Four Remaining British Guantanamo Detainees To Be Freed

When five British detainees were returned from Guantanamo in March 2004, the biggest clue to what would happen to them next was given by the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett.

He said that none was a threat to British security.

And, indeed, none has faced any further sanction.

In foreshadowing the release of the remaining four British citizens from Guantanamo, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, was more ambiguous in his choice of words.

But in saying that some of the 200 detainees freed by the US had returned to terrorism, he was probably hinting that the decision on whether to charge any of the four - Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga, Feroz Abassi and Richard Belmar - may be less clear-cut.

Whatever the eventual outcome, it is likely that the four will be arrested in the UK under a section of the Terrorism Act 2000 prohibiting involvement in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

They will be questioned by officers from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch and a decision on any prosecution taken by the Crown Prosecution Service.

They can be held up to 14 days without charge.

'Complex discussions'

Short of a direct admission of complicity, it seems improbable that "evidence" obtained from interrogations carried out at Guantanamo would, on its own, be sufficient to form the basis of a UK prosecution.

The Treason Act applies to those who take up arms against their own country.

But one of the four, Martin Mubanga, was not even seized from a "battlefield" and the evidence against the others rests mainly on allegations that they took part in Al Qaeda training camps so that sanction can almost certainly be ruled out.

Mr Straw told the Commons that there had been "intensive and complex discussions" to address US security concerns.

This may mean that the government has offered some kind of assurance that the men will be kept under surveillance but there is no possibility of details being publicly disclosed.

Alternatively, it could be that, in detention, the four provided so many nuggets of information about terrorist activity that their future value to Al Qaeda has been undermined. We will probably never know.

Meanwhile, two British residents, who are not citizens, are amongst the 550 detainees who continue to be held at Guantanamo.

And the US has signalled its intention to create a permanent prison, holding up to 200 "enemy combatants", there.

The war on terror might be entering a new phase but the implications for human rights have not diminished.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4165715.stm

Unanswered Questions
Alberto Gonzales will likely be confirmed. But that won't stop the widening scandal over Gitmo detainees
By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek

Jan. 17 issue - Ibraham Al Qosi's stories seemed fairly outlandish when they first surfaced last fall. In a lawsuit, Al Qosi, a Sudanese accountant apprehended after 9/11 on suspicions of ties to Al Qaeda, charged that he and other detainees at Guantanamo Bay had been subjected to bizarre forms of humiliation and abuse by U.S. military inquisitors. Al Qosi claimed they were strapped to the floor in an interrogations center known as the Hell Room, wrapped in Israeli flags, taunted by female interrogators who rubbed their bodies against them in sexually suggestive ways, and left alone in refrigerated cells for hours with deafening music blaring in their ears. Back then, Pentagon officials dismissed Al Qosi's allegations as the fictional rantings of a hard-core terrorist.

But in recent weeks a stack of declassified government documents has given new credence to many of the claims of abuse at Guantanamo. The documents are also raising fresh questions about the Bush administration's handling of detainees at a time when a prime architect of that policy, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, is facing a Senate confirmation vote as the president's nominee to be attorney general.

Many of the documents come from an unexpected source: the FBI. As part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the bureau has released internal e-mails and correspondence recording what their own agents witnessed at Gitmo. Coupled with accounts from other agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency—also released as part of the FOIA lawsuit—the FBI reports amount to a powerful case that many of the scenes alleged by Al Qosi and other Gitmo detainees may actually have happened. (Al Qosi is still in Gitmo, facing charges before a military tribunal.) And the reports suggest that the interrogation scandal is not going away any time soon, even if Gonzales is confirmed, as expected.

Many of the FBI accounts came from conscience-stricken agents troubled by what they had witnessed. One agent reported seeing a detainee sitting on the floor of an interrogation cell with an Israeli flag draped around him while he was bombarded by loud music and a strobe light—almost exactly what Al Qosi had alleged. Another reported seeing detainees chained hand and foot in fetal positions, in barren cells with no chair, food or water.

In one account that seemed to parallel the sickening scenes from Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, an FBI agent reported the way in which a female U.S. Army sergeant sexually humiliated a shackled male prisoner during Ramadan and even "grabbed his genitals."

Pentagon officials acknowledge that, frustrated by detainees' refusal to talk, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had approved "aggressive" interrogation techniques to be used at Gitmo. But last week, stunned by the new disclosures, Gen. Bantz Craddock, chief of the U.S. Southern Command—which runs Gitmo—ordered a full-scale inquiry into the FBI agents' allegations, which appear to go far beyond anything authorized. Craddock wants to know why allegations from seemingly credible government agents had not come to the U.S. military's attention sooner.

After hearing of the FBI memos, NEWSWEEK has learned, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Patrick Leahy fired off angry letters to FBI Director Robert Mueller demanding to know why he failed to disclose his own agents' complaints when they questioned him about Gitmo in a hearing last May. Feinstein last week called Mueller's evasive answers at the time "gobbledygook." When her comment was reported on NEWSWEEK's Web site, Mueller called Feinstein to express regret that he hadn't kept her better informed. As the inquiries continue, he may not be the only U.S. government official who has further explaining to do.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6803421/site/newsweek/

I would really like to know, of the hundreds(perhaps thousands) of 'detainees' who were illegally nabbed & forceably transported to Guantanamo & cruelly incarcerated since 2001, exactly how many have been convicted of a terrorist crime? For that matter, how many have been even charged with a major offense? And how many have been released so far?