WASHINGTON, Oct. 11, 2007 — A federal judge in Washington has taken the unprecedented step of blocking US plans to turn over a Guantanamo terrorism detainee to his home government in Tunisia. Judge Gladys Kessler of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, the federal jurisdiction for the US capital, yesterday ordered the US to halt the transfer of Mohammed Abdul Rahman to his native Tunisia.

Judge Kessler said Abdul Rahman, who has a heart condition, was convicted in absentia in Tunisia, sentenced to 20 years in prison and allegedly would face torture there, demonstrating “the devastating and irreparable harm he is likely to face if transferred.”

Judge Kessler said that Abdul Rahman had asked to remain at Guantanamo, and claimed that transferring him to Tunisia would amount to a death sentence.

“It would be a profound miscarriage of justice,” said Judge Kessler, if she allowed the government to return him to Tunisia.

Abdul Rahman, who was captured in Pakistan and allegedly handed over for a bounty, was cleared for transfer after a military panel heard his case in 2005. He is among a significant group of detainees who would prefer to remain in US custody over returning to potentially brutal regimes at home.

Two Tunisians already sent home from Guantanamo have already reported through their lawyers having been abused and tortured. Officials at the Tunisian Embassy were not available for comment, an employee in the ambassador’s office said. Tunisia has denied Abdul Rahman’s claims that it practices torture.

However, a report by the US State Department published earlier this year said the Tunisian government continued “to commit serious human rights abuses.”

Citing human rights groups, the report said the Tunisian security forces used sleep deprivation, electric shocks, submersion of the head in water, beatings and cigarette burns.

One of Abdul Rahman’s lawyers praised the ruling, which he said was the first time the courts had acted to control the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. “The executive has now been told it cannot bury its Guantanamo mistakes in Third World prisons,” Joshua Denbeaux told the Associated Press.

“Our country should honor these treaties that prevent torture, and block the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to a place where they may be subjected to torture,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of CAIR, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. “We praise the judge’s decision to uphold these values of protecting human rights because our country has been long time accused of transferring detainees to countries where human rights violations are known.”

But Cynthia Smith, a spokeswoman at the Defense Department, said officials there worked to ensure that mistreatment of transferred detainees did not occur and investigated accusations of mistreatment.

“Detainees are not repatriated to countries where it is more likely than not that they will be tortured,” Smith said.

The order was unprecedented as a direct intervention in the case of a prisoner at Guantلnamo Bay, where some 330 men accused of links to Al-Qaeda or the Taleban are held, according to a human rights group and the detainees’ lawyers.

In other cases, lawyers for detainees have tried to block transfers based on human rights concerns but have failed. Detainees’ lawyers told reporters yesterday that they knew of no other case in which a judge had barred a transfer.

Meanwhile, a Justice Department spokesman, Erik Ablin, said the department had argued that the judge lacked the power to issue the injunction. The government, he said, “is reviewing the district court order and considering its options.”

Judge Kessler, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, said she was acting because of the Supreme Court’s decision in June to review whether the Guantanamo detainees can bring habeas corpus suits, which are broad challenges to a detainee’s confinement. She said the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case “cast a deep shadow of uncertainty” over previous ruling restricting detainees’ rights.

The ruling came on the same day that the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by a German citizen of Lebanese origin who accused the CIA of abducting him and sending him to a prison in Afghanistan.

The Supreme Court’s decision was the third time Khaled El-Masri’s lawsuit has been rejected in the US judiciary system. In its decision to reject the appeal, the high court determined the case could not go forward without exposing state secrets vital to national security. The Supreme Court denied review without comment.

El-Masri claimed he was tortured by US interrogators during a five-month detention after being kidnapped in Macedonia. He was released in Albania in May 2004 after his arrest apparently proved to be a case of mistaken identity.

The United States says it does not torture terrorism suspects but has allowed unspecified harsh interrogation techniques.