Andy Worthington » Jamil El-Banna

UK Judge Approves Use of Secret Evidence in Guantánamo Case

Andy Worthington — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:06:38 +0000

Those of us who have been aware that the principles of open justice in the UK are being threatened in an unprecedented manner have, to date, focused largely on the use of secret evidence in cases related to terrorism — widely ignored by the general public, and by much of the media — and on the use of “super-injunctions,” which recently broke into the mainstream with the Twitter-storm over the Trafigura case.

The use of secret evidence in cases related to terrorism involves prisoners held on control orders (a form of house arrest), or imprisoned on deportation bail, who are assigned special advocates to speak on their behalf in closed sessions of the Special Immigrations Appeal Court (SIAC), but who are then prohibited from speaking to the special advocates about what took place in these closed sessions. This regime is now under threat, after the Law Lords ruled in June that imposing control orders breaches Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial, because a suspect held under a control order is not given “sufficient information about the allegations against him to enable him to give effective instructions to the special advocate assigned to him.”

Yesterday, however, a new front in the assault on open justice opened up when Mr. Justice Silber ruled, in the cases of seven former Guantánamo prisoners who are suing the government for damages, related to claims that agents of the intelligence services were involved in unlawful acts and conspiracy, that, for the first time ever in a civil case, MI5, MI6 and the police will be able to withhold evidence from defendants and their lawyers on the basis of national security.

The seven men in question are Bisher al-Rawi, Moazzam Begg, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Jamil El-Banna, Binyam Mohamed and Martin Mubanga, and they anticipated that their challenge would involve wrangling over the use of Public Interest Immunity certificates, designed to prevent the use of evidence in cases where the government asserts that disclosure would reveal intelligence sources or pose a threat to national security. The use of PII certificates has plagued the disclosure of documents in the long-running case of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who was subjected to “extraordinary rendition” and torture by the US government, with the complicity of the British intelligence services, but no one anticipated that, in this particular case, a judge would authorize the use of the same system of special advocates used by SIAC.

Mr. Justice Silber acknowledged that the case raised what he called a “stark question of law,” and added that he agreed with the claimants that an appeal “should be expedited.”

It is to be hoped that the Court of Appeals will recognize that Mr. Justice Silber’s ruling must be overturned, but in the meantime Louise Christian, the solicitor for some of the former Guantánamo prisoners, captured the full, horrific implications of the ruling when she explained:

The judge has sanctioned what would be a constitutional outrage, allowing government to rely on secret evidence in the ordinary civil courts. [He has done this] by treating the issue as if it was a purely technical legal matter, not a question of overturning the whole history of the common law and the fundamental principle that both sides must be on an equal footing. By giving the government such an advantage in civil litigation, the court would overthrow the very essence of the rule of law.

She added that she was “confident that the court of appeal will not allow such a massive erosion of the rights of the individual to hold government to account, particularly on the all-important issue of complicity in torture,” and we must all hope that her analysis is correct. As with the case of Binyam Mohamed, it appears that justice is being undermined, with issues of national security being invoked not to protect national security, but to prevent the government and its agents either from embarrassment or, more gravely, from being held accountable for complicity in the systematic torture and abuse at the heart of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009, details about my film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash, and launched in October 2009), and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Spanish judge resumes torture case against six senior Bush lawyers

Andy Worthington — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:11:04 +0000

The Spanish newspaper Público reported exclusively on Saturday that Judge Baltasar Garzón is pressing ahead with a case against six senior Bush administration lawyers for implementing torture at Guantánamo.

Back in March, Judge Garzón announced that he was planning to investigate the six prime architects of the Bush administration’s torture policies — former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who played a major role in the preparation of the OLC’s notorious “torture memos”; Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy; William J. Haynes II, the Defense Department’s former general counsel; Jay S. Bybee, Yoo’s superior in the OLC, who signed off on the August 2002 “torture memos”; and David Addington, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.

In April, on the advice of the Spanish Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido, who believes that an American tribunal should judge the case (or dismiss it) before a Spanish court even thinks about becoming involved, prosecutors recommended that Judge Garzón should drop his investigation. As CNN reported, Mr. Conde-Pumpido told reporters that Judge Garzón’s plans threatened to turn the court “into a toy in the hands of people who are trying to do a political action.”

On Saturday, however, Público reported that Judge Garzón had accepted a lawsuit presented by a number of Spanish organizations — the Asociación Pro Dignidad de los Presos y Presas de España (Organization for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners), Asociación Libre de Abogados (Free Lawyers Association), the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España (Association for Human Rights in Spain) and Izquierda Unida (a left-wing political party) — and three former Guantánamo prisoners (the British residents Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, and Sami El-Laithi, an Egyptian freed in 2005, who was paralyzed during an incident involving guards at Guantánamo).

The newspaper reported that all these groups and individuals would take part in any trial, which is somewhat ironic, as, although Judge Garzón has been involved in high-profile cases that have delighted human rights advocates — his pursuit of General Pinochet, for example — he has been severely criticized for his heavy-handed approach to terrorism-related cases in Spain (as in the cases of Mohammed Farsi and Farid Hilali, amongst others), and, in fact, aggressively pursued an extradition request for both Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes on their return from Guantánamo to the UK in December 2007, in connection with spurious and long-refuted claims about activities related to terrorism, which he was only persuaded to drop in March 2008.

It is, at present, uncertain whether another attempt to stifle Judge Garzón will derail him from his pursuit of the Bush administration’s lawyers, as he is not known for letting adversaries stand in his way. At the end of June, the Spanish Parliament pointedly passed legislation aimed at “ending the practice of letting its magistrates seek war-crime indictments against officials from any foreign country, including the United States,” on the basis that no Spanish Court should be able to judge officials of foreign countries except when the victims are Spanish or the crimes were committed in Spain.

However, on Sunday, when Público spoke to Philippe Sands, the British lawyer, and author of Torture Team, which provided much of the first-hand evidence for Garzón’s case, Sands explicitly stated that there was “no legal barrier” to prevent Judge Garzón’s prosecution from proceeding. He explained that he believed the recent decision by US Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special investigator to investigate cases of torture by the CIA is related to the Spanish lawsuit and the importance it has acquired because of its instigation by Judge Garzón. Sands told Público, “The recent decision by Eric Holder emphasizes how appropriate the Spanish investigation is. Many commentators believe that this decision has had a significant and direct impact in the United States, reminding people that there is an obligation to investigate torture.”

