The family of a man held at Guantanamo Bay for his alleged involvement in an attack on a Kenyan hotel and an attempt to bring down an airliner is suing the Kenyan government for $30 million in damages, claiming wrongful detainment and torture.

Mohamed Abdulmalik, 37, is accused by American officials of involvement in the 2002 attacks, and the U.S. says he is a member of al-Qaida.

His family maintains he was held in Kenyan custody without charge longer than Kenyan law allows and was tortured by Kenyan officials. U.S. officials later took him from Kenya, to Djibouti, to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a human rights group says.

The case raises questions about the legal justifications for Abdulmalik's U.S. detention, and why the Kenyan was flown to so many U.S. bases.

U.S. officials, who have held Abdulmalik without charge since early 2007, have declined to release even basic information about him. The Department of Defense has declined to release a transcript of his "enemy combatant" hearing at the U.S. base in Cuba, as they have done for other prisoners.

Army Maj. Tanya Bradsher, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Thursday that the transcript of his review tribunal was still classified.

Reprieve, a London-based human rights group that has intervened on detainees' behalf, says Abdulmalik's case stems from a coerced confession.

"You can't take a Kenyan citizen off Kenyan streets, beat him in Kenyan jails, and when a Kenyan court won't convict, hand him to U.S. soldiers," Reprieve's Cori Crider wrote in an e-mail.

She said that while Kenya denies handing him to the United States and also has disputed that he is Kenyan, her group has declassified documents showing that both these claims are false.

The lawsuit names Kenya's Attorney General and police commissioner as the key defendants. It was filed on Nov. 18 and the first hearing on the case had been scheduled for Thursday, but the case was postponed until January because the judge assigned to the case went on leave.

The director of public prosecutions for the Attorney General's office, Keriako Tobiko, said he had not been briefed about the suit and could not comment. The prosecutor in charge of the case did not return a call seeking comment.

A human rights lawyer with the government-funded Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, Hassan Omar, said Kenyan laws are not well-equipped to handle acts of terrorism or terrorism suspects _ and neither are Kenyan police.

"Kenya needs anti-terror laws but not under the present arrangement of the police force. It is corrupt, unaccountable and has shown ... a total disregard of the rights of its own citizens," Omar said.