“We know you’re an innocent man.”
08.08.07 - 08:53am
Five British residents locked up for years without trial in America’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre could soon be on their way home after the UK government formally requested their release, according to media reports.
With Gordon Brown at least trying to give the impression of distancing the British Government from US policies, the new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, has formally written to his Washington counterpart Condoleeza Rice requesting the release of the five men.
The move comes as the US looks towards closing the prison, which has been universally condemned for its widespread violations of basic human rights, flouting of international conventions and its dubious status even under American law.
Among those who could be released is Jamil el Banna who, prior to being spirited away into legal limbo by the US authorities, lived close to my own home in northwest London and whose case has been highlighted in both the local and national media.
The father of five, a Palestinian of Jordanian nationality who had been granted refugee status in the UK, was apprehended in bizarre circumstances in the Gambia in 2002 while on a business trip, apparently with either the complicity or at least knowledge of the British secret service. It appears he had come to the attention of the authorities because he knew the radical cleric and terrorist suspect Abu Qatada.
Having been taken into custody he was placed in chains and shipped to Bagram air force base in Afghanistan and held there before being shipped to Guantanamo. According to a special report by the Guardian as far back as February 2005, containing an interview with Mr El Banna’s wife in London:
From those prisoners who have been released, she knows that Jamil was interrogated only five times in Guantánamo, unlike other men who had hundreds of interrogations, and that he was told by his US interrogator, “We’re trying to get you out of here - we know you’re an innocent man.” Nevertheless, a writ of habeas corpus last October failed. The Guantánamo Combatant Status Review Tribunal - a military court - found Jamil el Banna was “properly classified as an enemy combatant and was part of or supporting al-Qaida forces”. Unclassified documents from the tribunal give a taste of the proceedings. The tribunal had his name wrong - they were using his father’s name, Abdul Latif, rather than his own, Jamil. The friendship with the cleric Abu Qatada, described as “an al-Qaida operative”, was listed as the first point in the evidence against him. El Banna replied that he was “one of hundreds” who used to pray with Qatada. “If I were any danger, then Great Britain would have put me in prison,” he said.
Another charge stated: “The detainee was arrested in Gambia while attempting to board an airplane with equipment that resembled a homemade electronic device.” El Banna reiterated what had been in the public domain for two years: that the arrest had taken place in the UK; that the battery charger was not in his luggage, but in al Rawi’s (a business associate), and anyway, there was nothing suspicious about it. He then told the tribunal that in Gambia Americans wearing black hoods kidnapped him, handcuffed him, cut off his clothes, and flew him to Bagram, where he was kept underground, without sight of light, for two weeks. “I was surprised that the Americans would do such a thing, it shocked me.” He got another nasty surprise when the tribunal told him that Spain had asked for his extradition because of his alleged link to a Syrian held in connection with the September 11 attacks. False accusations under torture are routine. El Banna told the tribunal, “Maybe someone accused me when I wasn’t there and gave my name up. I am not sure.”
In May the Guardian revealed that the US military had decided Mr El Banna was no longer a security threat and was prepared to release him, all but admitting that he was wrongly locked up in the first place. However, even though he already had refugee status in the UK and his wife and children were living in London, the British Government refused to give an assurance that he would be allowed back in the country. This would have meant he could be returned to his native Jordan. Yet Britain accepts he was tortured in Jordan, which is why he was granted refugee status originally. The High Court was due to rule this week on whether the government would have to accept Mr Banna back, making this latest decision look like an attempt to head off a possible legal judgment.
Mr Banna’s MP, Sarah Teather, said: “The government were frightened of losing the court case. They have been stalling and stalling until they thought they couldn’t get away with it.”
So as the Government has dragged its feet, Mr El Banna has been condemned to the disturbing Kafkaesque world of Guantanamo Bay, with its “enemy combatants”, a fiction invented by the Bush administration as a smokescreen for ongoing violations of international conventions and standards of law. A place where inconvenient lack of evidence is not allowed to get in the way. Where the fact that hundreds of years of judicial progress has determined simply knowing a person is insufficient reason for being locked up without charge or trial does not appear to be relevant. Mistaken identity and incomprehensible decisions appear to be common as people are swept up in war zones and elsewhere around the world.
Says a story from the Associated Press based on documents released under Freedom of Information laws:
Most of the detainees proclaim their innocence, including one older prisoner who tells the tribunal he’s too crippled to have been an enemy combatant.
“How could I be an enemy combatant if I was not able to stand up,” he says, describing how he hasn’t been able to walk in more than 15 years. A witness testifies that the man had a stroke years ago and barely left his house except to visit the doctor.
Read the full story of Jamil El Banna’s long ordeal, and that of his family, here.
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