Health fears for 'torture victims' -Brits to be released from Guantanamo [View All]

The four Britons soon to be released from Guantánamo Bay after up to three years in detention may need months of care when they arrive back home, experts in treating torture victims warned yesterday.
Foreign secretary Jack Straw yesterday confirmed the men would be released by the United States within weeks after being held without charge as alleged terrorists.

A total of nine British citizens had been held by the US at Guantánamo Bay, with five being released last March.

The failure of the government to secure the release of the remaining four had been embarrassing, especially after a direct plea last year from Tony Blair to President Bush appeared at first to have been snubbed.

Mr Straw told MPs that the releases followed "intensive and complex" discussions with the US, to address their security concerns.
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Louise Christian, solicitor for two of the four still detained, called on police not to arrest them, saying they should be treated as torture victims, not criminal suspects.

Moazzam Begg's father said he feared for his son's mental and physical health. Azmat Begg said: "My biggest fear is for his mental health as he has been in solitary confinement for so long and has been tortured badly."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1388398,00.html

On Begg, from the Independent...

1000 Days of Hell

It has been just over a thousand days since Pakistani security officers broke down Moazzam Begg's front door and bundled him into the boot of a waiting police car.

His terrified wife and three children looked on helplessly as Mr Begg was taken away in the middle of the night, transported to Bagram air base near Kabul before being flown to the infamous prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
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Mr Begg was a law student at Wolverhampton University before dropping out in his second year. After marrying a local girl he opened a bookshop in Birmingham, but started to feel the need to play a bigger part in the education of the children in poorer countries. So he took his young family to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

His father said: "The Taliban didn't allow any co-education so his wife wanted to teach the girls and he wanted to teach the boys. But he ran into trouble with Taliban red tape. While he was waiting for clearance he took his family to a remote area to make tube wells to improve their access to water."

Then the US bombardment started and the family fled to Pakistan. It was while the Beggs were waiting in Islamabad to return to teaching that he was arrested, taken to the US-controlled Bagram airbase, and then to Guantanamo Bay.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/story.jsp?story=599984