US asks court to deny Guantanamo prisoner request

WASHINGTON, Nov 18: A Guantanamo prisoner's legal petition to move a heart procedure from the remote US military base in Cuba should be denied because a similar medical procedure was successfully performed there in 2003, the US government said in court documents.

''All necessary medical equipment and highly trained and experienced medical personnel will be in place to perform the procedure on petitioner at the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo,'' US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler said yesterday.

Saifullah Paracha, a 59-year-old Pakistani businessman who holds US residency, has had two heart attacks and recently suffered chest pains, prompting doctors at Guantanamo to schedule the procedure around November 21.

His lawyers filed a motion with a federal court in Washington on Tuesday for an emergency restraining order to stop the cardiac catheterization scheduled at the base where some 430 suspected al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners are held.

They said there are cardiac catheterization laboratories in the United States or Pakistan that could perform the procedure.

Captain Ronald Sollack, a US Navy Medical Corps doctor who is the commander of the naval hospital there, said in court documents in the US response to Paracha's petition that a heart catheterization was performed in 2003 during which an artery stent was required.

''This is not the first time this procedure has been provided to a detainee in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,'' he said. ''Both the catheterization and the stent placement were performed successfully.'' In a cardiac catheterization, a thin plastic tube is inserted into an artery or vein and pushed into the chambers of the heart.

The US government's treatment of Guantanamo detainees has been the subject of international condemnation and court challenges since the first of the prisoners were transferred to the US naval base in 2002. Most have not been charged with crimes.

Washington has maintained that the prisoners can be held indefinitely without charges or access to courts.

Hunt has said his client, a businessman and television producer, was seized illegally while on a business trip in Thailand and taken to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. He was moved to Guantanamo around September 2004.

Hunt said a hearing on the request for a restraining order was set for Monday.

Reuters