|
|
| British Guantanamo inmates walk free |
| By ABC News Online |
| Published: 03/11/2004 |
|
Five Britons who the United States sent home from its Guantanamo Bay detention camp are all free men, after British police released them without charge. The five returned to Britain on Tuesday on a Royal Air Force (RAF) flight from the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba. The US is holding about 650 alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters - suspects in its post-September 11 "war on terror" - at Guantanamo Bay. Negotiations between London and Washington are continuing on the fate of four other Britons imprisoned at the base, who could face trial before controversial US military courts. Four of the repatriated men - Ruhal Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, Shafiq Rasul, 26, and Tarek Dergoul, 26 - were arrested by anti-terrorist police on their arrival at a RAF base outside London. The men, all British Muslims, were taken to high-security Paddington Green police station in west London to be questioned under anti-terrorism laws, which allowed detectives to hold them without charge for up to 14 days. The fifth returnee, Jamal al Harith, 37, was detained at RAF Northolt for just four hours under immigration rules, before he was given a police escort through a crush of reporters to rejoin his family at a secret location. Late on Wednesday, police said that Mr. Dergoul, a former care worker for the elderly from east London who was held under the Terrorism Act 2000, had been freed after "close liaison" between police and state prosecutors. He had been questioned under a section the Act which refers to the alleged involvement "in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism", according to police. The four other men have now also been released, bringing an end to their two-year ordeal. They were then taken to undisclosed locations of their choice. Max Clifford, a celebrity publicist hired by Mr. Dergoul's family, said: "Mentally, Tarek seems to be okay. Physically, he is in quite a bad way and walking is a problem. The cause of that, I do not know." A lawyer for Jamaican-born Mr. Al Harith, a web designer from Manchester who converted to Islam in his 20s, said the freed man wanted the US authorities to "answer for the injustice which he has suffered" at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon said it released the men because Washington believed they no longer posed a threat to US national security. Asked why it took two years to come to that conclusion, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "The goal was to keep these people off a battlefield and to keep them away from killing other people." |
MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
|
Comments:
No comments have been posted for this article.
Login to let us know what you think