Four Remaining British Guantanamo Detainees To Be Freed

The British government has announced that the four remaining British citizens held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo will be released. This follows months of negotiations between Washington and London and a direct appeal by Prime Minister Tony Blair to U.S. President George W. Bush, as well as multiple lawsuits filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The four Brits are: Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar. It is not clear when they will be released.

On Democracy Now!, we have covered these cases extensively, particularly that of Moazzam Begg. He was detained in Pakistan in 2001 and has been imprisoned without charge or trial in Guanatanmo after being transferred there from a base in Afghanistan. Last April, his father Azmat Begg joined us in our studio to talk about his son"s imprisonment. Here is some of what he had to say.

* Azmat Begg, speaking on Democracy Now, March 10, 2004.

Meanwhile, the Australian government says one of its citizens held at Guantanamo will also be released. Mamdouh Habib has been held at Guantanamo Bay for three years. He filed a lawsuit charging that in 2001 the U.S. transferred him to Egypt for 6 months, where he was electrocuted, beaten and nearly drowned. Habib alleges that while under Egyptian detention, he was hung by his arms from hooks, repeatedly shocked, nearly drowned and brutally beaten. Habib's case is only the second to describe a secret practice called "rendition," under which the CIA has sent suspected terrorists to be interrogated in countries where torture has been well documented. It is unclear which U.S. agency transferred him to Egypt. His was the first case to challenge the legality of the practice and could have implications for U.S. plans to send large numbers of Guantanamo Bay detainees to Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other countries with poor human rights records.

* Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of "Guantanamo: What the World Should Know."

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