He added, “Judge Garzón’s actions have acted like a catalyst, and are supported by many people in the United States, including some members of Congress. He has reminded everybody that a blind eye cannot be turned to these actions and that there are people who are not going to let that happen.” He also explained that Eric Holder’s gesture is only a first step, “limited to cases in which interrogators may have exceeded the limits formally approved by lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel,” that the architects of the “legal decisions that purported to justify the use of torture are not in immediate danger in the United States,” and that there is, therefore, “no legal barrier to the continuation of the Spanish investigation.”

He concluded by stating that it was “important” that Judge Garzón proceeds with the case in Spain, because, although Eric Holder “has confirmed the importance of the Convention Against Torture, he has taken only a first step that “does not really address the actions of those who were truly responsible for its violation.”

Note: I wish to extend my thanks to Carlos Sardiña Galache for alerting me to the latest developments in this important story, which was not mentioned in the English-speaking press, and for translating crucial passages.

As published on the Huffington Post and AlterNet. Cross-posted on The Public Record and After Downing Street. Also mentioned in the Washington Independent and Raw Story.

For a sequence of articles dealing with the use of torture by the CIA, on “high-value detainees,” and in the secret prisons, see: Guantánamo’s tangled web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majid Khan, dubious US convictions, and a dying man (July 2007), Jane Mayer on the CIA’s “black sites,” condemnation by the Red Cross, and Guantánamo’s “high-value” detainees (including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) (August 2007), Waterboarding: two questions for Michael Hayden about three “high-value” detainees now in Guantánamo (February 2008), Six in Guantánamo Charged with 9/11 Murders: Why Now? And What About the Torture? (February 2008), The Insignificance and Insanity of Abu Zubaydah: Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Confirms FBI’s Doubts (April 2008), Guantánamo Trials: Another Torture Victim Charged (Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, July 2008), Secret Prison on Diego Garcia Confirmed: Six “High-Value” Guantánamo Prisoners Held, Plus “Ghost Prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (August 2008), Will the Bush administration be held accountable for war crimes? (December 2008), The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part One) and The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Part Two) (December 2008), Prosecuting the Bush Administration’s Torturers (March 2009), Abu Zubaydah: The Futility Of Torture and A Trail of Broken Lives (March 2009), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part One), Ten Terrible Truths About The CIA Torture Memos (Part Two), 9/11 Commission Director Philip Zelikow Condemns Bush Torture Program, Who Authorized The Torture of Abu Zubaydah?, CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan 8 Months before DoJ Approval, Even In Cheney’s Bleak World, The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Torture Story Is A New Low (all April 2009), Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi Has Died In A Libyan Prison , Dick Cheney And The Death Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, The “Suicide” Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi: Why The Media Silence?, Two Experts Cast Doubt On Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi’s “Suicide”, Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney On Use Of Torture To Invade Iraq, In the Guardian: Death in Libya, betrayal by the West (in the Guardian here), Lawrence Wilkerson Nails Cheney’s Iraq Lies Again (And Rumsfeld And The CIA) (all May 2009) and WORLD EXCLUSIVE: New Revelations About The Torture Of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi (June 2009). Also see the extensive archive of articles about the Military Commissions.

For other stories discussing the use of torture in secret prisons, see: An unreported story from Guantánamo: the tale of Sanad al-Kazimi (August 2007), Rendered to Egypt for torture, Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni is released from Guantánamo (September 2008), A History of Music Torture in the “War on Terror” (December 2008), Seven Years of Torture: Binyam Mohamed Tells His Story (March 2009), and also see the extensive Binyam Mohamed archive. And for other stories discussing torture at Guantánamo and/or in “conventional” US prisons in Afghanistan, see: The testimony of Guantánamo detainee Omar Deghayes: includes allegations of previously unreported murders in the US prison at Bagram airbase (August 2007), Guantánamo Transcripts: “Ghost” Prisoners Speak After Five And A Half Years, And “9/11 hijacker” Recants His Tortured Confession (September 2007), The Trials of Omar Khadr, Guantánamo’s “child soldier” (November 2007), Former US interrogator Damien Corsetti recalls the torture of prisoners in Bagram and Abu Ghraib (December 2007), Guantánamo’s shambolic trials (February 2008), Torture allegations dog Guantánamo trials (March 2008), Sami al-Haj: the banned torture pictures of a journalist in Guantánamo (April 2008), Former Guantánamo Prosecutor Condemns “Chaotic” Trials in Case of Teenage Torture Victim (Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld on Mohamed Jawad, January 2009), Judge Orders Release of Guantánamo’s Forgotten Child (Mohammed El-Gharani, January 2009), Bush Era Ends With Guantánamo Trial Chief’s Torture Confession (Susan Crawford on Mohammed al-Qahtani, January 2009), Forgotten in Guantánamo: British Resident Shaker Aamer (March 2009), A Child At Guantánamo: The Unending Torment of Mohamed Jawad (June 2009) and the extensive archive of articles about the Military Commissions.

Former prisoners launch the Guantánamo Justice Centre in London

Andy Worthington — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:16:03 +0000

On Thursday, at the Frontline Club in London, former Guantánamo prisoners Sami al-Haj, Binyam Mohamed, Jamil El-Banna, Omar Deghayes and Moazzam Begg spoke at the launch of the Guantánamo Justice Centre, a non-profit organization, based in Geneva, with an office in London and others to follow in other countries. The GLC has been established by a number of former prisoners “to seek positive and peaceful resolutions to the plight of those who remain in the notorious Cuban prison, as well as other secret prisons around the world,” and it describes its goals as follows:

To help coordinate assistance to prisoners who remain beyond the rule of law, who are often subjected to torture and abuse;

To assist former prisoners to reintegrate into society in a positive and peaceable manner, many of them in countries with limited available resources, and with governments hostile to human rights;

To assist the family members of those being held.

