AP source: US releases detainee from Guantanamo

A Guantanamo Bay prisoner who was at the center of a Supreme Court battle giving detainees the right to challenge their confinement was heading to France on Friday after his release from the U.S. prison, an Obama administration official said.

Algerian Lakhdar Boumediene left the U.S. naval facility in Cuba Friday headed to relatives in France, said the official, who spoke on a condition of anonymity because the release was not yet cleared for announcement.

Boumediene was arrested along with five other Algerians in 2001 in Bosnia, suspected in a bomb plot against the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. He arrived in Guantanamo in January 2002.

President Barack Obama has promised to close the prison at Guantanamo and has urged allies to take some of the 60 inmates who could face abuse, imprisonment or death if returned to their homelands. France promised to take one Guantanamo prisoner when Obama attended a NATO summit in April, and said last week it would accept Boumediene.

Stephen Oleskey, a Boston-based attorney for Boumediene, told AP that he could not immediately comment on Friday's release.

A French diplomat said Friday that France had promised to take him in by the end of the week. "We confirm this time frame," the official said, on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

In June 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Boumediene v. Bush that foreign Guantanamo Bay detainees have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts. On a 5-4 split, the majority said the U.S. government was violating the rights of prisoners there and that the system the Bush administration put in place to classify suspects as enemy combatants and review those decisions is inadequate.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, "The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."

Boumediene was released as Obama announced that he is reviving Bush-era military tribunals for a small number of Guantanamo detainees, with several new legal protections for terror suspects. The system is expected to try fewer than 20 of the 241 detainees now being held at the detention center.

Human rights activists hailed Boumediene's release and his expected arrival in France.

"We welcome (France's) decision to take him in and urge France to give all the support that Mr. Boumediene needs in terms of protection and care," said Jean-Marie Fardeau, director of the Paris office of Human Rights Watch, who lobbied the French government to take in Guantanamo inmates.

"We hope that this is a first inmate taken in in France, and that others will follow, and that other countries will follow," he said.

So far, France has only pledged to take in one non-French Guantanamo inmate, Boumediene. Spain and Portugal have said they too could accept detainees, though several EU countries have refused, in part for security reasons.

Seven French citizens who were at Guantanamo were sent home in 2004 and 2005.

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Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler in Washington contributed to this report.