U.S. frees French Guantanamo suspects
Tue 27 July, 2004 08:38
PARIS (Reuters) - The United States has released four French nationals held without charge in the U.S. military base of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for over two years.
"Following discussions between France and the United States on the French detainees in Guantanamo, the American authorities have decided to hand over to France four of those held on the Guantanamo military base, who will be repatriated to France today," the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Afghanistan to Guantánamo Bay - the story of three British detainees
Today the Guardian publishes extracts from a 115-page report based on lengthy interviews the 'Tipton three' gave about their treatment by US and UK officials and military.
Tania Branigan and Vikram Dodd
Wednesday August 4, 2004
The Guardian
The Britons Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul were detained in northern Afghanistan on November 28 2001 by forces loyal to the warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum. The three, from Tipton in the Midlands, were handed over to US forces before being sent to Guantánamo Bay as suspected terrorists.
The "Tipton three" were released from Guantánamo in March this year, and after being flown back to Britain they were released without charge.
Today the Guardian publishes extracts from a 115-page report based on lengthy interviews they gave about their treatment by US and UK officials and military.
When released, they took payment from the media for interviews in which they alleged ill treatment. Their accounts were dismissed in some quarters, but since the revelations about the abuses at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, there has been renewed questioning about how far the US is willing to go in the "war on terror".
The report, Detention in Afghanistan and Guantánamo, has been compiled by the three men's lawyers, and is being released in the US today. It makes new allegations and gives extensive details about the treatment they suffered, which led them to make false confessions about their involvement in terrorism.
The Guardian paid no money to the three men or any of their representatives to publish these extracts from the report.
Arriving at Guantánamo
The terror, despair and anxiety of prisoners is laid bare by the released Britons, who describe their fear "that we might be killed at any minute" after their detention by US forces.
Their two-and-a-half-year ordeal has also left them with serious physical problems including knee and back pain - because of the positions in which they were shackled - and, in the case of Rhuhel Ahmed, permanent eye damage.
Their capture by the Northern Alliance was followed by a gruelling journey through Afghanistan in lorry containers, which only 20 of the 200 captives survived. It left all three suffering from "cold, dehydration, hunger and uncertainty" as well as dysentery and injuries.
US forces allegedly kicked and beat prisoners following the handover.
"One of [the soldiers] said 'you killed my family in the towers, and now it's time to get you back'," said Mr Iqbal.
"They kept calling us 'motherfuckers', and I think over three or four hours ... I must have been punched, kicked, slapped or struck with a rifle butt at least 30 or 40 times," he said.
Two weeks later Mr Iqbal and Mr Rasul were flown from Kandahar to Cuba, to be followed a month later by Mr Ahmed. Before their removal, they were hooded and forced to strip, then left naked.
"I could hear dogs barking nearby and soldiers shouting, 'get 'em boy'," said Mr Rasul. "I was taken ... for a so-called cavity search ... told to bend over and then felt something shoved up my anus. I don't know what it was but it was very painful."
The men alleged that the forced cavity searches were used to degrade and humiliate them, that they were systematically deprived of sleep and that they were kept on a restricted diet to weaken them.
Despite slightly better physical conditions in Cuba, they remained "at a high level of fear" throughout their detention.
"When we first got there the level was sky-high. We were terrified we might be killed at any minute. The guards would say, 'Nobody knows you're here, all they know is that you're missing and we could kill you and no one would know,'" they allege.
"After time passed, that level of fear came down somewhat but never vanished ... Not only could they do anything to any of us, but we could see them doing it to other detainees. We thought that we would never get out."
Mr Iqbal, who believes he suffered a breakdown after spending months in isolation and on a block with non-English-speaking detainees, believes that authorities deliberately fostered mental anguish - "they had thought carefully about the best way to punish me and break me."
Conditions in the camp
The treatment of prisoners worsened dramatically after the arrival of the US commander Major General Geoffrey Miller, the report alleges. Gen Miller ran Guantánamo for 18 months until last April, then going on to manage prisons in Iraq.
The report paints a disturbing picture of the rat, snake and scorpion-infested cages in which the men lived, exposed to blistering daytime temperatures, freezing nights and torrential rain.
