The former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden is taking legal action against the German state in an attempt to stop them deporting him to his native Tunisia.
Sami A. filed a lawsuit in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia today, claiming he faces torture if he is sent back to Tunisia, where he hasn’t lived for 20 years.
The 42-year-old was arrested on Monday, after an outcry over the more than £1,000 per month he and his family had been receiving in state handouts.
Fighting: Sami A. (pictured) who allegedly worked as Osama Bin Laden’s bodyguard is trying to stop his deportation from Germany, claiming the Tunisian authorities would torture him
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia admitted earlier this year that it paid 1,167 euros-a-month (£1,030) to him, his wife and their four children aged between four and 11.
Authorities have been trying to deport the man, who has lived in Germany on-and-off since 1997, for 12 years, but the threat of torture in Tunisia had prevented this.
However, Germany’s Federal Office for Migration recently reversed the decision, and the Tunisia assured authorities that he would not be tortured, but face trial, BILD reports.
As Sami A has been considered a security threat over his suspected ties to Islamist groups, he has been made to report to police on a daily basis for several year, but has never been charged with an offence.
Sami A. travelled to Afghanistan in the late 1990s to work for Osama bin Laden (pictured)
He has always denied being the former bodyguard of late Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks on the United States.
However, authorities believe he left Germany to undergo military training at an Al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 1999 and 2000 and later belonged to bin Laden’s team of guards.
An unrelated court ruling last month involving another Tunisian man – accused over a 2015 attack on Tunis’ Bardo museum – helped pave the way for Sami A.’s expulsion.
In that instance, German judges found that the accused did not face the threat of the death penalty as Tunis has had a moratorium on implementing capital punishment since 1991.
Germany’s hardline interior minister Horst Seehofer seized on the precedent to say he hoped Sami A. would be next, calling on migration officers to make the case ‘a priority’.