LONDON, 2 April 2007 — A man held at Guantanamo Bay for more than four years said yesterday his nightmare was over and he was delighted to be back home in Britain.
Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said last week the US government had agreed to release Bisher Al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen who lived for many years in Britain, from Guantanamo and send him back to Britain.
“I am delighted to be back home in England with my family,” Al-Rawi said in a statement released in his name by legal charity Reprieve. “After over four years in Guantanamo Bay, my nightmare is finally at an end.” He called for the release of his business partner, Jordanian Jamil El-Banna, who was arrested with him in Gambia in 2002 and is still held at the prison camp on the island of Cuba.
Edward Davey, a British parliamentarian who took up Al-Rawi’s case, said in January Al-Rawi and El-Banna had been handed over to the US Central Intelligence Agency after their arrest and taken to Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo. The British government has denied an accusation by Davey that Britain’s MI5 intelligence agency was complicit in their arrest.
Davey said Al-Rawi knew Abu Qatada, who Britain wants to deport to Jordan, where he has been convicted in absentia of involvement in terrorist plots. Davey said he believed Al-Rawi was innocent of any crime.
Al-Rawi said he felt sorry for nine British residents still held at Guantanamo, some of whom he said were on hunger strike protesting against being kept in extended solitary confinement.
“The hopelessness you feel in Guantanamo can hardly be described. You are asked the same questions hundreds of times. Allegations are made against you that are laughably untrue, but you have no chance to prove them wrong,” he added.
Al-Rawi said he was alleged to have taken part in terrorist training in Bosnia and Afghanistan. “I’ve never been to Bosnia and the only time I visited Afghanistan was thanks to the hospitality of the CIA in an underground prison — the Dark Prison — outside Kabul,” he said.
Britain has secured the release of all nine of its citizens who were held at Guantanamo and says it is not obliged to seek the release of nine others who were resident in Britain but not nationals. Four are Algerians and the others are from Ethiopia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco.
Al-Rawi’s lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, alleged in a separate statement yesterday that Al-Rawi had been kept in an underground prison, beaten and subjected to extremes of temperature and extended isolation. Katznelson said last week British authorities had told him his client would only have to tell police where he lives and report to them once a month.
