Ahcene Zemiri

Early life and education Ahcene Zemiri was born in Algeria, where he was raised as a Muslim. As a young man he emigrated to Canada.

Emigration to Canada He settled in Montreal in 1994 and became a legal resident. He married Karina Dereshteanu, a Canadian woman, in 1997.

Writ of habeas corpus 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. The Center for Constitutional Rights organized a program of finding United States lawyers who would agree to serve as the lawyers for Guantanamo captives, while serving writs of habeas corpus on their behalf in federal district court to challenge their detention. In the petition for habeas corpus, they asserted that their client had not been a member of the Taliban, al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups; "had no military or terrorist training, and has neither caused nor tried to harm American personnel or property."

Recanting of Millennium plot 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. He said he wanted to "clarify" his allegations against Zemiri and recanted his previous accusations. Coughenour was the Judge who sentenced Ressam.

Ressam wrote: "Mr. Hassan Zemiry is innocent and has no relation or connection to the operation I was about to carry out. He also did not know anything about it and he did not assist me in anything, It is true that I have borrowed some money and a camera from him, but this was only a personal loan between me and him. It has nothing to do with my case..."

Ressam explained he had offered false information because he "was in shock and had a severe psychological disorder." They were trying to gain access to information gathered by Canada. Both men had been interviewed by Canadian security officials before they went to Afghanistan. The men's lawyers argued that the notes from the men's Canadian interviews would have been used by the United States in building its dossiers against the two men. They had requested the Canadian evidence in order to make their case for the men's freedom in the US Justice system.

In 2009, Justice Edmond Blanchard ruled that since the men were not Canadian citizens, and their connection to Canada was "tenuous", the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not apply to them. Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, reported that it was not clear whether the two men had been sent home as free men, or whether they were transferred to Algerian security custody. She noted that two other Algerians, former detainees, had been granted asylum in France, because they had reason to fear a return home.