'I do not seek mercy, only justice' says prisoner's father

BIRMINGHAM - For Azmat Begg, the long-awaited homecoming of the five freed Britons was of no comfort.

His son, Moazzam Begg, is one of four Britons who remain in custody at Guantanamo Bay where he awaits trial by military commission.

Begg, in Washington as part of his tireless campaign to urge President George W. Bush to end his son's two-year ordeal, said:

"We are not against Americans or the English, we are human. We simply want justice."

In a letter to Bush, Begg claims that his son had been in Afghanistan as an aid worker, digging wells in villages without water. He had moved to Islamabad, Pakistan, with his wife and children, when he was arrested.

He wrote: "Mr President, I do not plead for mercy, my son has not been charged with any crime. I ask for justice. Before mercy comes justice, and my son has been denied justice.

"Before the law you and I stand equal but in Guantanamo Bay my son is helpless and powerless to prove his innocence."

At Moazzam's family home in Birmingham his wife Sally, 33, insisted her husband was a gentle man who doted on his children. He had never seen his youngest child, who was born after his arrest.

"George Bush says these were bad men arrested with Kalashnikovs in their hands, on the battlefield," she said. "Moazzam was asleep in Pakistan, in bed with me, with the children asleep.

"If he did something wrong, we must have too - perhaps they should arrest us all."

- INDEPENDENT