It details alleged abuses and deliberately inhumane practices - such as sleep deprivation, shackling in painful positions and sexual humiliation - implying that these were deliberately used to encourage detainees to cooperate.
"We had the impression that at the beginning things were not carefully planned, but a point came at which you could notice things changing. That appeared to be after Gen Miller [arrived] around the end of 2002," said Mr Rasul.
"That is when short-shackling [when detainees are chained into a squatting position] started, loud music playing in interrogation, shaving beards and hair, putting people in cells naked, taking away people's 'comfort' items [eg towels] ... moving some people every two hours, depriving them of sleep, the use of a/c [air-conditioned, cold] air.
"Before, when people would be put into blocks for isolation, they would seem to stay for not more than a month. After he came, people would be kept there for months and months and months.
"Although sexual provocation, molestation did not happen to us, we are sure it happened to others ... One detainee came back from an interrogation crying and confided in another what had happened. That detainee told others and then other detainees revealed that it had happened to them."
This year, the camp's original commander, Brigadier General Rick Baccus, told the Guardian that military interrogators were angered by the conditions he granted to prisoners. After his departure, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, gave military intelligence control over all aspects of Guantánamo.
The Washington Post reported that under Gen Miller a system was instituted which allowed hooding or keeping prisoners naked for more than 30 days, threatening by dogs, and extreme temperatures.
After Gen Miller took control of Iraqi prisons in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, he banned some practices, such as hooding, while defending others such as sleep deprivation.
But General Janis Karpinski, whom he replaced, claimed that he had earlier told her: "This place [Abu Ghraib] must be Gitmo-ised ... [prisoners] are like dogs." The US military refers to Guantánamo Bay as Gitmo. Gen Miller has denied the allegation.
Interrogations
Detainees cracked and gave false confessions under pressure from interrogators who did everything from showing them photographs of Donald Duck to beating them and holding guns to their heads, the men allege.
After months of questioning in coercive conditions, Mr Rasul admitted meeting Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 hijackers, in Afghanistan in 2000. In fact, he was working in a Currys store in the West Midlands.
"Eventually I just gave in and said, 'OK, it's me' ... because of the previous five or six weeks of being held in isolation and being taken to interrogation for hours on end, short shackled and being treated in that way," he said.
"I was going out of my mind and didn't know what was going on. I was desperate for it to end." He was cleared when M15 produced evidence showing the three were all in England at the time.
The report describes the extraordinary techniques employed by military interrogators. Mr Iqbal described US soldiers holding a gun to his head and beating him during interrogations in Afghanistan.
He added: "An American ... shouted at me, telling me I was al-Qaida. I said I was not involved in al-Qaida and did not support them. At this he started to punch me violently and then when he knocked me to the floor started to kick me around my back and in my stomach."
Interrogations at Guantánamo Bay were less violent but frequently involved physical stress - often in intense heat or cold, with detainees chained into painful squatting positions. On one occasion, Mr Iqbal recalled, "I was left in a room and strobe lighting was put on and very loud music. It was a dance version of Eminem played repeatedly."
Mr Rasul described being shown "photographs of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry, Rugrats, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jackson, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Osama bin Laden and famous people from different countries."
At other interviews, he was asked: "If I wanted to get surface-to-air missiles from someone in Tipton, who would I go to?"
Role of British officials
The report suggests British officials made repeated visits to Guantánamo to question Britons who had been subjected to alleged ill-treatment by the US.
Consular officials, who visited at least six times, were supposed to ensure the welfare of the Britons, yet were always accompanied by MI5 officers.
Mr Iqbal claims that the embassy official once acted like "a third interrogator", asking him not about his welfare, but about other matters.
Mr Ahmed says he was interrogated in Kandahar by both a Foreign Office official and an MI5 officer, who told him the other two Britons had gone home because they cooperated. In fact they were on their way to Guantánamo.
During an interview with Foreign Office staff and with an MI5 officer present, Mr Ahmed says he confessed to every allegation put to him, including going to Afghanistan to fight jihad at the expense of the al-Muhajiroun group.
He had eaten next to no food for weeks and was suffering from sleep deprivation and extreme cold. He said the British officials "did not seem to care or even ask him about the conditions."
British officials saw all three men within three days of their arrival in Cuba. Mr Rasul says he was interviewed under armed guard by someone who said he was from the British embassy in Washington and someone from MI5.
He said: "The MI5 officer told me in no uncertain terms that if I did not cooperate they could make life very difficult for me."
He was told if he admitted going to Afghanistan for jihad, he could return to England. Mr Rasul says he was interviewed twice by MI5 in Camp X-ray, and Mr Ahmed once. Mr Iqbal says British intelligence questioned him four times over three months. His first interrogation by MI5 lasted between six and eight hours.
One MI5 interrogator told Mr Rasul that he would stay in Guantánamo for the rest of his life. During one interview, he says, he noticed that he was being filmed.
During his fourth interview, Mr Iqbal says he refused to answer questions put to him by US and UK interrogators. Both left the room and then a British embassy official entered. He said Mr Iqbal should tell him about his grievances. Mr Iqbal stayed silent until he was shown letters from his family and told if could only have them if he cooperated.
"I was desperate to get some letters from my family, so I started to speak," Mr Iqbal said.
He "remembers clearly" that the official wrote down his list of grievances for the first time.
These included infections he was suffering from untreated wounds caused by iron leg shackles; being led naked to and from the showers; poor food; disrespect shown to their religion; and sleep deprivation. The complaint ran to two pages. Mr Rasul says he complained to a British embassy official called Martin, telling him that he had been kept in isolation for three months. Again, nothing seemed to happen.
The report concludes: "It was very clear to all three that MI5 was content to benefit from the effect of the isolation, sleep deprivation and other forms of acutely painful and degrading treatment, including short shackling."
The men expressed considerable anger that "there was never any suggestion on the part of the British interrogators that this treatment was wrong".
Prisoners' mental illness
There have been "several hundred" suicide attempts, many more than suggested in official accounts, according to the report.
Camp authorities recorded around 32 attempts by prisoners to kill themselves before they stopped counting them and created a new category of "manipulative self-injurious behaviour", for which figures are not disclosed.
But the report suggests that attempted suicides are just the tip of the iceberg. It describes in vivid detail the deteriorating mental health of prisoners, including Britons, and alleges that guards have assaulted men who have serious health problems.
The men said that a high percentage of detainees were on anti-depressants and that at least 100 were observably mentally ill, as distinct from being depressed about their situation.
They added: "For at least 50 of those their behaviour is so disturbed as to show that they are no longer capable of rational thought or behaviour ...
"It is something that only a small child or animal might behave like ... These people were obviously seriously ill and yet we understand [from the military police] that they still get interrogated, and if they say someone is from al-Qaida then that information is used."
The men claimed to have witnessed the beating of one man who suffered from mental illness - Jumah al-Dousari from Bahrain - for impersonating a female soldier.
Eight soldiers repeatedly punched Mr Dousari, smashed his face into the concrete floor until his nose was broken, and kicked him in the stomach.
"When they took him out they hosed the cell down and the water ran red with blood," Mr Rasul said in the report.
In another incident, a Saudi Arabian prisoner allegedly suffered irreversible brain damage when guards beat him up after he tried to kill himself.
The account raises particular concerns about the mental state of British residents and citizens, in particular Jamil el-Banna, a Jordanian refugee who lived in London.
"Mentally, basically he's finished," Mr Rasul said.
"They told him he was going to be sent back to Jordan and he was extremely scared ... [it] meant to him the end of his life. He knew that he would be tortured or killed there."
The report also says that Feroz Abbasi, from Croydon, "was getting a very hard time" and that guards reported Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, to be "in a very bad way".
Interesting story, perhaps the U.S Senate discuss their report.
Since this is only mentioned on the the last pages of US-papers - if at all - I doubt that very much.
a) I posted it because of reason ... see above
b) A2K-police notice? :wink:
Osama bin Laden's Yemeni driver will today become the first Guantánamo Bay prisoner to stand before a US military commission to face war crimes charges, in proceedings that have been denounced as unfair by human rights groups and American military lawyers.
Defence lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan and three other prisoners facing preliminary hearings this week are expected to challenge the legality of the proceedings, and the nature of interrogations under which the defendants made statements.
Unlike courts martial for US soldiers, there is no right of appeal to an independent civilian court. Instead appeals will be heard by another panel appointed by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
"This is a throwback," Eugene Fidell, a Washington lawyer specialising in military law, said. He said that the last time such tribunals were held was during the second world war, when suspected German saboteurs were put on trial .
"There are questions of independence and impartiality of the kind that would make eyebrows twitch in Strasbourg" - home of the European court of human rights - Mr Fidell said.
Mr Hamdan is in the first batch of four Guantánamo Bay prisoners to face preliminary hearings by the commission, made up of five US officers and chaired by a retired army colonel, Peter Brownback.
David Hicks, a former Australian kangaroo hunter turned Islamic jihadist, will face war crimes and attempted murder charges tomorrow, followed by Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, a Yemeni poet, and a Sudanese accountant, Ibrahim al-Qosi.
Mr Bahlul and Mr Qosi are alleged to have acted as bodyguards for Bin Laden. According to his US military lawyer, Mr Hamdan worked as a driver for the al-Qaida leader at his farm near Kandahar until his capture in November 2001.
The lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, said the 34-year-old Yemeni knew nothing about his boss's links to terrorist attacks against the US. The prosecution accuses him of conspiracy, arguing that not only did Mr Hamdan know about the terrorist plots, he also delivered arms to al-Qaida.
Mr Hicks fought with the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999 and converted to Islam in 2000. He is alleged to have attended al-Qaida training camps from January 2001 and to have met Bin Laden once. None of the defendants is accused of killing Americans, but they could all face life sentences.
The hearings will take place in a specially built T-shaped courthouse overlooking the sea at the Guantánamo Bay base, an isolated US outpost on the south-eastern tip of Cuba. The defendants will have the charges read to them.
Observers from the American Bar Association and international human rights groups will attend the proceedings, along with journalists. But they will be excluded when classified information is discussed. Photographs and sketches of the participants are banned.
Defence lawyers have complained that they have been given severely limited access to their clients, and until recently have not been given interpreters. The lawyers and human rights groups have criticised many of the regulations, including the admission of hearsay as evidence and the government's right to monitor conversations between defendants and lawyers.
John Altenburg, a retired major-general supervising the commissions, said no such monitoring had taken place so far.
"So the effect of monitoring of attorney-client discussions is speculative," he said, adding: "The attorney has to be advised that that's going to happen. The expectation is the attorney will tell his client that this is happening. And lastly, any information gleaned from that monitoring will be completely firewalled from the prosecution and the criminal investigators and will be kept in national security intelligence channels only."
Mr Altenburg said that, as in US civil trials, defendants had the right not to testify and would be presumed innocent until proved otherwise and that guilt would have to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.
However, Mr Fidell said that there were likely to be severe restrictions on the defendants' right to call witnesses.
In June, the supreme court ruled that Guantánamo Bay fell under the jurisdiction of US civilian courts and that the prisoners therefore had the right to challenge their incarceration in court. In response, however, the Pentagon has established its own review boards to hear the challenges in an attempt to avoid inmates taking their case to district courts in America.
The commission could set trial dates for the four men at this week's hearings, but defence lawyers could also ask for a delay, arguing they have not had sufficient time to talk to the defendants. Some have only been given interpreters in the past few days.
Prisoner interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, the controversial US military detention centre where guards have been accused of brutality and torture, have not prevented a single terrorist attack, according to a senior Pentagon intelligence officer who worked at the heart of the US war on terror.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, who retired last June after 20 years in military intelligence, says that President George W Bush and US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have 'wildly exaggerated' their intelligence value.
Christino's revelations, to be published this week in Guantánamo: America's War on Human Rights, by British journalist David Rose, are supported by three further intelligence officials. Christino also disclosed that the 'screening' process in Afghanistan which determined whether detainees were sent to Guantánamo was 'hopelessly flawed from the get-go'.
It was performed by new recruits who had almost no training, and were forced to rely on incompetent interpreters. They were 'far too poorly trained to identify real terrorists from the ordinary Taliban militia'.
According to Christino, most of the approximately 600 detainees at Guantánamo - including four Britons - at worst had supported the Taliban in the civil war it had been fighting against the Northern Alliance before the 11 September attacks, but had had no contact with Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda.
For six months in the middle of 2003 until his retirement, Christino had regular access to material derived from Guantánamo prisoner interrogations, serving as senior watch officer for the central Pentagon unit known as the Joint Intelligence Task Force-Combating Terrorism (JITF-CT). This made him responsible for every piece of information that went in or out of the unit, including what he describes as 'analysis of critical, time-sensitive intelligence'.
In his previous assignment in Germany, one of his roles had been to co-ordinate intelligence support to the US army in Afghanistan, at Guantánamo, and to units responsible for transporting prisoners there.
Bush, Rumsfeld and Major General Geoffrey Miller, Guantánamo's former commandant who is now in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, have repeatedly claimed that Guantánamo interrogations have provided 'enormously valuable intelligence,' thanks to a system of punishments, physical and mental abuse and rewards for for co-operation, introduced by Miller and approved by Rumsfeld.
In a speech in Miami, Rumsfeld claimed: 'Detaining enemy combatants... can help us prevent future acts of terrorism. It can save lives and I am convinced it can speed victory.'
However, Christino says, General Miller had never worked in intelligence before being assigned to Guantánamo, and his system seems almost calculated to produce entirely bogus confessions.
Earlier this year, three British released detainees, Asif Iqbal, Shafiq Rasul Rhuhel Ahmed, revealed that they had all confessed to meeting bin Laden and Mohamed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, at a camp in Afghanistan in 2000. All had cracked after three months isolated in solitary confinement and interrogation sessions in chains that lasted up to 12 hours daily.
Eventually, MI5 proved what they had said initially - that none had left the UK that year. Rasul had been working at a branch of Currys. The disclosures come on the eve of a House of Lords appeal on the fate of the foreign terrorist suspects held without trial in British prisons.
Tomorrow, the Lords will determine whether it was lawful for the government to opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights to allow for the detention of the men at Belmarsh and Woodhill prisons. It is widely believed that some of the men are held on evidence obtained from prisoners at Guantánamo. An officer from MI5 admitted under cross-examination by lawyers acting for the detainees that the British intelligence services would make use of information obtained under torture by foreign governments.
A high court appeal in August found that it was lawful for the British government to use information obtained under torture by foreign governments to avert an imminent attack, but there was no evidence that it had done so in the case of the detainees held in British jails.
Speaking at an Observer fringe meeting at the Labour party conference last week, Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer backed the decision of the court but said it was 'an almost impossible ethical question'.
While emphasising that Britain repudiated the use of torture he said: 'We cannot condone torture, but the basis of those incarcerations is protection of other people. If we thought that 'X' was going to blow up the Tube and we thought that information was obtained by a foreign intelligence service, can we really say that we can't detain people because that information was obtained by torture?
'That's the dilemma the government is faced with. The courts have taken the view as a matter of law, that we are entitled to rely on it and I have the awful feeling that is probably the right conclusion.'
The White House has endorsed a proposed bill that would make it legal for U.S. intelligence officials to deport individuals to countries known to use torture to extract information.
The "9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act" marks the first time the U.S. government has officially scripted its policy known as "extraordinary rendition," whereby American authorities can circumvent their own restraints on interrogations by sending suspects to countries known to employ harsh tactics.
Canadian Maher Arar alleges he was a victim of this practice, which is the crux of the lawsuit he has launched against the U.S. government. Arar was detained in New York on Sept. 26, 2002, on a stopover flight to Canada, and after two weeks was quietly deported on a private plane to Syria, via Jordan. He says he was questioned and tortured for almost two weeks, then held without charges in deplorable conditions for a year.
US officer predicts Guantánamo releases
By Mark Huband, recently in Guantánamo Bay
Published: October 4 2004 20:39 | Last updated: October 4 2004 20:39
Most of the prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay, the US military base on Cuba, are expected to be released or transferred to their own countries, the deputy commander of the unit that runs the base has said.
The US military is currently holding 550 alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters at the base.
Of these, 15 are facing military trials. The rest face tribunals, as ordered by the US Supreme Court, to decide whether the detainees were correctly designated as "enemy combatants".
Some 200 detainees have been released since the first prisoners arrived at the base in early 2002. But Brig Gen Martin Lucenti, deputy commander of the joint task force that controls the base- including its legal proceedings - has said he expects most will be freed or extradited.
"Of the 550 that we have, I would say most of them, the majority of them, will either be released or transferred to their own countries," he told the FT.
"Most of these guys weren't fighting. They were running. Even if somebody has been found to be an enemy combatant, many of them will be released because they will be of low intelligence value and low threat status.
"We don't have a level of evidence to feel that we can be confident to prosecute them [all]. We have guys here who have never told us anything, except to say that they want to cut off the heads of the infidels if they get a chance," Gen Lucenti added.
However, Brig Gen Jay Hood, commander of the task force that runs the camps, qualified this assessment, saying some "people here are of tremendous intelligence value", and the US still has much to learn from them.
A Pentagon spokesman said on Monday that the Defense Department would not put a figure on the number that it expected to be released.
"The view within the DoD is that we are not going to hold anybody any longer than is necessary. But I wouldn't make a blanket statement about how many will be released," a Pentagon spokesman said.
The indefinite detention of the Guantánamo prisoners- who come from 42 countries and were detained in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other states - has been condemned by lawyers and human-rights organisations.
The military authorities maintain they are unlikely to release any of the prisoners if they are still believed to be of intelligence value or a continued threat.
"The release of prisoners is dependent on them being considered low threat and whether they remain beneficial as intelligence sources," Gen. Lucenti said.
US set to release most Guantánamo detainees
By Mark Huband in London
Published: January 9 2005
The US is preparing to release or transfer many of the 549 detainees who are currently being held at the country's naval base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, a senior US defence official has told the Financial Times.
The official said "a significant portion will gradually be transferred or released" as part of a restructuring of the camp. This will include the construction of a new prison at the base, in which the US intends to hold long-term prisoners.
Among those expected to be transferred are four British citizens, whose detention has been a source of friction between the White House and its closest foreign ally. According to a senior UK counter-terrorism official, an announcement regarding the transfer of the British detainees "is expected within the next couple of weeks".
The UK official did not say whether the four would be prosecuted on terrorism charges on their return to Britain.
Five British citizens who were released from Guantánamo Bay into UK custody last year were freed within days of their arrival back in Britain. "It's a question of dealing with them under UK law. If there is evidence, then people are charged and imprisoned," said a spokeswoman for the British foreign office.
The senior US defence official said that an increase in the number of transfers - to an unspecified number of the 19 countries whose nationals are being held at Guantánamo Bay - was part of a long-term plan to create a permanent prison at the base.
The prison, which is to be called Camp Six, would have space for up to 200 detainees whom the US does not want to see released. The prison will have more communal living areas than the current maximum security installation at the base.
The new jail will also have improved medical facilities, "particularly to deal with mental health problems", the defence official said.
He added that the release or transfer of Guantánamo detainees to custody within their home countries "depends on what other countries are willing to step up and commit to".
Those prisoners who the US is planning to keep at the base for the long term will continue to be held indefinitely as "enemy combatants", the official said. This designation has been criticised by legal officials in the US, who have been battling with the Pentagon to exercise legal jurisdiction over the detainees.
The US defence official said that 25 per cent of the detainees were still of intelligence value. The Pentagon has based its detention policy on each prisoners' value as a source of intelligence as well as on an assessment of the potential threat that they would pose if released.
"There is a change in the balance between the detention mission and the interrogation mission," the official acknowledged.
Following contacts between the UK and the US, involving in particular my Right Honourable Friend the Prime Minister and his office, and between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and myself, the US Government has now agreed to the return of all four men to the United Kingdom. That decision follows intensive and complex discussions to address US security concerns. All the families have been informed of this decision this morning, as, Mr Speaker, have their MP's.
The four men will be returned in the next few weeks. Once they are back in the UK, the police will consider whether to arrest them under the Terrorism Act 2000 for questioning in connection with possible terrorist activity. Any subsequent action will be a matter for the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
It would be interesting and, for purposes of better understanding of the whole truth here, to also accompany these stories with available details of the circumstances under which these people were taken into custody.
