Two detainees have been sent home to Algeria from the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay despite the prisoners' protests that they face persecution there.
The Pentagon said Djamel Saiid Ali Ameziane and Bensayah Belkecem were transferred from the prison after a review "examined a number of factors, including security issues.
"The United States co-ordinated with the government of Algeria to ensure these transfers took place with appropriate security and humane treatment assurances," it said on Thursday.
The transfers were the latest in a series stemming from President Barack Obama's much-delayed efforts to meet his vow to finally shut down the US detention centre in Cuba.
"We are making progress on the president's commitment to close Guantanamo, and we look forward to continued progress on many fronts," said Cliff Sloan, the State Department's special envoy for Guantanamo closure.
But the men were fighting repatriation to Algeria, which Bensayah's lawyer said was the only country authorised by US law to accept its nationals detained at Guantanamo, although the State Department denies that this is the case.
"This was not voluntary - at all," Bensayah's lawyer Robert Kirsch told AFP by email. "Our hearts go out to Mr Bensayah and the family he never will see again."
Bensayah had demanded to be returned to Bosnia, where he was arrested in 2002 and where his wife and daughters lived.
The lawyer told the US State Department before the transfer was ordered that Bensayah feared for his safety. Kirsch had also appealed to the Defense Department and the Algerian embassy.
"Mr Bensayah believes Muslim extremists will expect him to sympathise with them, only because he was held at Guantanamo," he said. "He fears that they will attack or perhaps kill him when they learn he does not support them."
Ian Moss, adviser to Sloan, said that "while detainees may have a range of reasons for not wishing to return to their countries of origin - including a desire to avoid prosecution - it is our practice to repatriate detainees when this can be done consistent with our security and humane treatment policies".
Ameziane, who lived in Austria and Canada, fled Algeria in the early 1990s during the country's civil war, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which had helped represent him since 2006.
A member of the minority Berber community, he feared harsh treatment from security forces and had made multiple applications for asylum, his lawyer, Wells Dixon, said, adding he was "deeply disappointed" by the decision to send his client back to Algeria.
When president George W. Bush's administration cleared Ameziane for release in 2007, the Algerian, who was never charged with a crime, had asked to be returned to Canada.
"The United States government's forcible transfer of Djamel Ameziane to Algeria is a blatant breach of international law," said Viviana Krsticevic, executive director of the NGO Center for Justice and International Law, adding that he "risks torture or persecution" in Algeria.
