Government requests return of British residents from Guantánamo Bay

For years Tony Blair skirted around the issue and refused to get involved, lest he annoyed George Bush. After all, the men locked up at Guantanamo Bay might have been British residents, but they were not British citizens, a distinction that Blair used to avoid having to call for their release which, effectively, resulted in him signalling that they could go hang.

Thankfully, Gordon Brown is a more humane man and he has stepped up to the plate and requested that America let the five remaining British men locked up in Guantanamo Bay go and has vowed that he will allow them to return to the UK.

Whitehall officials said ministers and their advisers had come to realise that the government's position - that the men were either still regarded as security risks or that their residency status had lapsed - was untenable. "The UK was calling for an end to Guantánamo Bay yet was not doing all it could do [to end it]," said one official. What made the British position appear worse was the change in the US approach, with Washington suggesting that the men were no longer regarded as threats to American national security.

"No longer regarded as threats to American national security." That's the nearest Washington ever comes to admitting that they have, for four years, detained and possibly tortured totally innocent men.

Washington ought to compensate these people for the trauma that they have put them through. In any other circumstances, a person who was wrongly convicted of a crime would have the right to compensation. And that's a right that belongs to people who have only been put in jail; they have not been shackled and flown half way around the world to a camp where many suspect torture takes place.

Families and supporters of the men expressed both delight and caution last night. Mr Deghayes's brother, Abubaker, said: "When I heard I was so happy, I was in tears. It's been a long, long terrible episode. Previous experience shows when the British government officially makes a request to the Americans they do manage to bring them back."

But his sister, Amina, was more cautious, saying she would not be able to celebrate properly until her brother was back in the UK. "I am getting mixed messages," she said. "Some people are telling me he is definitely coming back. Other people are saying they are going to request he come back and they may not be successful for a while."

In May the Guardian revealed that the US military had decided Mr Banna was no longer a security threat and was prepared to release him. But British authorities would not guarantee that he would be allowed back in the country, which meant he could be returned to his native Jordan. Yet Britain accepts he was tortured in Jordan, which is why he was granted refugee status. The high court was due to rule tomorrow on whether the government would have to accept Mr Banna back.

Mr Banna's MP, Sarah Teather, said: "The government were frightened of losing the court case. They have been stalling and stalling until they thought they couldn't get away with it.

"The US are trying to clear out Guantánamo and, as their closest ally, we have a duty to help them. Abandoning British residents to indefinite imprisonment in obscene conditions was a gross dereliction of duty by the government."

Even Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General, has had warm words, praising Brown for taking actions that Blair only contemplated but never actually got around to. And, now out of office, Goldsmith was much more forthright about what he thought about Guantanamo Bay than he ever was whilst Attorney General.

Last night Lord Goldsmith, who was attorney general in the Blair government, admitted that " getting consensus within government was not easy" but claimed that the UK had been "moving towards it".

"But I am very pleased that Gordon Brown's government has reached a decision. It is the right one," he added, claiming to have always opposed the camp as "wrong in principle and practice". " Guantanamo had become a symbol of injustice; it had become a rallying call for terrorism... I think it has dragged the good name of the United States, the good reputation for liberty and justice, through the dirt instead of upholding those traditions," he said.

So Brown has stepped up to the plate and asked the US to send the men back to the UK. Good for him.

From the US they will receive no apology for what they have been put through. There will be no admission that they have been wrongfully imprisoned. If they have been tortured, the Bush administration will ask them to accept that as the way things now have to be since the US was attacked. They should probably regard it as unfortunate but necessary.

This is now how the USA operates, Bush-Cheney style. It's astonishing to witness how far that noble nation has fallen in such a short period of time.

Historians will look back at this Presidency and wonder what Congress were doing whilst Bush destroyed America's standing in the world.

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Tags: Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Guantanamo Bay, George Bush, Dick Cheney, torture, illegal detention, Jamil el-Banna, Shaker Aamer, Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed, Abdennour Sameur