Ahcene Zemiri (born 1967),[1] also known as Hassan Zumiri, is an Algerian citizen who was for seven years a legal resident of Canada, where he lived in Montreal.
[2][3] Ahmed Ressam, the terrorist convicted in 2001 of planning the foiled Millennium bombing of the Los Angeles Airport, alleged that Zemiri had been involved in the plot.
They also interviewed Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian, and Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian, who also were Canadian residents before being captured in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo.
In addition, the US Supreme Court had held that the government was illegally detaining persons at Guantanamo in the period when the CSIS agents had interviewed residents there.
[5] On July 27, 2008, Michelle Shephard, writing in the Toronto Star, reported that Canadian security officials had interviewed Zemiri and two others at Guantanamo in addition to Khadr.
[5] In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), the United States Supreme Court ruled that detainees had the right to review of their cases before an impartial tribunal to determine if they were enemy combatants.
[1] Lawyers from the firm Fredrikson & Byron of Minneapolis agreed to serve pro bono to represent Ahcene Zemiri and met with him in 2005.
[6] In January 2007, the press reported that Ahmed Ressam, who had been convicted in 2001 of planning the Millennium bombing and alleged that Zemiri was involved in the plot, wrote a letter in November 2006 to the U.S. District Court Judge John C. Coughenour.
[7] In preparing their habeas corpus cases, the attorneys for Ahcene Zemiri and Mohammedou Slahi, a Mauritanian national who also lived in Canada, appealed through the Canadian Justice system for the release of classified documents about the two men.
[9] Ahcene Zemiri and Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili were returned to Algeria on January 20, 2010, as their country of origin and citizenship.