LONDON, 12 March 2004 — Five Britons sent home from the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay were free men yesterday after police released all of them without filing charges.

Four of the men, all British Muslims, were freed late Wednesday after questioning at the high-security Paddington Green police station in west London under anti-terrorism laws. The fifth was already at liberty.

After at least two years in US custody, the five returned to Britain on Tuesday on a Royal Air Force flight from the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba where the United States is holding some 650 alleged Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters.

Talks 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, 23, Asif Iqbal, 22, Shafiq Rasul, 26, and Tarek Dergoul, 26 — were arrested by anti-terrorist police on their arrival at an RAF base outside London.

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 Wednesday police said Dergoul, a former care worker for the elderly from east London who had been held under the Terrorism Act 2000, had been freed after “close liaison” between police and prosecutors.

He had been questioned under a section of the law which refers to alleged involvement “in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism”, according to police.

Just before midnight, the other men were released, bringing an end to their two-year ordeal. They were then taken to undisclosed locations of their choice.

Dergoul was allowed to make brief phone calls to relatives before his release. According to the Daily Mirror, he told his brother Halid: “I want to clear my name and set the record straight.

“In the beginning I was messed up and it took a long time to come to terms with where I was. But now I am feeling emotionally positive and physically strong.”

The Mirror reported that Halid denied that his brother had links with extremists or Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, adding: “Tarek was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

A lawyer for Jamaican-born 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.

“He has been detained as an innocent for a period of two years. He has been treated in a cruel, inhumane and degrading manner. He wants the authorities to answer for that,” lawyer Robert Lizar said.

“He’s an innocent man,” Lizar added. “He wants to know why he was kept in custody for so long.”

Greg Powell, lawyer for Ruhal Ahmed, said he had met his client at the London jail where he was released and found him in good health. But his treatment at the hands of the Americans had amounted to “torture”.

“What I have learned from him is Guantanamo Bay is a kind of experiment in interrogation techniques and methods, really. And they do have extremely interesting stories to tell about what went on there,” Powell said. He declined to give further details about the prisoners’ treatment, or explain what his client was doing in Afghanistan when he was arrested.

The Pentagon said Tuesday it was releasing the five after months of haggling between London and Washington 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.”

“That’s a good thing,” he added. “That’s not a bad thing.”

The four Britons who remain in Guantanamo Bay are Feroz Abbasi, Moazzam Begg, Richard Belmar, and Martin Mubanga, who also holds Zambian citizenship.