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Britain frees Guantanamo returnees

A television reporter files a story Wednesday in front of Paddington Green police station in London, where four men released from Guantanamo Bay were being questioned by British police a day after their release from US custody at Guantanamo Bay. A fifth warned through his lawyer that he would hold Washington to account for the two years he spent in detention. PHOTO: AFP

British police have freed all five Britons flown home from Guantanamo Bay prison camp -- and the former terror suspects began denouncing their US captors yesterday amid questions about why they were held for two years.

The US turned over the five detainees to British custody on Tuesday, and by late Wednesday British police and prosecutors decided to release all of them without charges.

This could cause trouble for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will face public dismay as to why it took so long for Washington's closest ally to win its citizens' freedom if authorities at home concluded they should not face trial.

One of the five freed men was released on Tuesday and the other four on Wednesday, while a further four Britons remain at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba. Washington says they are more dangerous than the five it decided to send home.

Greg Powell, lawyer for one of the freed men, said 21-year-old Rhuhel Ahmed was on his way to a reunion with his family early yesterday after being released just before midnight. He was one of three prisoners from Tipton, a small industrial town in central England.

"He's on his way to meet his family and obviously that's a tremendous moment for all of them, because they haven't seen each other since 2001," Powell said.

Powell said he had met his client at the London jail where he was released and found him in good health. But his treatment at the hands of the Americans had amounted to "torture."

"What I have learned from him is Guantanamo Bay is a kind of experiment in interrogation techniques and methods, really. And they do have extremely interesting stories to tell about what went on there," Powell said.

He declined to give further details about the prisoners' treatment, or explain what his client was doing in Afghanistan when he was arrested.

Powell said Ahmed's family wanted privacy. But the former prisoners will be at the center of a media frenzy -- which could prove a money-spinner if they opt to sell their stories.

None of the five appeared in public immediately.

Britain's most famous publicist, Max Clifford, whose client list ranges from top nobility to O.J. Simpson, said he had been hired by the family of former detainee Terek Dergoul, 24, and expected tabloids would bid six figures for prisoners' stories.

Jamal al Harith, 35, from the northern city of Manchester, was the first to go free shortly after the group landed at a British air base on Tuesday.

Dergoul, a Londoner, was freed on Wednesday, followed by the Tipton detainees, including Ahmed and his friends Asif Iqbal, 20, and Shafiq Rasul, 24. Their families said they had traveled to Pakistan in late 2001 to find one of them a wife.

A fourth youth from Tipton, Monir Ali, had traveled with them and disappeared. His family has hoped the others will provide clues to his fate.

While Blair's supporters see the prisoners' return as a peace dividend for his support of US President George W. Bush, the Guantanamo issue could remain a major political headache.

Britons will want to know why it took more than two years to get them out. Meanwhile, the fate of the four still in Guantanamo will stay high on the political agenda.

Britain says the Bush administration's plans for special military tribunals to try Guantanamo suspects do not measure up to basic fairness standards. It wants either the rules to be modified or the suspects sent back to Britain for trial.
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