Tony Blair’s government was given special access to US intelligence files on Guantánamo Bay which revealed there was no credible evidence against the British detainees, a new book has claimed.
US officials hoped that any British detainees released from the notorious prison camp would be detained once they set foot in the UK or placed under strict surveillance. But officials who examined files on British detainees in a meeting in Washington in February 2004 found there was no significant evidence against them.
The UK government agreed six years later to pay millions of pounds in compensation to the former Guantánamo Bay detainees. The payouts were reported to be up to £20m.
Details of the meeting between the UK and US officials for the release of British detainees have emerged for the first time in a new book on the intelligence services, The Secret History of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj.
Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard’s former deputy assistant commissioner, accompanied cabinet office and Foreign Office officials for a meeting on 27 February 2004 to examine the secret files on the British detainees.
The official spent several hours going through the material at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which overlooks the White House. The files were intended to convey the level of threat that the detainees posed. The American officials were anxious that any detainees who were released would not pose a potential future threat.
“The intelligence was not sufficient to charge the detainees with anything,” said Clarke in his account of the meeting in the new book. “None of the material would have been admissible in court.”
US officials who might have hoped the UK detainees would be detained on British soil were soon disappointed. “We had to explain repeatedly that whatever happened to the detainees on their return to the UK could only be strictly in accordance with UK law,” said Clarke.
“There would be no arbitrary detention, unauthorised surveillance or extra-legal restrictions placed upon them, and we would certainly not be able to bring prosecutions on the basis of evidence gleaned by interrogations while they had been held in US custody.
“This was not because I was aware of any mistreatment but because their interviews had not been conducted with the safeguards, legal framework and access to legal representation.”
The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, a US naval base outpost in south-eastern Cuba, was established in January 2002 during the “war on terror”. In total, it has held about 780 detainees, and Amnesty International says it has become “a symbol of torture, rendition and indefinite detention without charge or trial”.
A series of meetings was held between UK and US officials in 2004 after the Labour government came under pressure over the British detainees held in the camp without trials.
Within a year, nine of the detainees had been released, including Moazzam Begg, who now campaigns with the Cage advocacy group, which works to help people caught up with the “war on terror”.
It was reported in November 2010 that the government was ready to pay up to £20m in compensation to the British detainees of Guantánamo Bay. Ministers later faced questions over the payouts after Jamal Udeen al-Harith, who reportedly received £1m compensation, carried out a suicide attack in Iraq in February 2017.
Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo Bay, was released in October 2015. The Saudi national who had permission to live in the UK indefinitely had been held since 2002, but had never been charged or faced trial.
As of July 2022, there were 36 detainees left in Guantánamo Bay. The White House has said it is the “goal and intention” to shut the facility, but human rights campaigner are frustrated that it is still open.
