Three Britons released from Guantanamo Bay last week claim they were interrogated by the British Secret Service, as well as brutalized by their American captors.

Jamal al-Harith, One of five Britons freed by the United States from its Guantanamo Bay detention center for terrorism suspects said he had experienced beatings and degrading treatment during his two years in custody. (AFP/Banaras Khan)

Rhuhel Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, and Shafiq Rasul, 26, all from Tipton, West Midlands, alleged that MI5 officers and Foreign Office officials took part in some of the 200 interrogations during their two-year detention at the US naval base in Cuba. They earlier claimed that they were beaten by US guards and ordered to answer questions at gunpoint. For three months they claimed they were held in solitary confinement when they had to survive on tiny portions of food, described by one of the men as "nouvelle cuisine American-style".

The boyhood friends, in interviews with two Sunday newspapers, said that they were visited at least six times by MI5 and Foreign Office staff. Mr Rasul said: "Every time the Foreign Office [staff] came, we asked about what was going on, and whether we had solicitors. His reply was, 'I don't know, all I know is what's been on TV. Your case hasn't been on TV'." But their detention had received massive publicity and their families' lawyers had been in regular contact with the Foreign Office.

Mr Rasul was visited in September by the Foreign Office and MI5. When Mr Rasul asked about his legal status, the Foreign Office official told him: "You should ask the MI5 guy who's coming tomorrow." He did, but the MI5 officer said: "You should have asked Martin from the Foreign Office."

The Tipton men's allegations, together with similar accounts given by the two other British detainees released last week - Tareq Dergoul, 26, and Jamal al-Harith, 37 - will increase pressure on the Government to intervene in the cases of the four remaining Britons held at Guantanamo Bay.

Like Mr Dergoul and Mr Harith, the three men from Tipton deny that they left Britain to fight for the Taliban.

The childhood friends claim they went to Pakistan because Mr Iqbal was meeting a woman his parents had arranged for him to marry. After the wedding, they planned to travel. But they were captured by Northern Alliance forces after they had gone to Afghanistan on a humanitarian mission to help provide food and medicine.

The men said that they narrowly survived a massacre by Northern Alliance soldiers when they were caught up in the fall of Kunduz. They were forced into lorry containers without ventilation alongside thousands of suspected Taliban fighters. Hundreds of fighters and refugees are thought to have suffocated to death.

Mr Iqbal said: "The last thing I remember is that it got really hot and everybody started screaming and banging. It was like someone had lit a fire beneath the container. You could feel the moisture running off your bodies and people were ripping of their clothes."

To survive, Mr Iqbal used a cloth to wipe up moisture from the interior walls until he realized that he was drinking the body fluids of the dead prisoners. Finally, the containers' doors were opened and those who survived were taken to Shebargan prison and were later transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

Mr Rasul, describing his arrival at Guantanamo Bay, said: "The sun was beating down and the sweat pouring into my eyes. I shouted for a doctor. Someone poured water into my eyes and then I heard it again, 'Traitor, traitor'.''

He added: "You'd look at people and see that they'd lost it. There was nothing in their eyes. They didn't talk."

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd

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