The launch was trailed on Wednesday, when Sami al-Haj, the al-Jazeera cameraman released in May 2008, who now heads the Human Rights Desk at al-Jazeera in Qatar, told the Associated Press that the Centre “aims to help over 500 men who have been released from the prison get medical and psychological treatment and find jobs.” Al-Haj explained that “only one in 20 former inmates has a job, and many have received no psychological or medical assistance,” and stated, “If you lock someone up in a normal prison for six months they need help. These people have been in jail for more than six years in an institution that’s much worse than a normal jail.”

He added that released prisoners “have received no explanation or apology, despite having never been charged with a crime,” and also explained that the organization will “lobby for the release or court trial of the 229 remaining inmates,” and, in the longer term, will “explore ways” of suing Bush administration officials for ordering the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo.

At the launch itself, which was extremely well-attended, Moazzam Begg began by explaining that returning British ex-prisoners had support from families, activists, community members and individuals, but that those returning to developing countries had little help. “Whether they are in Bermuda, Morocco, Mauritania or Yemen, the story is pretty much the same,” he said, as Reuters described it. “Where is the welfare for the people who have been tortured? Where is the support system for people who have endured cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment? The fact of the matter is — rarely does it exist.”

Adding that former prisoners face the stigma of having been held at Guantánamo every single day, Begg said, “How do you remove that from your head? How do you tell people that I am not a criminal, but I endured criminality? How do you explain that to anybody? When Guantánamo, by its definition, means that you must have been guilty of something because the world’s most powerful democracy could not have got it wrong. Even though we know it has got it wrong, we still carry that stigma with us, every single one of us.”

Describing the extent of the stigma, Sami al-Haj added, “My son does not deal with me as a normal father and even my wife and our close family like brothers and sisters and even our friends are keeping away from me because they do not want to put themselves in trouble.”

Binyam Mohamed, speaking for the first time in public since his release from Guantánamo in February, explained that he was not involved with the GJC “to win compensation,” and asked, “How much money can you give me that would make me forget the seven years I have gone through?” He also explained to reporters that, during an interrogation in Karachi shortly after he was seized at the airport in April 2002, his US captors explained how the US approach to the law had changed after 9/11. They told me, “You are guilty until you are proven innocent,” he said.

Describing his difficulties in readjusting to life after Guantánamo, and “at times struggling to control his emotions,” as the BBC described it, he said that he would “automatically” treat ordinary questions as an “interrogation,” and explained, “You have to live it to explain it. It’s very hard. If I enter a room and the light turns off for some reason I wonder if I’m back in the ‘Dark Prison.’” Mohamed was referring to the secret CIA prison near Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was held for several months in 2004 after being tortured in Morocco for 18 months on behalf of the US authorities.

He also said, “What the world doesn’t understand is that most people love to hear about torture stories — somebody hanged here, beaten there, blood over here, blood over there, but that’s physical torture. What remains [on release] is, each time you see a rope, you always go back to the time you were hung. That doesn’t go away.”

Adding, “I cannot fit into society,” he described the opening of the Guantánamo Justice Centre as “an important event” for the former prisoners, saying, “We are here and we are living in torture — a world of torture,” and, insisting that it was not a political organization, stated bluntly, “From my point of view, there’s a mess that has been done and someone has to fix it.”

Like all the other ex-prisoners, Mohamed was concerned not primarily with relating his own difficulties adjusting to freedom, and the ghosts of torture that still haunt him, but with the plight of others. He explained that he had recently spoken on the phone to Mohammed El-Gharani, the Chadian national — just 14 years old when he was seized in Pakistan — who was released from Guantánamo in June, and that El-Gharani was now “sleeping on the streets, rejected by his family, branded as a terrorist although he was released by the US and cleared of any wrong-doing.” “I realized that he can not talk to others, like his lawyers, as he can to me,” Mohamed said. “So I have to speak out for him here.”

Returning briefly to his own ordeal, he explained, “No one knows that what stays after torture is the memories. Lawyers speak about my rights in court, but I can only think about Military Commissions and about having no rights. After four years I can only think of things in terms of Guantánamo. No institution or medical foundation in the world can change how I feel.” He then added, poignantly, “And how about in Chad, where there is nothing to help El-Gharani?”

This was a theme reiterated by Jamil El-Banna, released in December 2007, who also spoke for the first time in public since his release. El-Banna explained, “The only people who can help are those who went through this,” and, as Victoria Brittain described it in the Guardian, “told the story of Ahmed Hassan, a Jordanian who lost most of both sight and hearing from torture in Guantánamo. He spoke of the moment when Hassan trusted him as they spoke on the phone and he was able to tell him he had found a doctor here who will help him. Hassan had previously found no material or medical support in Jordan, but only promises, which disappeared into thin air. El-Banna emphasized that Hassan’s was just one of many, many stories of deep disappointment on release.”

Moazzam Begg also spoke on this theme, explaining that the Yemenis, who make up the largest single group of remaining prisoners in Guantánamo (about a hundred of the remaining 229), were of particular concern to the new organization because Yemen lacked the facilities necessary to care for people traumatized by their long and brutal imprisonment.

He explained that former prisoners from Western countries were suffering too, and described how two men now living in London “were unable even to communicate with other people due to psychological and physical damage.” “One of them lives in a room that is so tiny it is close to the size of his cell where he spent five years. That is the difficulty in the UK,” he said, but he added, “Our own situation is much better than the vast majority of people who were held there.”

The former prisoners also read out messages of support from other ex-prisoners. Ahmed Errachidi, a Moroccan who had lived for nearly 20 years in the UK, and was repatriated from Guantánamo in March 2007, wrote that “the life of ex-detainees is simply a life on pause,” and from Qatar Jarallah al-Marri (released in July 2008) explained, “Freedom is more than walking away from a world of cells, shackles and beatings. It is a state of mind, a state of being that takes time to develop.”

As the meeting wound up, Moazzam Begg added further details about the Centre’s aims, explaining that it would partner with NGOs in the Middle East and in African countries who were well placed to deliver care on the ground, and that it was looking for funds from sources in the Gulf, Europe and elsewhere, and Ramzi Kassem, a US lawyer who represents prisoners in Guantánamo and in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, described the prisoners of George Bush’s “War on Terror” as the “victims of an ill-conceived policy” and criticized the Obama administration for retaining the system of Military Commissions introduced by its predecessor. “They only exist for one reason and that’s to whitewash torture,” he said, adding — in a sign that the GJC’s work will not be solely concerned with Guantánamo — that the estimated 600 prisoners in Bagram, unlike those in Guantánamo, are still being denied the right to challenge their detention in court.

