Camp Delta inmate 'who helped MI5' to be freed
Bisher al-Rawi is to be released from Guantanamo Bay after five years imprisonment without any charge being made against him.
He is one of the remaining British residents of Guantanamo that the UK government have been refusing to aid as they do not hold British citizenship.
Al Rawi's family fled Iraq in the eighties after his father was arrested by Saddam's secret police, taking refuge in Britain.Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer for the UK-based charity Reprieve, said he thought the decision to help Mr Rawi was only taken because the Government did not want an embarrassing court case in which Britain's involvement in his capture would have been made public.
The High Court in London has already permitted the disclosure of classified documents linking MI5 to Mr Rawi's arrest.
Mr Katznelson said: "Mr Rawi helped MI5 as an interpreter and acted as a go-between with Abu Qatada [a terror suspect later arrested and detained by the British authorities]. All this would have... been very embarrassing for the government and... MI5."
After his arrest in Gambia, where he had flown to assist his elder brother Wahab set up a peanut-oil processing plant there he asked for either a lawyer or a representative from the British high commission. .
He was then held in Gambia incommunicado for a month before being sent to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. What's most shocking about all this is that the British government themselves were responsible for his arrest and subsequent incarceration in Guantanamo Bay and, if the lawyer for Reprieve is correct, he has only now been released to prevent further details of his involvement with MI5 from becoming public."At his request [the Gambian agents] laughed and told him it was the British who have told us to arrest you."
His local MP, Edward Davey, has stated:
My constituent, Bisher al-Rawi, lives in New Malden, Surrey, but he is currently in camp 5, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has been imprisoned there by the Americans for over four years, without charge or trial, and has been subjected to continual degradation and torture.For years the British authorities hid behind the line that, as al-Rawi was not an actual British citizen, they had no responsibility for his welfare; a disgraceful decision that implied that al-Rawi had no status and existed in a virtual international legal black hole.
That would all be bad enough, but there is undeniable evidence—we have the telegrams—that MI5, and therefore the UK Government, was complicit in Bisher's illegal arrest, complicit in his rendition, and complicit in his long, illegal detention. As MI5 must have known about the psychological torture techniques of the United States, I believe that the UK has been complicit in his torture, too.
It was only when Reprieve took the case before a British court that Jack Straw had an apparent change of heart, "because of the particular circumstances of his case."
His lawyers said afterwards that the decision to intervene was only an expedient way of avoiding the publication of sensitive information about MI5's relationship with Mr al-Rawi.
Zachary Katznelson, senior counsel at Reprieve, said: "It's high time that the British government recognised their responsibilities to Bisher al-Rawi. He's always maintained, and the Government has never denied, that he was helping MI5 by acting as a go-between with Abu Qatada."That's his only connection and that is why he was detained - because he chose to help British intelligence."
More will come out about this in the next few weeks, but it seems clear that the UK authorities must have been aware of MI5's dealings with this man. Indeed, it is reported that when he got scared about any trouble that assisting MI5 in liaising with Abu Qatada might get him into, he was reassured that assisting British intelligence was actually a safeguard against getting into trouble and that they would assist him in anyway they could.
It would now appear that they hung him out to dry. His only crime, as far as I can tell from all that I can come across, is that he was a friend of Abu Qatada and that he agreed to assist MI5 when he was approached by them following 9-11. It is clear that he never accepted any payment for helping them and did not accept British citizenship when it was offered to him.
"All I did in Britain was try to help with steps necessary to get a meeting between Abu Qatada and MI5. I was trying to bring them together. MI5 would give me messages to take to Abu Qatada, and Abu Qatada would give me messages to take back to them."For that, he has spent the last five years in the Hell. And his actual story was known to the British authorities the whole time.
Heads should roll for this. But they won't.
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