Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, had been held at the U.S. base in Cuba since it opened in 2002, but was reunited with his family in south London this weekend.
Betcha it wasn't as tough to endure as this, though:
More at link...
| Bisher al-Rawi | Bisher al-Rawi | al-Qaeda | Britain | 20060401 | Link |
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| Freed Guantanamo detainees to sue British intelligence | |
| 2008-04-20 | |
Eight men freed from Guantanamo Bay are looking to sue the British intelligence services for damages, the Daily Mail said on Saturday citing lawyers and one of the former detainees.
Deghayes and el-Banna were released from the US-run facility in Cuba last December. Al Rawi was set free earlier this year. Spain dropped an attempt to extradite them to face terrorism charges in March. The second writ is on behalf of British nationals Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, west central England, a trio of friends from nearby Tipton, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed, and Londoner Richard Belmar. The three men from Tipton unsuccessfully sued their former captors for alleged human and religious rights violations in US courts. The case is now being taken to the US Supreme Court. Begg was quoted as saying that the case would centre on British intelligences general behaviour and complicity in the abuse of British citizens from their detention, interrogation and transfer to Guantanamo. Lawyer Irene Membhard, from London law firm Birnberg Pierce, confirmed to the newspaper that the writs had been issued. Service is not imminent but watch this space within the next two months, she was quoted as saying. | |
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| UK Resident: Guantanamo Tough to Endure |
| 2007-04-01 |
| LONDON (AP) - A British resident released from Guantanamo Bay after nearly five years in captivity said Sunday his detention at the U.S. prison camp was "profoundly difficult" to endure, his first comments since his release. Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, had been held at the U.S. base in Cuba since it opened in 2002, but was reunited with his family in south London this weekend. Betcha it wasn't as tough to endure as this, though: More at link... |
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| Home Front: WoT | ||||||||
| Gitmo inmates 'driven insane' | ||||||||
| 2007-01-12 | ||||||||
 from the Financial Times. Prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba are being driven insane by a tightening of conditions and the situation of their indefinite detention without trial, according to lawyers and rights activists involved with the US camp.The lawyers and activists also doubt whether the Bush administration intends to carry out its stated desire to close the facility.
Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, says the five years of the Bush administration's detention policy and related practices may have "done more to reverse 200 years of democracy than any other government act in US history".
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| UK families' Guantánamo appeal fails | |
| 2006-10-13 | |
 An attempt to force the government to demand that three British residents be returned from Guantánamo Bay failed today. Three appeal court judges rejected arguments that the men, who have indefinite leave to stay in Britain, should be treated as UK citizens even though they were foreign nationals.All the British citizens who were detained at Guantánamo have already been returned to the UK. Mr al-Rawi is an Iraqi national and long-term UK resident, Mr el-Banna a Jordanian national with refugee status in the UK and Mr Deghayes a Libyan national, also with refugee status in the UK. Rabinder Singh QC, acting for the families of the men, told a hearing in July that the men's detention was unlawful. He said there was
Announcing that the court of appeal had dismissed the three appeals, Lord Justice Laws said the refusal to request their return did not contravene human rights or race relations laws. | |
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| Britain to US: we don't want Gitmo nine back | |||||||
| 2006-10-03 | |||||||
| The United States has offered to return nearly all British residents held at Guantánamo Bay after months of secret talks in Washington, the Guardian has learned. The British government has refused to accept the men, however, with senior officials saying they have no legal right to return. Documents obtained by the Guardian show US authorities are demanding that the detainees be kept under 24-hour surveillance if set free - restrictions that are dismissed by the British as unnecessary and unworkable.
In Washington, the state department confirmed that there are "ongoing diplomatic negotiations", as the documents show. They were written by the most senior counter-terrorism officials at the Home Office and Foreign Office at a time when some ministers were voicing their harshest criticism of Guantánamo. The documents are witness statements from David Richmond, director general of defence and intelligence at the Foreign Office, and William Nye, director of counter-terrorism and intelligence at the Home Office. Mr Richmond wrote: "The British embassy in Washington was told in mid-June 2006 that, during an internal meeting between US officials, the possibility had been floated of asking the UK government to consider taking back all the detainees at Guantánamo who had formerly been resident in the UK. Information about what had occurred at this meeting had been fed back informally to the embassy, and the UK government wished to clarify the significance of this idea." On June 27 UK officials met US officials from the departments of state, defence and the national security council. Mr Richmond wrote of that meeting: "The US administration would only be willing to engage with the UK government if it sought the release and return of all the detainees who had formally resided in the UK (ie, regardless of the quality of their links with the UK), rather than just a subset of the detainees falling in that category."
