Lawyer Condemns ‘Lies’ Over Guantanamo Detainees’ Release
The lawyer for three British residents arrested hours after returning to the UK from the US Guantanamo Bay detention centre today condemned the Government for “lying” about their release.
Clive Stafford Smith, who is acting for all three men, described the Government’s actions since they returned to British soil as ” reprehensible”.
Omar Deghayes, 38, Abdennour Samuer, 34, and Jamil el-Banna, 45, were all released from the controversial camp in Cuba yesterday after years of being held without charge or trial.
They arrived back in the UK on board a charter jet last night but both Mr Deghayes and Mr Samuer were arrested immediately, and Mr el-Banna also taken into custody early this morning.
Mr Stafford Smith said: “These guys have been kicked so many times. They have been tortured. To do this when there are so close to home and their families, I think, is reprehensible.
“It would have been fine if that was what they (the Government) had told us was going to happen. They knew it was going to happen. I have no problem with them questioning my clients but they lied.”
He added: “Jamil el-Banna was told by an official yesterday that he would be at home with his children for the Festival of Eid.
“Five children are sitting in that house waiting, one of whom has never seen their father. It is absolutely outrageous.”
Mr Stafford Smith said Mr el-Banna and Mr Deghayes were both due in court later today, but that Mr Samuer would be released at some point during the day.
Both Mr el-Banna and Mr Deghayes were due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London, where protesters against their detention were expected.
Mr el-Banna’s son Anas, 11, and former Guantanamo detainees including Moazzem Begg and Martin Mubanga will be among those at the demonstration, demanding the men’s immediate release.
Mr el-Banna was detained under port and border controls after the flight landed at Luton last night.
He was arrested this morning after being taken for questioning at a police station in Bedfordshire.
Scotland Yard said its Extradition Unit had arrested a 45-year-old man on a European Arrest Warrant alleging terrorist-related offences, issued on behalf of the Spanish authorities.
The two other men were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and taken to Paddington Green police station in London for questioning.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the two men were arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.
He said: “Police are conducting investigations into the cases of each man on an individual basis.
“Their inquiries are being carried out, as they must be, strictly in accordance with UK law.”
Mr el-Banna could now face lengthy court hearings and a possible trial in Spain if the extradition goes ahead, but Mr Stafford Smith has vowed to fight any such request.
Fellow lawyers and campaigners have also condemned the arrests of the detainees on their return to Britain.
Respected human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, who represents some of the former detainees, said: “For five years Britain has denied that the US achieved the extraordinary rendition, torture and unlawful detention of Jamil el-Banna with its assistance and encouragement, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
“Now, on arrival in the country that is his home, Jamil el-Banna - exonerated entirely by the Americans - is told that the UK is now actively assisting another government to snatch him once again without even the chance of seeing his wife and children - this time through the device of a fast track extradition request from Spain.
“How unbelievable that 1,000 hours of interrogation in Guantanamo managed to overlook the claims made by the Spanish and how unbelievable that for five years the Spanish overlooked his presence in Guantanamo and failed to achieve his extradition from the USA.
“Enough is enough. These men must be immediately released.”
A spokesman for the former Guantanamo detainees said: “We are shocked that after the horrific ordeal suffered by these men in Guantanamo, once again they are facing further persecution.
“It is particularly sad that at this time of year, when we gather with our families, these innocent men, who should be at home with their wives and young children, after spending five years in a illegal prison camp, will face the possibility of spending another Christmas behind bars.
“They are innocent and should be released immediately.”
Unlike nine other men earlier sent back to the UK from the camp, the three are not full British citizens but the Government had been under pressure to demand their return.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced in August that the UK had formally requested the release of a total of five British residents held at the camp.
In addition to the three men now back in Britain, this included Shaker Aamer - who is said to have requested to go to Saudi Arabia - and Binyam Mohammed, who remains at Guantanamo.
Another British resident, Bisher al-Rawi, was sent back earlier this year.
