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A man who was a Guantanamo prisoner for eight years wants to return to his cell at the U.S. detention facility in Cuba, it was reported Saturday.
Hedi Hammami, 47, tells The New York Times that he wants to go back because there is no future for him in Tunisia.
“It would be better for me to go back to that single cell and to be left alone,” he told the paper. “Two or three weeks ago I went to the Red Cross and asked them to connect me to the U.S. foreign ministry to ask to go back to Guantánamo.”
He says the Red Cross refused to entertain his request, the paper reports.
The paper reports that Hammami hasn’t been happy for a long time in Tunisia.
He lost his government job, was placed under house arrest in 2015 and remains under “administrative control.” He told the Times the police have raided his homes and harassed him in other ways.
He was shipped to Guantanamo from Pakistan in 2002 after the military said he spent time in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
He was released in 2010 without being charged after being deemed no long a threat to the U.S.
He told the Times that he has no links to al Qaeda or terrorism.
Tunisia took him back after the overthrow of the country’s president in a popular uprising in 2011 that ushered in the Arab Spring. But Tunisia's democracy is faltering, according to the Times.
Hammami wants to return to Guantanamo even though he says he was tortured and mistreated there.
“My only demand is to be stable, but they don’t let me live my life in stability,” he said Tunisian authorities. “They are pushing you towards death.”
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