his wife and four children, whom he had not seen for a decade.

The sentence he is now appealing was handed down in 2002, after a multi-defendant trial was conducted in Adel’s absence. While his fate was being decided, Adel sat languishing in Guantánamo, completely unaware of what was taking place back in Cairo. He had no legal representation at the trial and the so-called ‘evidence’ used against him consisted of false statements tortured out of his co-defendants. While many of his co-defendants were deemed innocent after a judicial finding that the statements relied on by the military prosecutor were fabrications, Adel was not as lucky. Because of his status as a Guantánamo prisoner – the ‘worst of the worst’ according to the Bush administration – Adel was an easy target for the military court, and with no legal defence, the charges against him stuck.

Due to the flimsiness of the charges against him, Adel’s lawyers are confident that his Mubarak-era sentence will be overturned on appeal. Reprieve is calling on Egypt’s Military Prosecutor to grant him compassionate release based on the fact that he has already undergone nearly a decade of imprisonment without charge or trial.