Released Britons say they were interrogated by British officers

4.00pm - By ROBERT VERKAIK

LONDON - Three Britons released from Guantanamo Bay last week have told how they were brutalised by their American captors and interrogated by officers working for MI5, the British intelligence service.

Ruhal Ahmed, 22, Asif Iqbal, 22, Shafiq Rasul, 26, all from Tipton in the West Midlands, claim to have been beaten by their guards and ordered to answer questions at gunpoint.

They also allege that British secret services officers and Foreign Office officials took part in some of the 200 interrogations during their two-year detention at the notorious US naval base in Cuba.

For three months they claim they were held in solitary confinement when they had to survive on tiny portions of food described by one of the men as "nouvelle cuisine American style".

In interviews with two Sunday newspapers the boyhood friends say they were visited at least six times by MI5 and Foreign Office staff.

Mr Rasul says: "Every time the Foreign Office came we asked about what was going on, and whether we had solicitors. His reply was 'I don't know, all I know is what's been on TV. Your case hasn't been on TV'."

But their detention had already received massive publicity and their families' lawyers had been in regular contact with the Foreign Office.

In September 2003 Mr Rasul was visited on consecutive days by the man from the Foreign Office and then the MI5 officer.

When Mr Rasul enquired about his legal status the man from the Foreign Office told him: "You should ask the MI5 guy who's coming tomorrow." But when he did so the next day the MI5 officer said: "You should have asked Martin from the Foreign Office yesterday."

The Tipton men's allegations, together with similar accounts given by the two other British detainees released last week, Tarek Dergoul, 26, Jamal al Harith, 37, will increase pressure on the British government to intervene in the cases of the four remaining Britons still being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Like Mr Dergoul and Mr Harith, the Tipton three deny leaving Britain to fight for the Taleban.

The childhood friends say they went to Pakistan because one of them, Asif Iqbal, was meeting a woman to whom his parents had arranged his marriage.

After the wedding they planned to do some travelling.

But they were captured by Northern Alliance forces after they had gone to Afghanistan on a humanitarian mission to help provide food and medicine for the local people.

According to the men's harrowing account they narrowly survived a massacre by Northern Alliance soldiers when they were caught up in the fall of Kunduz.

Together with thousands of suspected Taleban fighters they were forced into lorry containers which had no ventilation.

Hundreds of fighters and refugees are thought to have suffocated to death.

Mr Iqbal said: "The last thing I remember is that it got really hot and everybody started screaming and banging.

It was like someone had lit a fire beneath the container.

You could feel the moisture running off your bodies and people were ripping of their clothes.

"To survive Mr Iqbal used a cloth to wipe up moisture from the interior walls until he realised he was drinking the body fluids of the massacred prisoners.

Finally the containers' doors were opened and those who survived, including the three Tipton friends were taken to Shebargan prison and later transferred to Guantanamo Bay.

Describing his arrival at Guantanamo Bay, Mr Rasul said: "The sun was beating down and the sweat pouring into my eyes. I shouted for a doctor, someone poured water into my eyes and then I heard it again, 'Traitor, traitor'. You'd look at people and see they'd lost it. There was nothing in their eyes. They didn't talk."