For a short interview with Binyam Mohamed, see this BBC video, and see below for two reports on the GJC’s launch, from Al-Jazeera and Press TV (via YouTube):

Spanish drop “inhuman” extradition request for Guantánamo Britons

Andy Worthington — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:31:36 +0000

Finally, after nearly three months of uncertainty, the Spanish government has dropped its request for the extradition of Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, two British residents freed from Guantánamo in December.

As discussed here, here and here, the very thought of extraditing these two men, who had suffered so much in US custody, was incomprehensible, not just because the timing of the request was so mind-bogglingly callous, but also because both men had been cleared by both the US and UK authorities.

Jamil El-Banna outside court in January. Photo © Dylan Martinez/Reuters.

Mr. El-Banna, a Jordanian, was seized with fellow British resident Bisher al-Rawi by US agents in the Gambia, where he had travelled to establish a mobile peanut-processing plant, in November 2002, and his case had caused embarrassment to the British government when it was revealed by his lawyers that British intelligence had been complicit in providing the false intelligence that led to his kidnapping, and Mr. Deghayes, who is married to an Afghan woman, and has a child that he barely knows, was seized in Pakistan and sold to US forces at a time when bounty payments for foreigners were widespread.

Omar Deghayes outside court in January. Photo © Dylan Martinez/Reuters.

Baltasar Garzón, the prominent judge who agreed to shelve the case against the two men, explained that he was doing so because of medical reports filed by the men’s lawyers at their last hearing in February. Two doctors, Jonathan Fluxman and Helen Bamber, had examined the men earlier in the month and had concluded that they were suffering from severe medical conditions caused by torture at the hands of their US captors and the inhumane conditions in which they were kept for five years.

According to the Guardian, the doctors reported that Jamil El-Banna was severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and that he was also suffering from “diabetes, hyper-tension, back pain and damage to the back of his left knee.” Mr. Deghayes was also diagnosed as suffering from PTSD and depression, and has “fractures in his nasal bone and right index finger.” In addition, he is blind in his right eye, as the result of an attack by guards at Guantánamo. It was also noted that both men presented “a high risk of suicide.”

In his report, Dr. Fluxman concluded that, “given all these factors, I don’t see how Mr. Deghayes would be able to give instructions to his lawyers, listen to evidence and give his own accurate testimony.” In Mr. El-Banna’s case, the doctors concluded that his already fragile mental health could deteriorate severely were he to be separated once more from his wife and children.

Announcing the shelving of the charges, Judge Garzón refused to concede that the initial claims that the men had connections with terrorism were misguided, but acknowledged that they were so damaged by their experiences that their very recovery was “uncertain,” and that as a result they were incapable of defending themselves in any potential trial.

Judge Garzón specifically blamed Mr. El-Banna’s medical condition on the “five years [he spent] in secret prisons in Gambia and Afghanistan and latterly in Guantánamo … in inhumane conditions.” He added that the torture he suffered in these prisons resulted in the “progressive deterioration of his mental condition.” In Omar Deghayes’ case, he noted that he was tortured and badly treated in prisons in Islamabad, Bagram and Guantánamo, and he concluded that the men’s treatment had “caused a serious deterioration in the mental state of the accused,” to such an extent that “it is impossible, even inhuman, to pursue the European arrest warrants.”

Speaking from his home in Brighton, Mr Deghayes said, “It’s good — it’s happy news. I always knew they would realise their mistake and give up the case.” He added that he hoped that the curfews imposed on Mr El-Banna and himself would now be lifted. “I still have problems with immigration as the authorities have taken away my resident status, but this is a relief, of course,” he insisted, and then pointed out that one of his main concerns was not his own status, but that of the 40 to 50 detainees still in Guantánamo who, he said, were in “immediate danger” of deportation to their home countries, where they face the risk of torture.

This, it should be noted, is a fate that Mr. Deghayes was himself threatened with, even though he and his family had fled Libya for Britain in the 1980s, after his father, a lawyer and trade union activist, had been murdered by representatives of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime.

Zachary Katznelson, Senior Counsel for Reprieve, the human rights charity which has represented the men, was also overjoyed to hear the news. “We are thrilled to hear that Judge Garzón has done the right thing and dropped his request for the extradition of Jamil and Omar,” he said. “These men suffered horrors for years at the hands of the United States. They never had a trial of any type, yet they served more than five years in a brutal prison. It is now time to let them rebuild their lives here in the UK — it’s where their families are and it’s where they call home.”

For more information about the Britons at Guantánamo, see my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

As published on Indymedia and CounterPunch.

For other articles dealing with Belmarsh, control orders, deportation bail, deportation and extradition, see Deals with dictators undermined by British request for return of five Guantánamo detainees (August 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: the troubling tale of Tunisian Belmarsh detainee Hedi Boudhiba, extradited, cleared and abandoned in Spain (August 2007), Guantánamo as house arrest: Britain’s law lords capitulate on control orders (November 2007), Britain’s Guantánamo: control orders renewed, as one suspect is freed (February 2008), UK government deports 60 Iraqi Kurds; no one notices (March 2008), Repatriation as Russian Roulette: Will the Two Algerians Freed from Guantánamo Be Treated Fairly? (July 2008), Abu Qatada: Law Lords and Government Endorse Torture (February 2009), Ex-Guantánamo prisoner refused entry into UK, held in deportation centre (February 2009), Home Secretary ignores Court decision, kidnaps bailed men and imprisons them in Belmarsh (February 2009), Britain’s insane secret terror evidence (March 2009).

Guantánamo Britons’ Spanish extradition request: an update

Andy Worthington — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:37:28 +0000

Yesterday Omar Deghayes and Jamil El-Banna, two of the three Britons freed from Guantánamo in December, returned to Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London for the third time since their release for an update on the progress — or lack of it — in the Spanish government’s request for their extradition, based on long-discredited allegations that were summarized in previous articles here and here.

