We got hope and change and yes we can. They got a revolution. But former Guantanamo detainee and current Egyptian prisoner Adel al-Gazzar has gotten… well, there is no polite way to put it. It seems the War on Terror is still doing its multinational damage.

Injured in an airstrike in Afghanistan, sold for a bounty to Guantanamo, forced to wait eight years (!) after the US cleared him for release, resettled in Slovakia but illegally imprisoned there, the man comes home to Egypt after the revolution and — gets arrested at the airport.  Read his whole story here.

My ferociously smart friend Katie Taylor, after working for years in Palestine, is now in London at an NGO called Reprieve, which advocates for the human rights of people on death row and people who are or have been at Guantanamo. She is working on Adel al-Gazzar’s case. She says it’s likely his in-absentia conviction, in a multi-defendant trial based on testimony extracted by torture from co-defendants while Adel sat at Guantanamo, will be overturned on appeal.  The Military Prosecution (of course this is a military trial) unexpectedly fast-tracked his hearing a few days before the election; ruling expected as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned.