British PM Gordon Brown has asked for the release from Guantanamo Bay of five non-national UK resident detainees, Tamam Ahmed Jama reports In an unequivocal break with previous policy, Britain has requested the release of five Guantanamo Bay detainees who are not British citizens but who had been legally resident in the UK before they were picked up abroad and subsequently transferred to the notorious US military prison on Cuba. On his first official trip to the US as leader in late July, the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the issue of UK residents with President George W Bush. Then, two weeks ago, the new Foreign Secretary David Miliband wrote formally to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, requesting the release and return to Britain of the men. Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather, who has campaigned hard for the release of one of the detainees, Jordanian national Jamil Al-Banna who was resident in her Brent East constituency in northwest London, has welcomed the news that she might be coming home soon. "This is fantastic news and a tremendous relief for Jamil's family here in London," she said. "They have shown incredible bravery, strength and determination. This decision should have been taken years ago. Abandoning British residents to indefinite imprisonment in obscene conditions was a gross dereliction of duty by the government." Teather is the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Guantanamo Bay. Liberal Democrat Leader Menzies Campbell also welcomed the news, adding, "this is a belated recognition of our moral responsibility towards these men. Up till now, the government's attitude has been supine in the face of systematic violation of all known legal principles." The five detainees whom Britain is seeking to be freed are Al-Banna, Libyan national Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed Al-Habashi from Ethiopia, Abdul-Nour Sameur, an Algerian, and Shaker Amer, a Saudi citizen. Following intense diplomatic activity between London and Washington, nine British citizens previously held at Guantanamo Bay were released and repatriated to Britain by January 2005. But the UK government, under former prime minister Tony Blair refused to intercede for the non-national UK resident detainees arguing that Britain had no responsibility for them since they were citizens of other nations and that the US would not negotiate with third countries. This was a huge disappointment for the families of the detainees and human rights groups who argued that the UK government had a moral, if not legal, obligation to intercede for the men since some had lived in the UK for a long time and their families and their whole lives were here in Britain. Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer representing the five detainees, said the British government has both moral and legal obligation to intervene on behalf of the men. "We are not talking about people who were just visiting the UK," Smith told the Weekly. "Deghayes lived in this country for 20 years, Al-Banna's five children are British citizens and Shaker Amer's four children are also British." "The new Brown government wanted to do the right thing," he said. "It is very positive news because these detainees now have a place to go and a government that is willing to take them. There is no guarantee that this will get resolved in a week or two, but I hope it won't take too long and that we will get the men out of Guantanamo soon." Al-Banna's son Anas, now 10 years old, wrote to Blair some two years ago, pleading to him to intervene so that his father could come home. That letter, a touching, handwritten letter, read in part: "your children spend Christmas with you, but me and my brothers and sisters spent Eid alone without our dad for three years. Why is my dad in prison? Why is he far away in that place called Guantanamo Bay?" Last week, Anas's family received a hand- delivered letter that the new government was negotiating his father's release. "When we opened [the letter], we were really happy," the BBC quoted young Anas as saying. All five of Al-Banna's children were born in the UK. He has not seen his youngest daughter, as his wife was pregnant when he was arrested in Gambia and taken to Guantanamo Bay. The detainees all deny vigorously any involvement in terrorism and some say that they have been tortured while in custody. Deghayes, according to his lawyer, has been blinded in the right eye as a result of beatings and pepper spray while in Guantanamo Bay. "The torture he has been through is shocking and the damage to his eye is irrevocable, unfortunately," Smith said. Al-Habashi's was one of the most publicised cases of the policy known as rendition, which involves secretly taking suspects to third countries for interrogation. According to Smith, Al-Habashi, after being picked up in an airport in Pakistan, was tortured in the "Dark Prison" near Kabul, Afghanistan, for five months and was then taken to Morocco where he was subjected to 18 months of "unspeakable brutality" before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. There have been signs recently that the US authorities want to reduce the size of the population of almost 400 men remaining in Guantanamo Bay, with the view of closing the camp in the near future. Apart from the five UK residents whose cases are apparently under review, 80 men are said to be "eligible" for release and awaiting countries prepared to take them. "Guantanamo Bay has been a nightmare for our clients for a long time; now it is a nightmare for the Bush administration because they cannot close it down unless they find governments willing to take the men," Smith said. The American ambassador to Britain, Robert Tuttle, told BBC Radio 4 that the US was going to study the request to release the UK residents "very seriously and get back with all due speed". The British human rights group Liberty has welcomed the request for the release of the five detainees. "This change of policy is extremely welcome, especially if it signals a bigger change of approach on both sides of the Atlantic," said James Welch, Liberty's legal director. "Surely the US and UK governments need no further evidence that internment, kidnap and torture have been completely counterproductive in the struggle against terrorism. It's high time that the special relationship returned to its original values of defending liberty rather than degrading it."
