Britain faces dilemma over freed Guantanamo four

LONDON - Britain faces a major headache in deciding what to do with four detainees held as terrorism suspects for about three years without charges at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and due home soon.

Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga, Richard Belmar and Moazzam Begg will be released within weeks from the camp, set up by the United States in January 2002 to hold combatants captured in Afghanistan and others suspected of association with al Qaeda.

Amid fears of an attack on British soil, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has introduced tough terror laws, but it must now balance the need to protect citizens with the requirement to respect human rights.

Police officers will decide what to do with the men when they return.

"It's up in the air what they could be charged with as we don't know what the evidence is yet," said a police spokesman. He said the four were not wanted in Britain before their capture in Afghanistan.

For a government that has put security centre stage for the next election, expected in May, the prospect of four former terror suspects walking free is unappealing.

Yet more awkward is the contrast with the fate of nine foreign terror suspects held in a British prison, described by rights groups as "Britain's Guantanamo", even after the country's top court ruled against it a month ago.

"It shows a glaring contradiction. The government has worked for the release of detainees in Guantanamo but is detaining foreign nationals in its own jails without trial and in breach of fundamental human rights," said a spokesman for human rights group Amnesty.

US officials say several of the four suspects learnt bomb-making and assassination skills at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and that Abbasi had met Osama bin Laden three times and volunteered for suicide missions.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told Parliament on Tuesday it was up to the police to decide what to do, but added:

"I should like to assure the House that every practical step will be taken by the relevant UK authorities to maintain national security and to protect public safety."

British officials said no deals had been done, although the Pentagon said Britain and Australia, which is also having a national freed, had given it "security assurances".

Washington believes some of the 200 detainees it has released from Guantanamo have returned to terrorism.

But any move to press charges in Britain is complicated, as evidence obtained in Guantanamo, where prisoners say they were tortured, would be legally inadmissible.

Rights group Liberty said it expected the suspects to be freed. "The assumption is that, rather like the ones who returned last year, they will be released pretty quickly," a spokesman for the group said.

- REUTERS