...In a desperate effort to draw attention to Bakhouch’s enduring incarceration, the Center for Constitutional Rights, or CCR, published an open letter with signatories from the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and other nongovernmental groups, urgently pressuring the State Department to intervene. The letter, published Wednesday and shared exclusively in advance with The Intercept, alleges that the U.S. provided the Algerian government with harmful and unfounded allegations about Bakhouch’s past — information that led to his detention — and that Bakhouch is imprisoned under severe conditions which violate international law. (The Algerian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Despite being transferred out of Guantánamo on the basis that he no longer posed a significant risk to the United States,” the letter says, “Mr. Bakhouch was told by the Algerian lawyer assigned to represent him in trial that the United States provided the information to the Algerian government that led to them charging him with having sworn allegiance to Osama Bin Laden.”

“This allegation is woefully unfounded,” the letter continues, “and we are deeply troubled by the fact that Mr. Bakhouch is being detained on this basis and enduring abuse in Algerian custody, purportedly in part because of false or incomplete intelligence information from the United States.” ...

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