Guantanamo Four Are Too Dangerous To Free, Says US (Brit Muslims)

The United States has disclosed its case against the Guantanamo Four, telling the Telegraph that the four imprisoned British Muslims were trained al-Qa'eda terrorists who would return to the fight if released.

Senior US officials, abandoning their policy of keeping secret the details of the allegations against the Guantanamo detainees, said they were convinced that if freed all four would pose "a serious threat" to America and Britain.

Azmat Begg, father of one of the detainees, at a press conference with Terry Waite The four men trained at al-Qa'eda terrorist camps in Afghanistan, US officials claimed. They allegedly learned such skills as bomb-making, assassination and urban warfare.

After reviewing US evidence, the British security services concluded that they were "more comfortable not having these people walking the streets in the UK", US officials said. Tony Blair had agreed.

The four Britons who will continue to be held at Guantanamo Bay are Feroz Abbasi, 23, from Croydon, south London; Moazzam Begg, 36, from Birmingham; Richard Belmar, 23, from London; and Martin Mubanga, 29, also from London. Five others are expected to be freed this week.

President George W Bush designated Abbasi, a former worshipper at Finsbury Park mosque, and Begg, who worked in an Islamic bookshop in Sparkhill, to be among the first to stand trial before military tribunals.

Louise Christian, the solicitor representing the families of two of the detainees - Abbasi and Mubanga - reacted angrily to the allegations made in Washington.

"I do not represent the detainees because I have no access to them - I can only represent their families," she said. "These allegations are outrageous. It is outrageous that they are being made when the detainees do not have a voice."

The senior Bush administration official, explaining the decision to open previously sealed files, pointed to harsh coverage of the Guantanamo cases in Britain, "our closest ally". He urged the Britons to accept that America was at war with global terrorists. In a war, the rules of the civilian justice system did not apply, he said.

"If the British Government had captured Luftwaffe pilots bombing London during the middle of World War Two, they would not have given them lawyers to argue that they were innocent and ought to be released," he said.

A final straw, the official added, was learning that Terry Waite, the former Beirut hostage, had stated that his experiences paled beside the suffering of the Guantanamo detainees.

"In Britain, we've gotten no information out about these guys at all," the official said. "We have ceded the public relations ground to those who would say that these people are entirely innocent.

"For the last two years, the administration has not given any information about anybody at Guantanamo. In a military operation you don't talk about those sorts of things. And I think we may have done ourselves a disservice," he said.

The disclosures about the Britons still held at Guantanamo Bay are certain to overshadow a visit to Washington by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, to discuss improved transatlantic co-operation in the war against terrorism.

Before flying to Washington last night, Mr Blunkett voiced concern over the American treatment of the detainees, which is causing acute political embarrassment for Mr Blair.

Mr Blunkett promised to raise the issue with the US authorities and fight for a "fair deal" for the four Britons who have no prospect of being released. Asked if he believed that the way the men were being held at Guantanamo Bay was wrong, he replied: "Yes I do."

The family members of several British detainees arrived in America at the weekend to lobby for their relatives. Azmat Begg, whose son Moazzam is one of the Guantanamo Four, is to join supporters including the actors Corin and Vanessa Redgrave today in a public march on the White House.

The senior official struck back at claims that the four detainees were charity workers swept up in a crude manhunt by US forces.

One of them, he claimed, "met Osama bin Laden personally three times; volunteered to participate in suicide operations. And this is one of the people who is being painted as entirely innocent.

"We are constantly looking to make sure that nobody has just been swept up. There were something like 10,000 people captured in operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"And only something like 800 of them, after extensive screening processes, were taken to Guantanamo - only people who we felt really posed a serious threat. And they have continued to be screened there, repeatedly."

US officials said selection for trial depended on the clarity of the evidence against a given detainee.

The US was not obliged to try all enemy combatants, the official said. Under the rules of war, it was legitimate to hold captives until the end of a war, simply to prevent them from rejoining enemy forces.

Some of the British detainees had allegedly admitted to engaging in terrorist activities. Some allegations against them came from other detainees, who had trained alongside them in al-Qa'eda camps, the official said. Citing legal constraints, the British Government has said little about the crimes allegedly committed by the four.

