Delivered Into Enemy Hands - Human Rights Watch

making harsh statements against the United States and it was clear to him that bin Laden
was planning violence against the US. Saadi said he had an argument with Osama bin
Laden about this where he told him that for many reasons, the actions against the US that
he was planning were not legally authorized within Sharia. “We told OBL [bin Laden] that
the consequences of operations against civilians would be negative, but he was not
convinced,” Saadi said.
Immediately after the September 11 attacks, Saadi and several other LIFG members and
their families left the area, moving from place to place to avoid arrest. They first went to
Pakistan, but that did not feel safe there either. They then moved on to Iran. They sent their
families there first. “I asked my wife if she wanted to go to Algeria and be with her family
there, but she preferred to be with me,” Saadi said. But at the time Saadi himself could
not get proper papers for Iran, so he crossed over borders illegally, only meeting his family
there later. They stayed in Iran for about a year. “The LIFG were all there together in a sort
of community,” he said. But in January 2003, he said they were forced to leave Iran. By this
time, Saadi had four children.
They went to Malaysia, where he hoped to get asylum. He visited a UN office and was given
an appointment for a month later. Before then, he was arrested by the Malaysian authorities,
who detained him and his family for about 10 days. Saadi asked to be released to go to his
UN appointment. The Malaysian authorities said they would, but if he went back to the UN,
he would find US officials waiting for him. So he asked to be sent to China, where he had
already obtained a visa. “The Chinese visa was so easy for us,” he said. “The Chinese were
receiving people from everywhere at the time.” The Malaysians then sent him to China.
From China he attempted to get back to the United Kingdom. Saadi’s friends and family in
the UK told him that if he went to the UK embassy in Hong Kong, someone there would be
able to help him. 331 When he arrived in Hong Kong, a man he assumed was a UK diplomat
was waiting for him when he got off the plane. Instead, he was arrested for purported
passport or immigration violations and detained, most of the time with his family. The
331 Saadi talked more expansively about this to The Guardian. While in China in March 2004, he said he was approached by
British intelligence officers via an intermediary in the UK and was told that he would be permitted to return to London. First,
however, he would have to be interviewed at the British consulate in Hong Kong and would be met by British diplomats on
his arrival. Ian Cobain, Mustafa Khalili and Mona Mahmood, “How MI6 deal sent family to Gaddafi’s jail,” September 9, 2009,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/09/how-mi6-family-gaddafi-jail (accessed June 17, 2012).
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