As I was unable to attend yesterday’s hearing — and no major media outlet has seen fit to report on it — I spoke to Jackie Chase from Brighton’s Save Omar campaign, who filled me in on the morning’s events.

Speaking to a busy courtroom and an overflowing public gallery, Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Mr. Deghayes and Mr. El-Banna, submitted medical reports which analyzed in detail his clients’ precarious mental state. Although he made a point of sparing the court the details of their abuse in US custody, which had created their current problems, he explained that the reports revealed that both men were suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

He also pointed out that a particular source of stress and mental anguish for the men derived from the electronic tagging devices that they have been obliged to wear since their return to the UK, which, he said, were causing them anxiety, because they were giving them flashbacks to their ordeal in the US prisons in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, and specifically to their interrogations and the array of brutal techniques that were used on them during the run-up to their interrogations.

Mr. Fitzgerald then asked for the tags to be removed, a request to which the prosecution graciously acquiesced. In their place, Mr. Deghayes and Mr. El-Banna are required to allow police representatives to visit them during the curfew hours that were also imposed on their return to the UK — between 8 pm and 7 am — to check that they are actually at home.

As for the extradition request, the Crown Prosecution Service reported that there had been no response from the Spanish government since the last hearing in January. The judge set a deadline of April 13 for the Spanish to respond to the medical reports, and to issues previously raised by Mr. Fitzgerald and his colleagues; namely, that the Spanish authorities had failed to explain why they had filed the extradition request on the men’s return, when they had not pursued it vigorously during their long imprisonment in US custody; and that they had also failed to explain why they wished to pursue the case when both the British and American governments had concluded that there was no case against either man.

In open discussions between the judge and the various lawyers, the prospect was raised that the Spanish government might drop its extradition request in the near future. If they respond by April 13, however, the formal extradition hearing will take place on May 15.

It is to be hoped that the Spanish will indeed drop their request for the return of two innocent men who are struggling to rebuild their lives. As the case of Farid Hilali revealed last week, the European Arrest Warrant, introduced to facilitate extradition proceedings between EU member states, is proving itself sorely lacking in any mechanism whatsoever to prevent extraditions when the country making the request is acting on “evidence” that fails to stand up to impartial scrutiny. See here, here and here for more on Mr. Hilali’s story.

As published on Indymedia.

For the conclusion of the extradition story, see here.

Guantánamo Britons resist Spanish extradition order

Andy Worthington — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:25:20 +0000

On Wednesday January 9, in a crowded court room at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, a short hearing took place as the next step in the request for the extradition of two former Guantánamo detainees, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, which, with astonishing insensitivity, was submitted by the Spanish government on the men’s return from Guantánamo last month after more than five years in US custody.

The weakness of the Spanish case –- alleging that both Mr. El-Banna and Mr. Deghayes were members of an al-Qaeda cell in Madrid, which provided recruits for militant training camps in Afghanistan and Indonesia –- was discussed at length in a previous article.

In this hearing, as the men returned to court after three weeks with their families, their lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, QC, launched a withering attack on the Spanish government, telling the court, “The Spanish authorities are deeply implicated in the ordeal of the last five years. They acquiesced to, and facilitated, their interrogation at Guantánamo and indeed participated in that interrogation process. They took no steps or adequate steps to say, ‘we want them for trial in Spain.’ They left them to be interrogated in Guantánamo, and now –- after they have been exonerated by US authorities, after English police have said they don’t wish to bring any charges –- the Spanish authorities are saying, ‘we want to question them on the self-same charges.’” He added that it would be an “obvious oppression” to extradite them now “for the same allegations that have been fully investigated in Guantánamo.”

The judge, Timothy Workman, who had already shown compassion to the men before Christmas, when he granted them bail, and noted that prosecution concerns about doing so were “outweighed by the detailed review carried out in the US,” extended their bail, and ordered them to return for a more lengthy hearing on February 14.

Outside the court, as Mr. El-Banna and Mr. Deghayes mingled with well-wishers, there was a palpable optimism on the part of the lawyers, a feeling, perhaps, that the Spanish can be persuaded to drop their ludicrous claims before they embarrass themselves.

Both Mr. El-Banna and Mr. Deghayes seemed well, although this was clearly a day for a show, and it was impossible to discern the fears and anxieties that must be troubling both men after their long imprisonment in horrendous conditions.

With his hair and beard trimmed since his court appearance in December, when, with his long grey hair, he appeared, perhaps aptly, to be a recently rescued castaway, Mr. El-Banna smiled tentatively, taking his supporters by the hand and thanking them warmly.

Jamil El-Banna. Photo © Dylan Martinez/Reuters.

Mr. Deghayes, too, seemed in good spirits. Engaged and talkative, he was accompanied by a group of supporters from the Save Omar campaign, who had worked assiduously for his release, and had travelled from his home town of Brighton to show their solidarity. His mother, whose distress was apparent in photographs taken before his release, was smiling and glancing over at him, clearly still elated at her beloved son’s return.

Omar Deghayes. Photo © Dylan Martinez/Reuters.

For more on the stories of the British residents, see my book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

As published on Indymedia.

For the rest of the extradition story, see here and here.

Jamil El-Banna’s first interview since returning from Guantánamo

Andy Worthington — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:29:26 +0000

Little noticed by the wider world, Jamil El-Banna, one of three British residents freed from Guantánamo in December, gave his first interview after his release to Jenny Engstrom of the Willesden and Brent Times. The article was published as the newspaper’s front page story on December 27, but, as it is does not appear to be available on the internet, I’ve taken this opportunity to reproduce the main body of it here.

The Willesden and Brent Times’ campaign to free Mr. El-Banna began in February 2006, and was a regular feature of the paper’s coverage until his release in December. For further information about Mr. El-Banna’s story, and the Spanish government’s request for his extradition on ill-founded terror charges, see here. Information about his first, brief extradition hearing (with Omar Deghayes), which took place on January 9, 2008, will follow shortly.

“Just So Happy To Be Home”
EXCLUSIVE by Jenny Engstrom

Newly released Guantánamo detainee Jamil El-Banna has told of his relief at being reunited with his family in an exclusive first interview with the Times. With his long tangled white beard and grey flowing hair, grown in protest of his mistreatment at the US detention camp, Jamil El-Banna looks much older than his 45 years. But despite his five-year ordeal in Guantánamo, he looks surprisingly cheerful and relaxed, with a spark in his eyes.

