The Obama administration had been cleared to effect the deportation of cleared Guantanamo prisoner Abdul Aziz Naji by no less than the Supreme Court, who rejected a lower court order blocking the action. What hasn’t been reported thus far is the role of Congress, who was mandated to have advance notice of the transfer. Meanwhile, in Algeria, Naji told the press about torture and the drugging of prisoners at Guantanamo.

Last week, the United States government transferred an Algerian national, imprisoned for the last eight years at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, back to his home country.

In an editorial posted by the New York Times on Saturday afternoon, the editorial board condemned the Obama administration’s involuntary deportation of a Guantanamo prisoner to Algeria. The prisoner, 35-year-old Abdul Aziz Naji, was cleared of any charges in a wide-ranging review of Guantanamo prisoner status last year. Naji begged not to be sent back to Algeria, a country he fled after being attacked himself at age 17 or 18 by extremists. Naji feared the Algerian government could not protect him against the Islamic fundamentalist rebels that have been fighting the somewhat more moderate Islamic government for some twenty years now. Now he has disappeared, and the Algerian ambassador says the government cannot protect him against extremists.

Even though 35 year-old Abdul Aziz Naji said he’d rather stay at Guantanamo than be deported to his home country of Algeria, the Obama administration forcibly deported him anyway, despite Mr. Naji’s fears that “he would be targeted by violent groups who would kill him if he refused to join their battle against the country’s government.” The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block the deportation in a ruling last week. Now Naji takes on the notoriety and the tragic fate to be the first involuntary transfer from Guantanamo.

The D.C. Circuit federal appeals court, backed by the Supreme Court’s inaction, continues to threaten the independent judiciary’s role in checking the Executive’s unilateral imprisonment of suspected non-citizen armed conflict participants – this time by allowing the immediate rendition to Algeria of an unlawfully-detained Guantanamo prisoner against his wishes, though he fears for his life if sent to Algeria, a nation he left behind more than fifteen years ago.

As pressure to end the war builds in Washington, supporters of the war in Afghanistan will invariably return to their strongest argument: the threat of Al-Qa’eda. However, a reasonable understanding of the terrorist organization shows that even Al-Qa’eda is not enough to justify a bloody and expensive occupation.