 Mustaq Ali Patel is one of the last three French detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His family members say they cannot figure out why he is there in the first place.
| Something to do with explosives, was it? Or a hand saw? |
Cousins of the Indian-born former imam say Patel, 45, was just a victim of bad luck and bad timing who had settled in Afghanistan in the early to mid-1990s long before the US-led invasion of the country. Patel was one of seven French citizens captured in the US-led campaign that toppled the hardline Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Four have returned to France, and all spent more than two years at Guantanamo. "As a family, we all believe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time," said one cousin, Luqman Dawod, a British citizen who arrived from Manchester on Wednesday to meet one of Patel's French lawyers.
| Downtown Konduz, holding a rocket launcher? Wrong place. November, 2001? Wrong time. |
"We don't believe he has done anything wrong."
| "He's a good, responsible lad. Always keeps his weapons clean, never plays with his grenades." |
Haroon Patel, another cousin, who runs a convenience store in Manchester, said: "He is not a terrorist, he was a good person." They said they did not know when Patel was detained.
| "He just turned up there one day. Nobody knows how he got there. But we know he's innocent, by Gum!" |
French officials said this month that US authorities indicated the "possibility" that Patel and two other French nationals Ridouane Khalid and Khalid Ben Mustafa could soon be handed over to France. "They've said that time and time [again], but I don't hold my breath any more," said Dawod.
| Okay, then. We won't. Will that cause you to hold your breath? |
Four other French citizens once held at Guantanamo Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel returned to France in late July and are being held as part of an investigation into suspected terror-related networks. Patel's case appears different, his lawyer said. "As for Mr Patel, from what I know, we're looking at a series of bad coincidences and slightly disastrous random events," said French lawyer William Bourdon.
| "Now, they might seem unlikely, esecially the part about the gypsies and the trained bear, but..." |
"He was in Afghanistan long before the Taliban" ran the country, he said. Bourdon, who also represents Sassi and Benchellali, said they had indicated "harassment, humiliation and insults" at Guantanamo but did not suffer sexual abuse that some other former detainees have recounted. Patel's cousins said he had drifted out of contact with the family about 10 years ago and no relatives knew he was in Afghanistan until they received a letter from him through the mail early last year.
| "Dear Mom, How are you? Well, here I am in Guantanamo..." |
Patel became a citizen of France through marriage to a French woman. The cousins said they have lost contact with her but say she is believed to live in La Reunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. His mother, who lives in India's Gujarat state, has not heard from her son in more than 20 years but calls the British cousins about once a week to find out if they have more information, they said. Dawod, 25, said the only other letter the family had received delivered via the Red Cross indicated that "he has not been in good shape mentally", but there were no details. The cousins, who are heading the legal effort in France, said they could not confirm news reports saying that Patel had been an auto parts vendor in Afghanistan. |