Caption from the article: “The first family portrait: Jamil El-Banna with his children Anas, 12, Mohammed, 11, Badeah, six, Abdulrahman, eight, and Mariam, four.”
Exclusive picture by Jenny Engstrom.

Sitting on his living room couch surrounded by all his children, Mr. El-Banna decided to give his first interview to the Willesden and Brent Times, which has been campaigning for his release for nearly two years. He said, “I’m just so happy to be home and to be back with my children. It’s wonderful to see them all, and to see my youngest daughter, Mariam, for the first time. I’m so grateful to the Times campaigning for me all this time and for keeping the issue in the public eye.”

The father-of-five was reunited with his family outside their home last Thursday, following his release from the US base in Cuba the day before. His children ran out in the street as the police van bringing him home pulled up outside their front door. It was the first time he had met his youngest daughter, Mariam, 4, who was not yet born when Mr. El-Banna was detained by the Americans.

The emotional homecoming proved too much for his eldest son, Anas, 12, who broke down in tears after embracing his father for the first time in five years. His wife, Sabah, said, “It was so emotional, Anas started crying. At first Mariam was a little scared. She didn’t recognize her dad with the long hair, but soon enough she calmed down. Marian has waited her whole life for this day. It was the first time she got to hug and kiss her dad and the first time he got to hug her.”

Mr. El-Banna also spoke of his ordeal in Guantánamo. He said, “It’s been hard. But one thing that kept me going all these years was the support I got from people all over the world and from all religious and social backgrounds. I received thousands of letters. I have tried to reply to the people who wrote to me, but I have not been able to answer all of them. Please accept my apologies. I don’t want them to feel I ignored them, but sometimes I wasn’t given enough paper by the guards.”

He added, “I would also like to thank all my solicitors: Gareth Peirce, Zachary Katznelson, Clive Stafford Smith and Brent Mickum, who have all helped me and my family, and also my MP, Sarah Teather. They have all supported my wife and children while I’ve been away. I can’t thank them enough. I feel they understand my situation and I will never forget everything they have done for me.”

Guantánamo two: Harold Pinter calls on Spanish to drop extradition request for Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes

Andy Worthington — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:12:06 +0000

On Wednesday January 9, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, two of the three British residents released from Guantánamo before Christmas, will face a brief hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in connection with the request, filed by the Spanish government on their return to the UK, for their extradition in connection with long-discredited terror charges. Sources close to the men have indicated that this is just a preliminary hearing and that there will be a full hearing in a few months’ time, with a final decision following up to six months later.

Detainees in Guantánamo.

Both men have spent the last few weeks with their families, attempting to get used to their freedom after long years without charge or trial in Guantánamo, where they were both treated horrendously, and although Timothy Workman, the British judge who granted them bail before Christmas, is to be commended for allowing them this brief period of readjustment in the comfort of their homes, the Spanish government’s groundless request for their extradition remains extraordinarily insensitive.

The following letter, addressing their plight and asking the Spanish government to drop its claim, was written by Harold Pinter, Baroness Kennedy, QC, Sir Geoffrey Bindman and Victoria Brittain, and appears in the Times.

Guantánamo two: There can’t be any justification for subjecting these men to further legal processes

Sir, The belief of the UK residents Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes that they had at last been restored to freedom in Britain after their five-year ordeal in Guantánamo Bay prison camp was cruelly disappointed when, on their arrival before Christmas, they were arrested at the behest of the Spanish Government demanding their extradition to face terrorism charges.

Both the US and British authorities have long been aware of the stale and flimsy evidence on which Spain relies, and both governments have made it clear that they do not regard the release of the men as posing any security threat. Were it otherwise their release would have been inconceivable.

Under the European Extradition Convention the British authorities have little choice but to act on a request from another European state and bring the suspect before the court. Fortunately, when the men were taken to Horseferry Road Magistrates Court, the district judge, Timothy Workman, had the wisdom and compassion to grant them bail pending a full hearing in the new year. They are in court today.

However weak these cases may be, and whatever may be the outcome of Spain’s application when it is fully heard, there can be no justification for subjecting the two men to the further ordeal of a prolonged and uncertain legal process after all they have gone through. We call on the Spanish Government to withdraw its ill-considered persecution of these men. They have suffered enough.

Harold Pinter
Baroness Kennedy, QC
Sir Geoffrey Bindman
Victoria Brittain

The Guantánamo Britons and Spain’s dubious extradition request

Andy Worthington — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:59:38 +0000

Celebrations by the families, friends and supporters of the three British residents who returned from Guantánamo on Wednesday –- Omar Deghayes, Jamil El-Banna and Abdulnour Sameur –- were abruptly cut short when the Spanish government immediately requested the extradition of El-Banna and Deghayes for alleged ties with terrorists, even though the supposed evidence in Deghayes’ case was comprehensively demolished nearly three years ago, and, in El-Banna’s case, is strenuously denied by his lawyers. In March 2005, image recognition experts, commissioned by the BBC’s Newsnight, concluded that the figure in a grainy video of a Chechen training camp, which was supposed to be Deghayes, was in fact a militant named Abu Walid, who had later been killed.

As the men landed on British soil, there was no reason to suspect that their return would involve anything more than a cursory police investigation. El-Banna had been cleared for release from Guantánamo by a military review board in May this year –- as close to an admission of innocence as the notoriously unapologetic US administration ever gets –- and the US authorities had also agreed to the return of Deghayes and Sameur, as requested by the British government in August, while refusing to release another British resident, Binyam Mohamed, whose current parlous state was reported here.

Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who represented the men and met with them at Guantánamo during their long imprisonment without charge or trial, pointed out that they had all agreed to unspecified voluntary security arrangements required by the UK authorities, and, on arrival, as Sean O’Neill described it in the Times, El-Banna “was detained under port and border controls –- a signal that Britain does not regard him as posing any serious security threat.” Deghayes and Sameur, meanwhile, were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and were held for questioning at Paddington Green police station in west London, a move that served only to indicate, in O’Neill’s words, “that Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command wants to be certain they pose no threat to Britain before releasing them.” He added, “Most of the previous returnees from Camp Delta have been through the same process and none have been involved in any trouble since they came back.”

