Guantanamo Bay must close

Written by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP and published in The Islington Tribune on Fri 24th Mar 2006

Sarah with former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg

Two weeks ago, as Euro-MP for London, I joined a moving event in the European Parliament commemorating the victims of terrorism.

Our thoughts were with all victims around the world, but in particular with those who suffered from the Madrid bombings in March 2004 and our own July 7th horror in London.

I was especially pleased that students from South Camden school made the trip to Brussels. Located close to King's Cross, the school got caught up in the events of that dreadful July day last year. Mohammed Juned Khan spoke so impressively on their behalf about the need for all communities to work together in a spirit of unity.

All reasonable people can agree on the imperative need to do all we can to prevent terrorist atrocities and hunt down the despicable perpetrators. We all remember that the victims of the 7/7 London bombs, like those in New York on 9/11 and Madrid on 3/11, included people of many faiths and ethnic groups.

Fighting terrorism demands that we apply the law. Both the sanctions and procedures of the criminal law must be used to bring the terrorists to justice. And suspects must have defendants' rights and the protections of human rights law while they undergo interrogation, detention and trial.

But it is becoming increasingly clear that not only the United States has grossly flouted the rule of law in the way it has conducted its 'war on terror' since September 2001. More information is starting to emerge of the shadowy role that the British government under Tony Blair has played in colluding with President George Bush's defiance of civilised human rights values.

We have just had the third anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, when Tony Blair defied millions of people in this country to take our troops into an expensive, illegal and disastrous war with his buddy, the Toxic Texan.

But another aspect of the Blair government's lies is the way delivered its own citizens and legal residents into that 'black hole' of lawlessness and torture, the camp run by the US at Guantanamo Bay. The scandal of this betrayal is being told in newspaper articles and in a case in the English High Court.

Nine British citizens spent several years in Guantanamo Bay before they were released, none charged with any criminal offence. The government did little enough to get them out. But there is another category of nine British people illegally imprisoned and still trapped in the hell-hole which the government has washed its hands of. These are legal residents with permission dating back decades to stay in the UK.

I and others have repeatedly lobbied the British government over the last few years to provide assistance to my constituents like Jamil al-Banna, Bisher al-Rawi and Omar Deghayes, some of whose families live not so far from Islington in north London.

These three men are now taking legal action to force the British government to liberate them from the black hole. Not least because it is clear that the security service MI5 was complicit in the abduction of Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi, which explains the British government's unwillingness now to protect them.

The official line is that the UK cannot take responsibility as they are not British citizens. To add insult to injury, the government says their right of return to the UK once free cannot be guaranteed.

But the human rights watchdog the Council of Europe has demanded that European governments do all they can to ensure 'the release of any of their citizens, nationals or former residents' currently detained at Guantanamo Bay, and that detainees 'do not suffer detriment to their rights or interests as a result of being held in unlawful detention, especially in regard to immigration status.'

Though Tony Blair until last week asserted that Guantanamo Bay was only 'an anomaly', it in fact violates just about every international legal instrument or norm of civilised behaviour by democratic states.

The reason this matters to all of us is that if we let governments lock up who they choose, with no arrest warrant, prosecution, evidence or trial, who knows when it might be our turn? And if we ditch our standards, the terrorists who hate and want to destroy the West have in effect won.

I hope that legal action or media exposure will succeed where political pressure has so far failed, in forcing the British government to live up to its international obligation to act for these 9 British residents still imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

It is a disgrace that EU states have failed to present a determined and united front to call for its closure, and to oppose rather than collude with other illegality in the 'war on terror'. For that, Tony Blair bears considerable personal blame.

Baroness Sarah Ludford, former councillor for Clerkenwell ward on Islington Council, is Liberal Democrat MEP for London