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UK: No government help for "severely tortured" Guantanamo prisoners

01 March 2006

Three of the British residents, detained without trial or access to unfettered legal assistance at Guantanamo Bay for more than three years, will lodge an appeal after the High Court ruled that the government had no obligation to come to their assistance. In May, lawyers for Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna and Omar Deghayes told the High Court that there was "compelling evidence" that the men had been "severely tortured and suffered inhuman and degrading treatment" at the hands of their US captors. The copious evidence ranges from the accounts by released detainees and their lawyers' statements to medical evidence of torture and even the testimony of US government documents, some of them annotated by the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. The lawyers argued that given this plethora of evidence the government had an obligation and a duty to act on their client's behalf and that they were entitled to receive assistance similar to that given to the British nationals (who were eventually returned to the UK after the Foreign Office belatedly made a formal request).

The government, and Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, maintain that as foreign nationals, the men have no legal right to expect any representation. To put their statements in context it should be recalled that Bisher al-Rawi had lived in Britain for 20 years while Jamil al-Banna had refugee status and Omar Deghayes fled the Gaddafi regime in Libya some 20 years ago. None of the men are in a position where their national governments will represent their interests. Mr Justice Tugendhat and Lord Justice Latham rejected these arguments stating that because they were unable to evaluate what was happening in Guantanamo they would not interfere with Straw's decision that he was "under no obligation to act" on the men's behalf.