Even more significant were comments made by William Nye, director of counter-terrorism and intelligence at the Home Office, following discussions with the US government about the return of the British residents, which had first taken place in June 2006, and which were revealed in the Guardian last October. At the time, the British government, which, until that point, had refused to press for the release of any of the British residents, was reluctantly discussing the return of just one of the British residents, Bisher al-Rawi (who was released in March this year). Both al-Rawi and El-Banna had been kidnapped by CIA agents in the Gambia, where they had travelled to set up a mobile peanut-processing plant, after an inexplicable tip-off from MI5, and had been transferred to Guantánamo via a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan. Scandalously, the discussions about the repatriation of al-Rawi –- but not of El-Banna –- were based solely on the fact that al-Rawi’s lawyers had embarrassed the government by pointing out that he had actually been working for MI5, keeping tabs on the radical cleric Abu Qatada.

Describing what had happened during the meeting with the Americans, William Nye explained that the Americans had requested that the British take back all the residents –- not just al-Rawi –- but that the British representatives had balked at the conditions that the US government had attempted to impose, which included an insistence that they “cannot legally leave the UK, engage with known extremists or engage in, support, promote, plan or advocate extremist or violent activity,” and that the British government would put surveillance in place “to know immediately of any attempt to engage in any such activity.” Nye declared, “I am not satisfied it would be proportionate to impose … the kind of obligations which might be necessary to satisfy the US administration,” explaining that the measures demanded by the Americans would have to be enforced by MI5 and would divert vital resources away from countering more dangerous terrorist suspects. “The use of such resources … could not be justified and would damage the protection of the UK’s national security,” he wrote, adding, in the most crucial passage, that the detainees “do not pose a sufficient threat to justify the devotion of the high level of resources” the US would require.

It was genuinely shocking, therefore, when the Spanish government lodged its extradition request on the men’s return. As Sean O’Neill described it, the Spanish alleged that El-Banna had links with a Madrid al-Qaeda cell, which was purportedly responsible for recruiting young men and sending them for jihad training, and which was also “said to have had ties to the German-based al-Qaeda unit that plotted the September 11 atrocities.” He added, “What has motivated Spain to act now is something of a mystery. America has had Mr. El-Banna in custody for five years and interrogated him repeatedly in brutal conditions. It laid no charges against him and deemed him fit to be freed. Spain made no attempt to extradite him from or question him while he was in US custody.” He concluded that the Spanish government’s action “seems inhumane and its evidence rather thin.”

Clive Stafford Smith added more detail, explaining that he had tried to encourage a Spanish extradition request as a means of getting the men out of Guantánamo, but that the authorities in Madrid had never showed any interest. “It is very dismaying,” he told the BBC’s Newsnight. “For quite a long time, we tried to get the Spanish to demand their release because we thought it was an elegant way to get them out of Guantánamo. The Spanish weren’t interested … The idea now that they want to use this evidence we have proved to be false to take them for further detention is very worrying.”

Under the terms of the European Arrest Warrant, an EU-wide agreement introduced in 2004 and intended to simplify extradition procedures between member states by removing potential political interference and ensuring “faster and simpler surrender procedures,” the British government had no choice but to comply with the Spanish request, even though William Nye had made it clear that none of the men were regarded as a “sufficient threat” to warrant 24/7 surveillance, and, as Sean O’Neill pointed out, the British “had no intention of putting [El-Banna] on trial as a terrorist when he returned here.”

On the morning of December 20, while the Metropolitan Police were preparing to release Abdulnour Sameur without charge, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes were duly transported to Westminster Magistrates’ Court –- just a few hundred yards from Parliament –- where Melanie Cumberland, representing the Spanish government, resurrected the claims against the men, first formulated by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón in December 2003 (when he also requested the extradition of two other Guantánamo detainees, a Moroccan and a Spaniard), that El-Banna had been a member of a Madrid-based organization known as the Islamic Alliance, and that he was an associate of Imad Yarkas, who is serving 12 years in a Spanish prison for terrorism offences. Cumberland relayed the Spanish authorities’ claim that both El-Banna and Deghayes belonged to a cell that provided recruits for military training in Afghanistan and Indonesia, which was also alleged to have raised funds for terrorism and to have spread al-Qaeda propaganda.

In response, Ed Fitzgerald QC, who represented both men, cited the discredited video as “the centrepiece” of the Spanish allegations, and accused the prosecutor of making wild accusations “for which there was no evidence,” adding that there was, instead, solid evidence that neither the US nor UK authorities considered the men to pose a significant danger.

Granting bail to both men –- set at £50,000 (much of which was paid by actress and human rights campaigner Vanessa Redgrave) –- the judge, Timothy Workman, dismissed prosecution claims that they would flee abroad or engage in terrorist acts, and declared, in El-Banna’s case, “The prosecution concerns about offences being committed are outweighed by the detailed review being carried out in the US.” He did, however, insist on tough bail conditions, including the imposition of a curfew, the use of electronic tagging and a prohibition on travelling abroad.

Jamil El-Banna on his release from custody. His solicitor, Gareth Peirce, is on the right of the picture.

Outside the court, El-Banna, who appeared to have aged considerably during the five years of his imprisonment, made only a brief statement. “Thank you very much everybody, my solicitor, the British people, the British government for your help,” he said, adding, “I am tired, I want to go home and see my children,” before leaving in a car to be reunited with his wife and his five children. He has never seen his youngest child, who was born after his capture. His MP, Sarah Teather, who has campaigned assiduously for his release, said that “immense cruelty” had been inflicted on the family, who were only told at 8.30pm on Wednesday that he had been arrested and would not be coming home. “The children could not understand why he was not back and Sabah [his wife] was devastated,” she added. After meeting Mrs. El-Banna briefly outside the courtroom on Thursday morning, I can confirm that this was indeed the case.

Several hours later, Omar Deghayes also emerged from the court to be reunited with his family. Speaking later from his home in Brighton, he said, “I am very, very happy to be home. I am very grateful to everybody who has helped me. I would have been happier if everybody in Guantánamo were released and that ugly, bad place was closed down if not demolished.” He added, “I need some rest but I will be very happy to speak to everybody in the media to help other people to be released.”