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| US reveals names of Guantánamo detainees |
| 2006-04-20 |
| The US government has released its first official list of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. The list of 558 people comprises three-quarters of the total number of detainees who have passed through the camp, which was set up in 2002 after the end of the war in Afghanistan. Secrecy surrounding the camp, and persistent reports of human rights violations, have attracted notoriety for the prison, in the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba The people named on the detainee list come from 41 countries, although nearly two-thirds are from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Former officials of Afghanistan's Taliban regime are particularly prominent on the tally. The Taliban's former defence ministry chief of staff Mullah Mohammed Fazil is still in custody along with intelligence officials Abdul Haq Wasiq and Gholam Ruhani. Kabul's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, is also included, although he was released from the prison camp late last year. Also included on the list is David Hicks, an Australian for whom lawyers are currently fighting to establish British citizenship via his mother, who was born in south London. The court of appeal last week rejected a home office claim that he was not entitled to register his citizenship on account of his previous alleged membership of al-Qaida. The Guardian today reported that foreign secretary Jack Straw had written to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice demanding the release from Guantánamo Bay of UK resident Bisher al-Rawi. Mr Rawi, an Iraqi citizen, took the British government to court last month claiming he had been hired by MI5 to track an alleged Muslim extremist and was only arrested after British intelligence passed false information to the US. Another detainee named on the list is Muhammed al-Qahtani, accused of being the 20th hijacker in the September 11 attacks. The Saudi citizen was stopped as he tried to enter the US in Orlando, Florida, shortly before the attacks. Details of Qahtani's interrogation caused outrage and shed fresh light on the techniques used in Guantánamo Bay when a logbook was leaked to Time magazine last year. He was frequently awoken at 4am and interrogated until after midnight, with requests for toilet breaks refused until he wet himself, while Christina Aguilera music was played at him if he dozed off. The list has previously been seen by members of the Red Cross, but was only publicly released after the Associated Press news agency sued US authorities under the freedom of information act. It numbers all the detainees who have appeared at hearings in Guantánamo Bay to determine their combatant status. The hearings took place between July 2004 and January 2005. All detainees at the prison between those dates received a hearing, but only 38 of them were determined to be "no longer enemy combatants" by the military tribunals, and only 29 of those were released. A total of around 750 people are believed to have passed through the camp, and 490 are currently believed to be in custody there. Groups working for the release of detainees welcomed the release of the list. Sayeed Sharif Youssefi, an official from Afghanistan's independent peace and reconciliation commission, said it would help in his efforts to obtain the release of Afghan detainees. "This is very good news and it helps us because now it is easy for us to identify the Afghans in Guantánamo, learn how many there are and from which provinces they come from," he said. Bill Goodman, legal director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights said: "This is information that should have been released a long time ago, and it's a scandal that it hasn't been." |
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| Rice: US not a global jailer |
| 2006-04-01 |
 The US secretary of state has defended the US invasion of Iraq and hinted that the US will not release prisoners from Guantanamo Bay until it is certain they pose no threat. "I know we have made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure," Condoleezza Rice told a gathering of 200 foreign policy experts, local officials and journalists organised by England's Chatham House foreign policy institute on Friday. "This could have gone that way, or that could have gone that way. But when you look back in history, what will be judged is: Did you make the right strategic decision?"Also on Friday, Rice said her country harbours no desire to be the world's jailer. Speaking at a football stadium, Rice said: "We want the terrorists that we capture to stand trial for their crimes. But we also recognise that we are fighting a new kind of war, and that our citizens will judge us harshly if we release a captured terrorist before we are absolutely certain that he does not possess information that could prevent a future attack." Jack Straw announced last week that Britain would take up the case of a British resident held at the Guantanamo. He said the government would intervene on behalf of Bisher al-Rawi, 37, a native Iraqi and British resident who was arrested in Gambia three years ago. |
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| Britain |
| Gitmo Brit says hes MI5 |
| 2006-03-24 |
