Aug 7, 2007 7:30 am US/Eastern
Britain Asks U.S. To Release 5 Held At Guantanamo
LONDON (CBS News) ―
Britain has asked the U.S. to release five British residents from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, the Foreign Office said Tuesday, a move that suggests new Prime Minister Gordon Brown will take a harder line on the issue than his predecessor.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has written to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asking that the men be freed.
The men - Saudi Arabian national Shaker Aamer, Jordanian Jamil el-Banna, Libyan-born Omar Deghayes, Ethiopian national Binyam Mohamed and Algerian Abdennour Sameur - had all been granted refugee status, indefinite leave or exceptional leave to remain in Britain before they were detained, the statement said.
"Discussions with the U.S. government about the release and return of these five men may take some time," it said.
There may be security considerations when the men are returned, and the British government will "take all necessary measures to maintain national security," the Foreign Office said.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has hardened Britain's position over Guantanamo Bay, after ex-leader Tony Blair refused to press the U.S. to release the men. In March, foreign office minister Kim Howells insisted Blair's government could not intervene in the cases of the former residents.
In April, Bisher al-Rawi, a 37-year-old Iraqi national and British resident, was released from the camp after five years in detention. But British officials only took up al-Rawi's case after it was disclosed he had provided assistance before his detention to MI5, Britain's domestic spy agency.
Al-Rawi's U.S. lawyer, George Brent Mickum IV, said last year that al-Rawi had agreed, during one of at least six interviews with British agents at Guantanamo, to work for the British security service in exchange for his release. Nothing came of the offer, Mickum said.
The U.S. has taken steps to reduce the numbers of detainees at Guantanamo, the Foreign Office said. Miliband and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had reviewed the government's approach to the men "in light of these ongoing developments, our long-held policy aim of securing the closure of Guantanamo Bay, and the need to maintain national security."
"This has been a review in light of the fact that we want to see Guantanamo closed," said a Foreign Office spokesman, on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.
"This change of policy is extremely welcome, especially if it signals a bigger change of approach on both sides of the Atlantic," James Welch, the legal director of the civil rights group, Liberty, said in a statement. "Surely the U.S. and U.K. governments need no further evidence that internment, kidnap and torture have been completely counterproductive in the struggle against terrorism. It's high time that the special relationship returned to its original values of defending liberty rather than degrading it."
The Foreign Office and Downing Street declined to confirm whether Brown had discussed the plan with President Bush during their Camp David summit last week. Miliband met Rice for talks in Washington during the trip.
El-Banna was arrested with Al-Rawi by Gambian authorities in November 2002 and transferred to U.S. detention, Amnesty International said. It said Deghayes and Aamer were captured in Pakistan in 2002.
Campaign group Reprieve claims Mohamed was held in Morocco for 18 months after being captured in April 2002 in Pakistan and later sent to Guantanamo. Amnesty International said the circumstances of Sameur's detention were not immediately clear.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
