Last Moroccan Guantanamo Detainee: 18 Years Without Trial After 9/11 Arrest

The last time his brother Mustapha had seen him dates back to the mid-1980s, when he had joined him in Libya to prepare his trip to Australia. After going to Sudan and then Saudi Arabia, Abdellatif had promised his family to return to Morocco as soon as he had a few savings.

"We remained without news of my brother for nearly four years," recalls Mustapha. "In 2001, we received a visit from members of the Red Cross who informed us that Abdellatif had been incarcerated in the Guantanamo prison after the September 11 attacks".

He would have been arrested by NATO forces in Afghanistan, then tortured and transferred to the United States for a sum of money, he had claimed to the British organization Reprieve, which was defending him before the American legal authorities.

After a 3-month stay in the Kandahar prison, the prisoner was transferred without trial to Guantanamo, where he suffered the worst torture until 2016, a period during which he was declared dead, adds the British organization.

Although he was authorized by 6 American investigative agencies to leave the penitentiary in July 2016, Abdellatif Nasser was never able to be released and extradited to Morocco. In November 2016, Donald Trump won the US elections and the hopes of the Moroccan detainee were dashed with the signing of the new decree canceling that of Barack Obama which provided for the closure of this prison decried by human rights defenders.

Very cultured and passionate about reading, Abdellatif Nasser managed to write a bilingual dictionary of 2,000 words in Arabic and English, which had been a great success with the inmates and prison guards.