Posted on 20-2-2004
After
772 days, five Britons face freedom from Guantanamo Bay
Five of the nine Britons held without trial by the Americans
at Guantanamo Bay are to be returned to the United Kingdom,
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, announced yesterday.
As their families celebrated their release, international concern
focused on the plight of up to 660 terror suspects, including
a further four Britons, still being held in the high-security
camp.
The five freed British detainees at Camp Delta in Cuba will
be flown home in the next few weeks after the Government admitted
they posed no terror threat. To minimise the humiliation of
its closest military ally, the White House allowed the Foreign
Secretary to announce the news first.
Mr Straw said that police would consider whether they should
face questioning under the Terrorism Act 2000. But within minutes
of his statement, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, said that
"no one who is returned ... will actually be a threat to
the security of the British people".
The Foreign Secretary said that discussions were continuing
with the US authorities over the other four Britons but the
Government still believed they "should be tried in accordance
with international standards or returned to the UK".
The five to be released are Rhuhel Ahmed, 23, Tarek Dergoul,
24, Jamal al-Harith, 35, Asif Iqbal, 20, and Shafiq Rasul, 25.
The British detainees are among more than 600 prisoners who
have been held in the US Navy base since being picked up for
suspected links to al-Qa'ida or the Taliban in the wake of the
invasion of Afghanistan. There are 20 European citizens being
detained, including six from France as well as nationals from
Sweden and Germany.
The Bush administration has faced international condemnation
about its decision to keep the men blindfolded and in manacles,
and its failure to charge them or provide legal representation.
It is alleged that some confessions have been extracted by torture.
Just 87 prisoners have been released to date, including four
Saudis and one Spaniard. A Danish man was released yesterday.
The families of the British men have consistently protested
the men's innocence. Critics pointed out that the lack of progress
underlined the weakness of Mr Blair's claim to have a "special
relationship" with the US. London and Washington have spent
months locked in negotiations over the affair. In November 2002,
the Court of Appeal said the British detainees were being held
in a "legal black hole" and described their treatment
as "objectionable". In the first clear indication
of London's frustration with George Bush, Mr Straw said that
Lord Goldsmith QC, the Attorney General, had rejected US proposals
to try the remaining four Britons in US military tribunals.
"In the Attorney General's view, the military commissions,
as presently constituted, would not provide the type of process
which we would afford British nationals," he said.
The discussions that led to their release began in July when
the US ruled that two of the other British detainees were eligible
to be tried by military commissions. The four who will remain
in Camp Delta are Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga
and Richard Belmar. Almost all of the prisoners were picked
up in Afghanistan or in Pakistan following the Anglo-American
overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.
Clive Stafford Smith, the British human rights lawyer representing
a group of detainees, has challenged the legality of the prison
in Guantanamo Bay in the US Supreme Court. He said the decision
was a "cynical" attempt to avoid embarrassment over
the court's likely ruling, which is expected in June - months
before the US presidential election. "The US Supreme Court
will say the Bush administration has been acting illegally,"
Mr Stafford Smith told BBC Radio 4's PM programme. "With
the election set for November, George Bush doesn't want that
from the court that put him in office in the first place."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty,
said: "We are delighted that the five have been released,
but let us not forget those that are remaining. Nor should we
forget that Britain has its very own Guantanamo Bay at Belmarsh
Prison, in south-east London, where 14 men have been held for
up to two years without charge, or prospect of trial."
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