The Algerian Six were six Bosnian men (five of whom had dual nationality), all born in Algeria, who were imprisoned without charges at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002. They later filed for habeas corpus in United States federal court and their case reached the United States Supreme Court in 2008. It ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that detainees and foreign nationals had rights to file for habeas corpus in federal courts. Following his review of their cases, a US District Court judge ordered five of the Bosnians to be released based on insufficient evidence.
The Algerian Six were six Bosnian men (five of whom had dual nationality), all born in Algeria, who were imprisoned without charges at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002. They later filed for habeas corpus in United States federal court and their case reached the United States Supreme Court in 2008. It ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that detainees and foreign nationals had rights to file for habeas corpus in federal courts. Following his review of their cases, a US District Court judge ordered five of the Bosnians to be released based on insufficient evidence. In 2009, the US released the men. Three were flown to Bosnia to reunite with their families under 'protective custody.' The US refused to let Lakhdar Boumediene return to Bosnia and he feared returning to Algeria because of potential retaliation; France offered to let him settle there. He was joined in Provence, France, by his wife and children. District judge Richard J. Leon recommended the continued detention of Bensayah Belkacem, but his attorneys appealed his case. In 2010, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals overturned Leon's decision. They determined that Belkacem was not a member of al Qaeda and should be released. After the men initially fell under U.S. suspicion, the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina arrested them in 2001 and tried them, but later released them for lack of evidence. They were illegally turned over to US intelligence officials in January 2002 in Sarajevo and transported to Guantanamo. They were detained there without charges by the US for the years following. The Bosnian authorities were formally condemned for their actions by the , the relevant Bosnian court at the time. In late 2004, the six men had been sent before Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) of three United States military officers. The CSRTs concluded that each of the six men was properly classified as an "enemy combatant" based on classified evidence. The CSRTs were criticized for applying a definition of "enemy combatant" that was so broad that it could include a "little old lady in Switzerland," who donated money to a charity in Afghanistan that, without her knowledge, funded al Qaeda. Wolfgang Petritsch, a UN diplomat and former High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, said the US had threatened the UN to withdraw their men from the mission in 2002 if he protested against the transfer of the six men out of Bosnia at that time.