Lawyer worried about Mauritanian Guantanamo inmate

NOUAKCHOTT, Jan 20 (Reuters) The health of a Mauritanian citizen held at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is ''extremely concerning'', his lawyer said today.

Clive Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer who is defending 38 detainees at the Guantanamo base, travelled to the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott to urge the government to request the repatriation of three of its citizens held in the US jail.

Asked about one of the Mauritanian prisoners, Ahmed Ould Abdel Aziz, Stafford Smith told Reuters: ''His state of health is extremely concerning and could deteriorate, like that of his co-detainees who are traumatised.'' Stafford Smith, founder and legal director of the human rights charity Reprieve, said the Mauritanian prisoners should be sent to their own country where they would have a fair trial.

About 395 prisoners suspected of al Qaeda and Taliban links remain at the Guantanamo prison camp. More than 770 captives have been held at the facility, which opened five years ago, soon after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Only 10 detainees have been charged with crimes.

The lawyer criticised the ''degrading and inhumane character of the detention conditions of the prisoners'', singling out the force-feeding of detainees on hunger strike using tubes via their nostrils into their stomachs.

Mauritania has been one of the United States' closest allies in its efforts to tackle Islamic militant groups in the Sahara and Africa's arid Sahel belt.

The military junta which seized power in August 2005, ending the dictatorial two-decade rule of President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, is due to hand over to a civilian government after presidential elections in March.

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