DAt the beginning of January, like Barack Obama already during his first mandate, President Biden will have once again made the promise to close the Guantánamo camp as quickly as possible, the “moral stain” of the United States. If today they are only forty to haunt this fortress, up to 789 prisoners will have been held in secret in this American enclave on the island of Cuba. Originally from the Lyon suburbs, Mourad Benchellali was one of the first. After having hesitated to condemn the tortures he says he suffered, the European Court of Human Rights has finally concluded that the case was dismissed.
In the spring of 2001, you left France illegally for Afghanistan. How can you not accept today that you are called a former jihadist?
As I refute the term repentant, because that implies that I would have been what appearances made of me. Despite the jihadist enrollment, I have never subscribed to the most radical theses, nor to violence. I was just a …