Insisting he intended no criticism of Mr Blair, the senior US official said: "We are disappointed that the British Government has been unable to provide more information to the British people about the unsavoury backgrounds of some of the British detainees, and the threat they would pose to both the US and the UK."

In private, the Bush administration feels that it has been left to become the world's jailer, taking the flak for Guantanamo Bay while looking after terrorists other countries do not want to take back.

"Overall, with European governments, it has been convenient for them to criticise Guantanamo without stepping up to do something about the people that are there," the official said.

"No US government official is very happy about Guantanamo, and we would vastly prefer it if other countries would take these people and either prosecute them or detain them."

There are serious doubts whether British courts would be able to prosecute or jail Guantanamo detainees, amid legal questions over the admissibility of much of the US evidence. From Washington's perspective, their continued detention in Cuba looks like a substantial favour to Mr Blair, and the British people.

"Tony Blair has recognised the threat posed by these four individuals and, despite the political pressure being placed on him back home, he has sided with the British security services in allowing these four individuals to remain in custody," the US official said.

"We feel that we are not just doing the British people a favour, but that collectively this is the right thing to do. I think that senior British officials have recognised that."

Amnesty International said it had grave concerns about the conditions in which the detainees were being held and the methods used to extract information from them.

"The bottom line for Amnesty is that all of those held must be charged with recognisable offences and tried in the courts," said a spokesman.

"A final straw, the official added, was learning that Terry Waite, the former Beirut hostage, had stated that his experiences paled beside the suffering of the Guantanamo detainees."

Oh really?

From Toronto Star:

On Jan. 29, the U.S. military freed three Afghan teens after imprisoning them for a year at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as "juvenile enemy combatants."

The Pentagon had decided the boys, captured in Afghanistan 17 months earlier, no longer posed a threat to America and wouldn't be put on trial.

The U.S. move pleased activists who viewed the boys' detention and interrogation as human rights violations.

The Pentagon refused to name the boys — all believed under 16 — because they feared reprisals by Taliban or Al Qaeda sympathizers.

That created a dilemma. Should journalists track the boys down, and give them a chance to tell their stories? Or just leave them alone?

On Feb. 11, the Star and New York Times, acting independently, reached the same conclusion. Each tracked down an ex-inmate, and ran his story, including name and photo.

Sonia Verma, a Star reporter on leave, found Asadullah Rahman in the village of Khuja Angoor, and filed a 1,700-word story headlined: The lost childhood of Asadullah.

It painted a somewhat different portrait from the Pentagon tale of a trained gunman conscripted to fight in an anti-U.S. militia.

In Verma's account, Asadullah told of being kidnapped, sold into sexual slavery to a local gunman (not Taliban), and then captured by U.S. soldiers.

And now, from the "Guardian" by James Astill

Asadullah strives to make his point, switching to English lest there be any mistaking him. "I am lucky I went there, and now I miss it. Cuba was great," said the 14-year-old, knotting his brow in the effort to make sure he is understood.

Not that Asadullah saw much of the Caribbean island. During his 14-month stay, he went to the beach only a couple of times - a shame, as he loved to snorkel. And though he learned a few words of Spanish, Asadullah had zero contact with the locals.

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth. Less diverting were the twice-monthly interrogations about his knowledge of al-Qaida and the Taliban. But, as Asadullah's answer was always the same - "I don't know anything about these people" - these sessions were merely a bore: an inevitably tedious consequence, Asadullah suggests with a shrug, of being held captive in Guantanamo Bay.

On January 29, Asadullah and two other juvenile prisoners were returned home to Afghanistan. The three boys are not sure of their ages. But, according to the estimate of the Red Cross, Asadullah is the youngest, aged 12 at the time of his arrest. The second youngest, Naqibullah, was arrested with him, aged perhaps 13, while the third boy, Mohammed Ismail, was a child at the time of his separate arrest, but probably isn't now.

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

This might seem to jar with the prevailing opinion of Guantanamo among human rights groups. An American jail on foreign soil, Guantanamo was designed, according to Amnesty International, to deny prisoners "many of their most basic rights", which in America would include special provision for the "speedy trial" of juveniles. But, seized in the remotest wilds of violent Afghanistan, the boys knew practically nothing of their rights, and expected less.

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