Mr el-Banna, a Palestinian UK resident, was picked up in November 2002 while on a business trip to Gambia alongside Mr al-Rawi.
The pair are believed to have been taken first to Afghanistan under a process of rendition before arriving at Guantanamo.
Mr Deghayes is said to have left Libya in 1986 after his father, a trade unionist, was killed.
He settled at Saltdean near Brighton as a refugee but later travelled widely, including to Afghanistan where he lived under the Taliban - attempting to export organic fruit, according to supporters.
He was arrested in Pakistan after leaving Afghanistan because of the US-led bombing after September 11.
Mr Samuer is said to be an Algerian army deserter who fled to the UK in 1999 and lived in Harrow after being granted asylum.
But he left for Afghanistan and was arrested on the border with Pakistan after the US-led airstrikes.
© 2007 The Independent
The U.S. government has a problem if, after 5 years, it simply releases people it held without charges and tortured. So, part of the release package is probably either ‘confessions’ or ‘confirmed’ allegations of terrorist activity. That way, instead of the papers screaming “Innocent Men finally released”, the headlines say “Released prisoner arrested for terrorism.” One makes it look as if the U.S. made horrible mistakes and the other makes it look as if there was good reason to hold the individual.
In a few weeks, or months, after the press interest has passed, the charges will be dropped.
There is an alternate, less likely possibility: The prisoners actually were guilty of a crime and have been released to show the U.S. had good reason to hold them. If that’s the case it might suggest that innocent prisoners are still being held to prevent bad publicity.
Let’s call it GAIPAC, Guantanamo by American-Israel Petroleum Atrocity Conservatives
Do British citizens know that they too are living under King George…again?
all hail
ctrl-z: Agree.
And this is the nub of the matter…
“Unlike nine other men earlier sent back to the UK from the camp, the three are not full British citizens…”
Thus they are objects and the UK can do as it likes to them, just as the US already has.
G. Brown, Tory-lite, Bush Poodle II
Whatever the cost, the governments feel that these detainees must appear to have been stained and continue to be stained for the rest of their lives, by their unfortunate detentions. Only then can the governments justify there inaction over the long course of this illegal detention, by appearing to officially take the line that there was something valid about it, and the detainees still have something to hide, and the government is still being “tough” on terror.
In Australia, with David Hicks about to be released from prison confinement, his activities and what he might say to the public must be officially condemned beforehand by the police politically setting release conditions of strict curfews, and frequent reporting to the police of his whereabouts. Since the police will no doubt be taping and following his every move anyway, the conditions are more for public consumption.
ASIO (the local CIA equivalent) is probably still asking David Hicks to help them with their investigations. As if they actually mattered in the total mess of world power politics.
The western governments and police are being careful of not being seen as “soft on terror” and still have ambitions of NATO military victories in Afghanistan by the employment of mass terror against the local populations. The tactics against the detainees are a showing that the governments also can beat up defenseless people when they have been given the inappropriate label.
Following is an article that deserves to be referenced whenever the topic of Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. GWoT prisons, secret renditioning, torture, … is or are mentioned.
“Inside the CIA’s notorious “black sites”
by Mark Benjamin
Global Research, December 16, 2007
Salon.com - 2007-12-15
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A Yemeni man never charged by the U.S. details 19 months of brutality and psychological torture — the first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons.
Dec. 15, 2007 | The CIA held Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in several different cells when he was incarcerated in its network of secret prisons known as “black sites.” But the small cells were all pretty similar, maybe 7 feet wide and 10 feet long. He was sometimes naked, and sometimes handcuffed for weeks at a time. In one cell his ankle was chained to a bolt in the floor. There was a small toilet. In another cell there was just a bucket. Video cameras recorded his every move. The lights always stayed on — there was no day or night. A speaker blasted him with continuous white noise, or rap music, 24 hours a day.
The guards wore black masks and black clothes. They would not utter a word as they extracted Bashmilah from his cell for interrogation — one of his few interactions with other human beings during his entire 19 months of imprisonment. Nobody told him where he was, or if he would ever be freed.
