Britain to US: we don't want Guantánamo nine back

The US have offered to return almost all British subjects held in Guantanamo Bay but the British government are refusing to accept the nine men, stating that the preconditions the US have placed upon their release are unworkable and unacceptable.

The US are insisting that the men, if released, must be kept under 24 hour surveillance.

Although all are accused of terrorist involvement, Britain says there is no intelligence to warrant the measures Washington wants, and it lacks the resources to implement them. "They do not pose a sufficient threat," said the head of counter-terrorism at the Home Office.

This reminds me of the way the US attempted to negotiate the release of the Tipton Three, saying they would only do so if the British government could guarantee that they would face prosecution. I found it slightly astonishing at the time that the men in charge of running the US government would not understand the basic principle of the independence of The Crown Prosecution Service and how a government who gave such a guarantee would fatally undermine that independence and turn the CPS into a subservient wing of the government rather than an independent entity.

And here we have the US government doing it again. Pronouncing people guilty by decree and insisting that certain restrictions be set upon them before it will ever agree to them being set free. In most civilised countries such conditions can only be set by a court of law after evidence has been presented and the defendants have had an opportunity to dispute that evidence.

This appears to me another example of the shocking way that the Bush administration seek to keep US courts out of the process when it comes to dealing with people held at Guantanamo and rather insist people are guilty based on the word of the administration rather than offering any evidence to back up their charges.

William Nye, director of counter-terrorism and intelligence at the Home Office, wrote:

"The US administration envisages measures such that the returnees cannot legally leave the UK, engage with known extremists or engage in support, promote, plan or advocate extremist or violent activity, and further have the effect of ensuring that the British authorities would be certain to know immediately of any attempt to engage in any such activity."

But Mr Nye says the evidence and intelligence he has seen is not enough for a control order severely restricting their movements: "I am not satisfied it would be proportionate to impose ... the kind of obligations which might be necessary to satisfy the US administration."

The measures the US wants in place would have to be enacted by MI5 and take effort and resources away from countering more dangerous terrorist suspects. Mr Nye wrote: "The use of such resources ... could not be justified and would damage the protection of the UK's national security." He says the Guantánamo detainees "do not pose a sufficient threat to justify the devotion of the high level of resources" the US would require.

There seems to be a worrying trend amongst the Bush administration to see themselves as judge, jury and executioner. And it is also apparent that whenever other countries get a chance to review the evidence upon which their judgements have been made, the other countries inevitably find the evidence too weak to support the conclusions that the administration have arrived at.

Here we now have the astonishing case of a British government refusing to accept it's own subjects because it cannot agree to the preconditions the Bush administration have made, preconditions that it has set of it's own accord and which have been subject to no review by any American court.

This is a further indication, were any needed, of the absurd new powers that Bush is trying to claim for himself and of the degree to which he is already abusing these powers.

If Bush believes these men are guilty of any crimes then he should present evidence of these crimes before a court of law and give these men the opportunity to defend themselves.

However, it is this that Bush is anxious to avoid. And, from the reaction of the British government, one can only conclude that he is avoiding this because the evidence he has against these men is shoddy and inconclusive.

And yet, it is based on that shoddy and inconclusive evidence that they have been held in Guantanamo Bay for almost four years where their lawyers claim they have been tortured.

One would be forgiven for assuming that the US administration might be setting such preconditions merely as a way of avoiding the conclusion that they were wrong to hold the men in the first place.

Most of us remember the case of Haji Nasrat Khan, a 78 year old man who was recently released having been held for three and a half years at Guantanamo, and only released a full year after the US authorities told him they knew he was innocent. If this is the standard of "terrorist" held there, the US are in bigger trouble than I thought.

I have no doubt that some of the men held in Guantanamo Bay might be terrorists, but it seems ever likely that the vast majority are simply people caught in a dragnet.

And it seems even more likely that the Bush administration are going to any lengths, including putting impossible restrictions as a precondition for release, as a way of masking the sheer scale of the miscarriage of justice that they have indulged in.

Tags: US, UK, Bush, Blair, Guantanamo, Bay, suspects, release, preconditions, terrorists, terrorism, Tipton Three, Haji Nasrat Khan, injustice,