| THE Foreign and Commonwealth Office has been forced into an embarrassing change of heart over its refusal to press for the release of a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay after the High Court was told yesterday that he had links to MI5. Bisher al-Rawi, 37, who has lived in Britain for more than 20 years, says that he was working for British Intelligence when he was picked up by the CIA during a trip to Africa. Lawyers for Mr al-Rawi and two other long-term British residents held at Guantanamo claim that they are all being tortured and want the High Court to order Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to lobby the US authorities for their release. The Government has said that as foreign nationals the men have no legal right to the assistance they are demanding. But the Foreign Office said yesterday that Mr al-Rawis case was now regarded as different. "The Foreign Secretary considered it appropriate to reconsider Mr al-Rawis request that he make representations to the US," it said. Mr al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, and his Jordanian business partner, Jamil el-Banna, who was granted refugee status in 2000, were picked up in Gambia three years ago and accused of trying to set up an al-Qaeda terrorist training camp. Both men claim that they were asked by British Intelligence to infiltrate an organisation run by a London-based radical cleric, Abu Qatada. Timothy Otty, who is appearing for the detainees, said that documents from a security service agent, "Witness A", established that there were "communications" relating to the two men before their arrest in November 2002, between the British and US security services. The third man, Libyan-born Omar Deghayes, 36, had also been held at Guantanamo for three years and was now on a hunger strike, Mr Otty said.The hearing is expected to last for two more days. |
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| Britain |
| UK cooperated with US on sending terror suspect to secret prisons |
| 2005-12-18 |
| LAWYERS for a former pupil at a top British independent school have accused the government of colluding with the CIA to send him to a series of prisons where he was abused. The claims relating to Bisher al-Rawi, a former student at Millfield now being held at Guantanamo Bay, will raise fresh questions about British involvement in the controversial American practice of âextraordinary renditionâ. The procedure, in which prisoners are secretly flown by the CIA to countries where they may face torture during interrogation, has sparked a string of investigations across Europe. The government has faced mounting criticism from human rights groups and opposition politicians since it emerged that CIA-operated planes had landed at British airports on dozens of occasions. Al-Rawi, 37, an Iraqi national who has lived in Britain since 1985, and his business partner Jamil al-Banna, a Jordanian who was granted refugee status in Britain in 2000, were detained three years ago in Gambia. They were later flown by the CIA to Afghanistan and then to Cuba in March 2003. The men are accused of being associated with Al-Qaeda and Abu Qatada, a radical Muslim cleric who has been described as Osama Bin Ladenâs European ambassador. Qatada is in a British jail pending deportation to his native Jordan. In Cuba one interrogator is alleged to have told al-Banna: âWhy are you angry at America? It is your government, Britain, the MI5, who called the CIA and told them you and Bisher were in Gambia and to come and get you. Britain gave everything to us. Britain sold you out to the CIA.â The comments, recounted by al-Banna, 43, to Clive Stafford Smith, his British lawyer, are outlined in transcripts of interviews recently declassified by the Pentagon. Al-Rawi has claimed he was approached by MI5 in London to act as an unpaid intermediary with Qatada. When the preacher supposedly went into hiding at the end of 2001, al-Rawi admits finding Qatada a new flat. However, he also claims he told his MI5 handlers where the preacher was staying. Last year al-Rawi asked for three MI5 agents to be called as witnesses before a military tribunal at Guantanamo. The British authorities refused to co-operate, but it is understood the same agents may have interviewed al-Rawi at the American prison on âa handful of occasionsâ. Prior to travelling to Gambia in November 2002 to set up a peanut-oil processing factory, al-Rawi and al-Banna were arrested at Gatwick airport and questioned by police about a suspect electronic device. They were released when it turned out to be a battery charger. The pair flew out to Gambia about a week later, but were stopped again by local intelligence officers at Banjul airport and handed over to the Americans. âThey said they were from the (US) embassy,â al-Banna told a military tribunal last year. âThey were wearing black, they even covered their heads black.â His account matches descriptions of the CIAâs rendition unit. Flight logs reportedly show that a CIA-operated Gulfstream jet, registration N379P, was in Banjul on the day of the menâs arrest. The same plane has landed at five different British airports. Al-Banna and al-Rawi were held for about a month in Gambia before being flown to the notorious âdark prisonâ in Kabul and the US military airbase at Bagram. There, al-Banna claims he was offered $10m (£5.6m) and a US passport to testify against Qatada. When he refused, an interrogator told him: âI am going to London . . . I am going to f*** your wife. Your wife is going to be my bitch. Maybe youâll never see your children again.â Al-Banna was so angry that he spat at his interrogator, but was allegedly slapped around the face until he bled. Al-Rawi claims that an American soldier punched him in the eye when he was being transferred from Kabul to Bagram. He alleges that interrogators threatened to send him to Jordan where âelectric cablesâ would be used to extract evidence. Both men have been repeatedly questioned at Guantanamo by American intelligence officers. Al-Banna claims he was kept in interrogation rooms for up to 14 hours a day with the air-conditioning on full so that it was freezing cold. The Home Office, which covers MI5, refused to comment. The US State Department said: âWhen we act, we do so lawfully.â |
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