Our part in shame of Guantanamo

Written by Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP and published in The Independent on Sat 18th Mar 2006

Dear Sir,

As details of "Britain's shadowy role in the Guantanamo scandal" (16th March) emerge, 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 the 9 British residents still imprisoned at the camp.

I and others have repeatedly lobbied the British government over the last few years to provide assistance to these men. Jamil al-Banna, Bisher al-Rawi and Omar Deghayes, who have decades of legal residence in the UK, are my constituents. The official reaction is that the UK cannot take responsibility as they are not British citizens and furthermore, that their right of return to the UK, once free, cannot be guaranteed as it would be subject to a renewed visa application..

The fact that MI5 was complicit in the abduction of Jamil el-Banna and Bisher al-Rawi explains the British government's unwillingness now to protect these men. But their assertion that international consular law prevents assumption of responsibility for legally resident non-nationals is disputable.

Last year the parliamentary assembly of human rights watchdog the Council of Europe demanded that European governments do all they could 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.' In reply, the Committee of Ministers, including the UK, expressed 'the determination of the member states to ensure that the rights of persons released and returned to their jurisdiction are fully respected'. Of course that makes no actual commitments about release and return, as British diplomats will have ensured.

Although until very recently Tony Blair thought it was only an 'anomaly', Guantanamo Bay in fact violates just about every international legal instrument or norm of civilised behaviour by democratic states. 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.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah Ludford