Missing from the extradition discussions –- in the media, if not amongst the lawyers –- was the demonstrable weakness of the intelligence relating to the two other Guantánamo detainees whose extradition was requested by Judge Garzón in December 2003. Garzón’s motives were not in doubt. In an interview for Mother Jones in 2004, he explained to Tim Golden why he was stringently opposed to the Americans’ approach to the “War on Terror,” and why he favoured “a multinational, legal approach over what he describe[d] as a ‘militaristic’ strategy of intelligence gathering, extrajudicial arrests, and military detention.” “What frightens me is when people start going beyond the limits of the law,” he said. “Taking the right to a defense away from those who are detained at Guantánamo. Establishing a license to kill terrorists. In this country, we know what it means to use this heavy hand. We know that when the fight against terrorism moves outside the law, it becomes very dangerous.”

As an example of Garzón’s legal approach to the post-9/11 world, Tim Golden observed that an indictment of Osama bin Laden that was issued by Garzón in autumn 2003, which was the first such document to charge bin Laden in connection with the 9/11 attack, “echoed his insistence that even the most terrible criminals on earth should be dealt with in courts of law.” Garzón also defended his extradition request for the four Guantánamo detainees –- Jamil El-Banna, Omar Deghayes, Moroccan-born Lahcen Ikassrien, and Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in north Africa –- “arguing pointedly that the only standing charges against them were those he had filed in Spain.”

Despite Garzón’s enthusiasm for the law, however, when Lahcen Ikassrien and Hamed Ahmed were extradited from Guantánamo to Spain, at his request, the cases against them collapsed.

Ahmed, transferred in February 2004, had the dubious distinction of being the first Guantánamo detainee to be handed over to a foreign country for prosecution. Released on bail in July 2004, he was later put on trial and was sentenced to six years in prison in October 2005, although Garzón’s claims did not even figure in his trial. Instead, he was convicted based on allegations by the prosecution that he had travelled to Afghanistan in August 2001 to fight for the Taliban government, and had received religious and military training. However, in a momentous decision by the Spanish Supreme Court in July 2006, his sentence was dismissed. The Supreme Court ordered his immediate release, and said that the High Court had not considered him “innocent until proven guilty,” and had used evidence collected at Guantánamo that “should be declared totally void and, as such, non-existent,” adding that the High Court was “entirely remiss in its role of providing evidence.”

Ikassrien, transferred in July 2005, was released on his return, but was ordered to report daily to the police, and was prohibited from leaving the country without permission. When his trial came around, he, like Hamed Ahmed, had his case dismissed by the Supreme Court, which concluded, in October 2006, that there was no evidence to back up charges he was a member of al-Qaeda, stating, “It has not been proved that the accused Lahcen Ikassrien was part of a terrorist organization of Islamic fundamentalist nature, and more specifically, the al-Qaeda network created by [Osama] bin Laden.” Significantly, the Supreme Court’s judgment followed another momentous decision, four months before, to quash the conviction of Imad Yarkas, the lynchpin of the whole case against Hamed Ahmed, Lahcen Ikassrien, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, for conspiracy to commit murder in the 9/11 attacks, although his conviction for belonging to a terrorist organization was upheld.

With only these examples of failed prosecutions to draw upon, the position taken by the Spanish government is, frankly, incomprehensible. As Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes attempt to rebuild their shattered lives in the bosom of their families, it is to be hoped that their lawyers can draw compelling arguments from these cases –- and from other examples of Spanish intelligence failures –- before the extradition hearings begin on January 9, 2008.

Jamil El-Banna reunited with his children, December 21, 2007.

For more on the stories of the British residents and Hamed Ahmed, see my newly released book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed, and see here for my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

For more on Lahcen Ikassrien’s story, see the additional, online chapter here.

As published on Indymedia.

For the rest of the extradition story, see here, here and here.

Britons in Guantánamo return to UK for Eid al-Adha

Andy Worthington — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:58:29 +0000

Three of the six British residents in Guantánamo –- Jamil El-Banna, Omar Deghayes and Abdulnour Sameur –- are on their way back to the UK, and will, hopefully, be able to celebrate Eid al-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice), which follows the annual hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca). This is the most important feast day in the Muslim calendar, and falls tomorrow (December 20).

According to the latest reports, they are on board a chartered aircraft along with a doctor and officers from the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit, as well as uniformed officers, whose presence was requested by the Foreign Office. According to the Guardian, a police spokesman was “not prepared to discuss” whether the men would be held on arrival like the nine British nationals released in 2004 and 2005, and British resident Bisher al-Rawi, who was released in March this year.

Omar Deghayes’ sister, Amani, said that she was “extremely relieved” to hear the news of her brother’s release and added that he had been on the receiving end of “brutal and illegal treatment,” as reported here. She also said, “Our family has always said that Omar was totally innocent – one of the hundreds of people taken to Guantánamo by the Americans for no good reason.” Speaking to the BBC, she said that his family would be concentrating on helping him to put his ordeal behind him. “I’m extremely relieved that Omar’s ordeal is finally coming to end after over five years of suffering in Guantánamo,” she said. “We’re looking forward to spending the Eid as family together.”

Celebrations by campaigners for the three men will be tempered by the knowledge that the other three British residents have been left behind: Saudi-born Shaker Aamer, who is seeking repatriation to Saudi Arabia, Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, now reportedly suffering from severe mental deterioration, whose requested return to the UK was refused by the US government, and Algerian-born Ahmed Belbacha, who has been cleared for release from Guantánamo, but whose return was not requested by the British government because he was not technically an official resident at the time of his capture.

The struggle for justice for these men continues.

For more on the stories of the Britons in Guantánamo, see my newly published book The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed.

For articles dealing with the Spanish government’s subsequent attempts to extradite Omar Deghayes and Jamil El-Banna to Spain, see here, here, here and here.

Note:

The prisoners’ numbers (and variations on the spelling of their names) are as follows:

ISN 905: Jamil El-Banna
ISN 727: Omar Deghayes
ISN 659: Abdulnour Sameur (Abdenour, Abdennour)

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the eleven prisoners released from February to June 2009, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here).