It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words “I am innocent” in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.
So Bashmilah stopped eating. But after his weight dropped to 90 pounds, he was dragged into an interrogation room, where they rammed a tube down his nose and into his stomach. Liquid was pumped in. The CIA would not let him die.
…
Little about the conditions of Bashmilah’s incarceration has been made public until now. His detailed descriptions in an interview with Salon, and in newly filed court documents, provide the first in-depth, first-person account of captivity inside a CIA black site. Human rights advocates and lawyers have painstakingly pieced together his case, using Bashmilah’s descriptions of his cells and his captors, and documents from the governments of Jordan and Yemen and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to verify his testimony. Flight records detailing the movement of CIA aircraft also confirm Bashmilah’s account, tracing his path from the Middle East to Afghanistan and back again while in U.S. custody.
Bashmilah’s story also appears to show in clear terms that he was an innocent man. …
…
Bashmilah said in the phone interview that the psychological anguish inside a CIA black site is exacerbated by the unfathomable unknowns for the prisoners. While he figured out that he was being held by Americans, Bashmilah did not know for sure why, where he was, or whether he would ever see his family again. …
…
Realistically, psychiatrists in such a setting could do little about the prisoners’ deeper suffering at the hands of the CIA. “They really had no authority to address these issues,” Bashmilah said about his mental anguish. He said the doctors told him to “hope that one day you will prove your innocence or that you will one day return to your family.” …
…
Bashmilah’s apparent innocence was clearly lost on officials with Jordan’s General Intelligence Department. After his arrest, the Jordanians brutally beat him, peppering him with questions about al-Qaida. He was forced to jog around in a yard until he collapsed. Officers hung him upside down with a leather strap and his hands tied. They beat the soles of his feet and his sides. They threatened to electrocute him with wires. The told him they would rape his wife and mother.
…
Bashmilah was turned over to the CIA in the early morning hours of Oct. 26, 2003. Jordanian officials delivered him …. He had no idea who his new captors were, or that he was about to begin 19 months of hell, in the custody of the U.S. government. …
I asked Bashmilah which was worse: the physical beatings at the hands of the Jordanians, or the psychological abuse he faced from the CIA. “I consider that psychological torture I endured was worse than the physical torture,” he responded. …
…”
NOW, WHEN he says that the treatment was worse to or for him than what the “friendly” Jordanians did, now that says something major. When first reading the article, I expected the opposite answer from him, so stunned I was.
The whole article is very worth reading; I wanted to quote enough to emphasise that it is a very important article and story, account.
Those mental health “care” “professionals” are QUACKS! No, I’m not speaking of the CIA abductors, interrogators and torturers, who clearly do work a (destructive) form of psychology alright. I really mean the people who are professionally titled or labeled “mental health [care]” workers.
Also, that article provides a link to Salon’s June article on the use of psychologists and/or psychiatrists in the non-secret, so “non-black” prisons of the U.S.-et-al GWoT.
I see the biggest crime here in the fact these men were released after 5 years without ever being charge with anything. If they had actually been terrorist’s they would have never seen the light of day again. One can only assume, they were innocent from the beginning. That we now have the kind of government who is capable of committing such dastardly deed of scooping people up off the street on little evidence of wrongdoing. Which in itself smacks of Gestapo type raids of the 30’s and 40’s. Seven years ago I was proud to be an American for many reasons. Today I feel only shame that we have reached the bottom of the barrel in allowing such people to rule unhampered. What has happened to us as a nation?
Clive Stafford Smith has an excellent book out on Guantanamo called “Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side”. I strongly recommend it.
Beyond the torture, brutality, hatred, and humiliation the detainees have faced, there is the way they have been jerked around by the security bureaucracy, which now continues for them in Britain and possibly Spain. At NO time have they been able to challenge the allegations against them, nor do they know even who fingered them as terrorists. But they are punished nonetheless, and now gratuitously shaken down again for information that they clearly don’t have.
How can the insanity of the security bureaucracy ever be overcome, once it takes over people’s lives?