Five British men held by the US military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flew back to England, where four were immediately arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. The fifth was released.
The five landed on Tuesday at Northolt Royal Air Force Base aboard a military C17 transport, unshackled and accompanied by independent observers.
PHOTO: AFP
Four of the men were whisked away in armored police vans to the Paddington Green high security police station in west London, where terrorist suspects are held.
The fifth, 37-year-old Jamal al-Harith, also known as Jamal Udeen, was released after questioning at the air base by immigration authorities.
Al-Harith, a Web site designer from Manchester in northern England, reportedly was backpacking in Pakistan near the Afghan border when he was arrested in September, 2001 by the Taliban, who feared he was a spy. He reportedly was sent to Guantanamo after US forces found him in a jail in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
"He's an innocent man and he wants to know why was he kept in custody for so long,'' al-Harith's lawyer, Robert Lizar, told reporters.
Metropolitan Police said the four other men were arrested under a section of the Terrorism Act that concerns alleged involvement in the commission, preparation, or instigation of terrorist acts. They gave no further details.
The five men were among nine Britons whose captivity at the US military prison had caused friction between the two allies.
The arrests were not unexpected. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has said police would consider whether to arrest the men, and that prosecutors -- not Prime Minister Tony Blair's ministers -- will decide whether to press charges.
Police said the four terror suspects were allowed a telephone call and access to lawyers of their choice. All would undergo medical examinations before questioning, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Peter Clarke, the national coordinator for anti-terrorism.
"Everything that happens to these men from the moment they arrived on UK soil will be entirely in accordance with United Kingdom law and the normal procedures in these cases will be followed to the letter," Clarke said.
The five were released from the US Navy prison in Cuba after months of talks between British and American officials, including US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who discussed the detentions of British subjects when Bush visited London in November.
Four Britons remain at Guantanamo. Negotiations over their fates will continue.
Britain had demanded that its nine nationals, who had been held without charge or access to lawyers, either be given fair trials or returned home.
Some legal experts doubt there will be enough evidence to try any of the returnees because information gleaned from interrogation at Guantanamo would be inadmissible in court.
It is also unclear whether British courts have jurisdiction over alleged criminal acts in Afghanistan, unless crimes of terrorism or treason could be proven, the experts said.
Blair has emphasized that those held at Guantanamo had to be handled carefully because they might pose a danger to Britain's national security.
But some Britons have expressed anger over the men's detention without the rights normally afforded to defendants.
About 640 prisoners are held at Guantanamo on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's fallen Taliban regime or the al-Qaeda terror network.
The British government had announced last month that five Britons held at Guantanamo would be released. They had been identified as al-Harith, Ruhal Ahmed, Tarek Dergoul, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul.
The four still at Guantanamo are Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Richard Belmar and Martin Mubanga. Begg and Abbasi had been listed as some of the first detainees likely to face a military commission, a possibility Britain has criticized.
Blair's official spokesman said on Tuesday that the Britons should only be tried in the US if they had access to legal representation and rights of appeal.
In the US, where Home Secretary David Blunkett gave a speech on Tuesday in Boston, his spokeswoman Allison Potter-Drake said Blunkett "has always personally felt that in an ideal world, they would be dealt with [in the United States], but what he has problems with is the process here and what he has always said is he wants a fair trial."
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS