The lawyer acting for ten UK residents being held at Guantánamo Bay has said the US authorities would send them home now if the UK government gave the go-ahead.
Clive Stafford Smith yesterday rubbished a claim by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, that there was ‘continuing dialogue’ with the US over the Cuba detainees.
Falconer added: ‘We could not take people back into the UK on terms that we could not legally deliver.’
Leaked documents on Tuesday revealed that British officials have said the US asked for the men to be kept under 24-hour surveillance if they are sent back to Britain.
Stafford Smith told News Line yesterday: ‘This is a red herring.
‘First, my clients would agree to any conditions – including electronic tags or whatever, to get out of Guantánamo.
‘At the moment they are being held in a cell the size of a toilet with cameras on them all the time – even when they go to the toilet.
‘They just want to be back with their families. Several of them have British wives and British children and they would accept any conditions.
‘The real issue is the British government should take them back with whatever conditions they want to apply
‘The government doesn’t even know how many there are. They say there are nine UK residents being held, when the real figure is ten.
‘The Americans have said they are willing to discuss sending them all back.
‘But the British government do not appear willing to discuss it.’
He insisted: ‘If the British government were to say tomorrow that it welcomed them back to their families then the US government would send them straight back.
‘The Americans want to get rid of them.’
Nine British citizens were released in January 2005, returned to the UK and, after being questioned for several days by anti-terrorist detectives, were reunited with their families.
Stafford Smith said none of them had since caused any problems in Britain and he said he could guarantee the nine UK residents currently being held would similarly pose no security risk.
There was no difference between British citizen Moazzam Begg and the UK residents still in Guantánamo, he added.
‘Compare him with Shaker Aamer,’ he said of Begg. ‘They were very close friends, lived together for a while and were taken to Guantánamo at roughly the same time. Begg is now free but Aamer is still locked up.
‘The only difference is the extent to which the British government is prepared to go in to bat for them.’
He said that the UK residents , including electronic tags or whatever, to get out of Guantánamo.’
He said it was absurd to think that the UK authorities were going to ‘orphan those children because they won’t stand up for what is decent’.
The lawyer said the Blair government’s argument, that it could not accept the nine under the conditions imposed by the US, did not hold water.
He pointed out that the German Chancellor had won the return of a Turkish man who was a German resident, Murat Kurnaz, in August.
Stafford Smith stressed: ‘Angela Merkel, who is not known for being a leftie, made it the top issue in her discussions with Bush and he was released without any restrictions or preconditions.’
He said the nine British residents had been tortured and denied their human rights throughout their stay at Guantánamo and had in some cases made confessions to end their torture.
He pointed out that many of the detainees had not been captured in Afghanistan and had solid alibis.
Stafford Smith added: ‘Two of my clients were arrested in the Gambia and a third has wage-slips proving that he was actually cooking eggs in a London restaurant at the time he was supposedly learning how to make bombs in Afghanistan.’
