Morocco convicts US detainees
2006-11-11 21:02
Rabat - A Moroccan court has convicted three former detainees at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for creating a criminal group and forging documents, the official news agency said.
The criminal court in Sale, located near the capital, Rabat, and which often handles terrorism cases, handed the harshest sentence of five years in prison to Mohamed Souleymani Laalami, who was accused of creating a criminal group, the MAP news agency reported late on Friday.
Two other defendants, Najib Lahssini and Mohammed Ouali, were sentenced to three years each on charges of falsifying documents, the news agency said.
The Moroccan government confirmed in February that the United States had handed over the three men, but did not say when the transfer took place.
Details of what led to the men's detention at Guantanamo were not available. The US currently holds about 430 men at the facility on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. Most of them have not been charged.
- AP