An Iraqi who pleaded guilty to commanding insurgents who committed war crimes in Afghanistan filed suit in federal court on Friday, seeking to stop his transfer from the U.S. military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in Iraq.
The petition, filed by his lawyers, made public negotiations that had been underway for some time to transfer Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, 63, to the custody of the Iraqi government despite protests from him and his lawyers that he could be subject to abuse and inadequate medical care.
Mr. Hadi, who says his true name is Nashwan al-Tamir, is the oldest and most disabled prisoner at the offshore detention site as a result of a paralyzing spine disease and six surgeries at the base. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to war crimes charges, accepting responsibility for the actions of some of the forces under his command, in a deal to have his sentence expire in 2032. The deal included a possibility that he would serve the sentence in the custody of another country better suited to provide him with medical care.
His lawyers said the U.S. plan is to have the Iraqi government house him at the Karkh prison outside Baghdad, the former site of a U.S. detention operation called Camp Cropper that held hundreds of prisoners in the years before it was returned to Iraqi control in 2010.
“Because of his conviction here and the myriad problems with Iraq’s prison system, Mr. al-Tamir cannot safely be housed in an Iraqi prison,” the lawyers said in their 27-page filing. “Additionally, he does not believe the Iraqi government can provide the medical care he needs for conditions that were aggravated by inadequate medical care while at Guantánamo.”
The lawsuit seeks to thwart a deal that is part of an effort by the Biden administration to reduce the detainee population at the prison before President-elect Donald J. Trump takes office. Four prisoners, including two Malaysian men who like Mr. Hadi pleaded guilty to war crimes, have been repatriated in less than a month. Unlike Mr. Hadi, none of those four men, including a Tunisian citizen and a Kenyan citizen, opposed being handed over to their homelands.
It is not known when the Pentagon intends to deliver Mr. Hadi to Iraq. But the Defense Department notified Congress of the plan on Dec. 13. If the administration is hewing to a statutory requirement of 30 days’ notice to Congress, he could be transported from Guantánamo the week of Jan. 12.
Government lawyers agreed to a speedy process on the challenge. They notified Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia that they would like to respond to the question of a preliminary injunction by Wednesday.
Spokesmen at the State and Justice Departments declined to discuss the case.
Mr. Hadi was represented on the petition by Benjamin C. McMurray and Scott K. Wilson, federal public defenders in Utah. It was also signed by Susan Hensler, a lawyer who is employed by the Defense Department and has represented him since 2017.
The lawyers cited a 2023 State Department report about concerns over human rights abuses in Iraq that specifically mentioned “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.” They asked the court to temporarily forbid his transfer while the case is argued. “The permanent harm justifies a preliminary injunction against the immediate transfer of Mr. al-Tamir to an Iraqi prison to serve his sentence.”
Mr. Hadi was born in Mosul, Iraq, in 1961. He fled Iraq in 1990 to avoid conscription into Saddam Hussein’s Army for what became the first U.S. invasion of Iraq, and then settled in Afghanistan. In 2003 and 2004, early in the U.S. invasion, Taliban and Qaeda forces under his command unlawfully used the cover of civilians in attacks that killed 17 U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. His forces, for example, had a fighter pose as a cabdriver in a taxi laden with explosives.
At Guantánamo, he has relied on a wheelchair and four-wheeled walker and has for years been held in a cell outfitted with accommodations for disabled people.
His lawyers said in their filing that U.S. officials notified them of the plan to repatriate Mr. Hadi “a week before Christmas,” adding that “government officials informed defense counsel that they had concluded Iraq was the ‘only’ option.”
Both the prisoner and the lawyers objected to the transfer, the filing said, citing U.S. obligations under international and constitutional law not to send someone to a country where he might be subject to abuse.
Scott Roehm of the Center for Victims of Torture, an advocacy group, said it was his understanding that “senior State Department officials have previously determined that Mr. al-Tamir couldn’t be sent to an Iraqi prison without violating the prohibition on torture.”
“The State Department’s own human rights reports, which are consistent with that determination, find that Iraqi prisons are rife with serious human rights abuses, torture included,” he said. “If the government now has a different view, it needs to explain why, by making its analysis public.”