Ex-prisoners in media bid war

By CHRIS BUNTING, ROBERT VERKAIK and IAN HERBERT in London

The four remaining British detainees flown home from Guantanamo Bay were released by the Metropolitan police yesterday and stepped into a media bidding war for their stories.

Tarek Dergoul, 26, Asif Iqbal, 22, Shafiq Rasul, 26, and Rhuhel Ahmed, 22, were released without charge from the high-security Paddington Green police station in west London, where they had been held under the Terrorism Act since being flown back to Britain on Wednesday.

A fifth, Jamal al-Harith, 37, was released almost immediately on arrival after questioning by immigration officers. Four other British nationals are still being held at Guantanamo Bay.

The clamour for stories began even before the five boarded the C-17 plane which took them from Cuba.

"If you are not offering money, forget it," said a lawyer for one of the five when asked about the chances of an interview.

Yesterday, reporters were furiously dispatching business cards and letters to the men's families and lawyers, promising large sums of money for their first-hand stories.

The international scale of the detainees' story may also inflate the sums of money they can demand.

American journalists are rumoured to have rented houses in Tipton, the West Midlands town that is home to three of the former detainees. It was uncertain yesterday whether the former detainee Dergoul, a care worker from east London, had signed a deal with a media organisation.

He is believed to be mentally fragile and having difficulty walking after two years in American custody.

British publicist Max Clifford said he had been hired by Dergoul's family and expected tabloids would bid six figures for the prisoners' stories.

"Physically he is not in a very good condition. He has been incarcerated for two years and is physically in a bad way. He is mentally fragile but okay," Clifford said.

He said he had received no money from Dergoul's family. The level of media interest, including countless "cards and invitations" led the family to put their story in his hands.

Clifford said Dergoul, who was captured in the Tora Bora mountains following the US-led coalition's invasion of Afghanistan, had been caught in "the wrong place at the wrong time". He had originally told his family he was flying to Pakistan in 2001 to learn Arabic.

Dergoul's solicitor, Louise Christian, said her client had complained of being cold in his police cell. She said police had not made proper allowances for his sleep deprivation or provided enough blankets to keep him warm after he had been flown home from the Caribbean.

Christian said Dergoul had had one of his hands amputated after he was captured by US forces in Afghanistan.

- INDEPENDENT