Ex-Guantanamo Inmate Stopped from Flying to Montreal
A French former Guantanamo detainee was barred from flying to Montreal, where he was to address a conference on Western youth radicalization, he said Friday.
Mourad Benchellali told public broadcaster Radio-Canada that he was stopped in Lyon, France from boarding an Air Transat flight because of U.S. concerns the aircraft would fly through U.S. airspace.
He said he was shocked to learn that he was on the U.S. no-fly list.
"I was coming to Canada to talk about prevention, to talk about my story. The goal is to dissuade young people from falling into a downward spiral," he said.
Conference organizers decried the application of "inconsistent measures that are both unjust and ineffective, and have been taken in an indiscriminate way in the fight against terrorism."
U.S. flight tracking website FlightAware showed the Lyon to Montreal flight did not cross into U.S. airspace. But the return flight would have flown over the U.S. state of Maine.
Benchellali, 33, was released from the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba in 2004 after spending two years in detention.
He had been arrested by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, where he said he trained with al-Qaida to gain the respect of his militant brother.
But at a subsequent French trial he denied fighting U.S. forces or planning attacks.
The youngest in a French-Algerian family of radical Islamists, all of whom had been convicted for acts of terrorism, Benchellali recently told AFP he had been young and "naive" and eager to travel.
"At the time, al-Qaida, bin Laden did not evoke anything for anyone. I wasn't going there with bad intentions," he said.
Since his release from French custody in 2007, Benchellali has published a book about his experiences and lectures often in France, Switzerland and Belgium on the perils of radicalization.
Source: Agence France Presse
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