A court filing said the prisoner was at risk for abuse and might not be able to get adequate health care if transferred.
An Iraqi who pleaded guilty to commanding insurgents who committed war crimes in Afghanistan filed suit in federal court on Friday, seeking to stop his transfer from the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in Iraq.
The petition, filed by his lawyers, made public negotiations that had been underway for some time to transfer Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, 63, to the custody of the Iraqi government despite protests from him and his lawyers that he could be subject to abuse and inadequate medical care.
Mr. Hadi, who says his true name is Nashwan al-Tamir, is the oldest and most disabled prisoner at the offshore detention site as a result of a paralyzing spine disease and six surgeries at the base. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to war crimes charges, accepting responsibility for the actions of some of the forces under his command, in a deal to have his sentence expire in 2032. The deal included a possibility that he would serve the sentence in the custody of another country better suited to provide him with medical care.
His lawyers said the U.S. plan is to have the Iraqi government house him at the Karkh prison outside Baghdad, the former site of a U.S. detention operation called Camp Cropper that held hundreds of prisoners in the years before it was returned to Iraqi control in 2010.
“Because of his conviction here and the myriad problems with Iraq’s prison system, Mr. al-Tamir cannot safely be housed in an Iraqi prison,” the lawyers said in their 27-page filing. “Additionally, he does not believe the Iraqi government can provide the medical care he needs for conditions that were aggravated by inadequate medical care while at Guantánamo.”
The lawsuit seeks to thwart a deal that is part of an effort by the Biden administration to reduce the detainee population at the prison before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office. Four prisoners, including two Malaysian men who like Mr. Hadi pleaded guilty to war crimes, have been repatriated in less than a month. Unlike Mr. Hadi, none of those four men, including a Tunisian citizen and a Kenyan citizen, opposed being handed over to their homelands.
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