Homecoming answers father's prayer

TIPTON - After two years of setbacks and dashed hopes Riasoth Ahmed could hardly contain his joy - his son was finally coming home.

"He is a young boy and has his whole life ahead of him," Ahmed said.

His son, Ruhal Ahmed, was one of five Britons held without trial for two years at Guantanamo Bay. Yesterday the men were back on British soil after being released from the United States base in Cuba.

As detectives from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch waited to question the 23-year-old, his father prepared to welcome him back to their small terraced home in Tipton in the west Midlands.

But Ahmed said he had no idea what effect the high-security detention would have had on his son. "When you can't see him, you can't tell how he will feel, how he will be."

The family has insisted that Ruhal, the third of six children, went to Pakistan for a wedding in 2001.

There he joined his two friends, Shafiq Rasul, 24, and Asif Iqbal, 20, fellow pupils at Alexandra High School in Tipton.

His family say he was in Karachi on the day the Americans started bombing Afghanistan. It was the last time his father spoke to him.

Ahmed was bitter that his son would now be held for questioning before he could see him."He has been interrogated for two years," he said. "Surely they have got all the answers they want by now."

- INDEPENDENT