Blair joins calls for closure of Guantanamo detention camp

Tony Blair yesterday joined the growing calls for the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay to be closed after he was questioned about the claims of torture by two British residents held there.

Mr Blair's was challenged at his regular monthly press conference at 10 Downing Street over the graphic and shocking claims by two men who lived in Britain that they were handed over to the CIA by the British security service MI5 for torture in Kabul's notorious 'dark prison' before being taken to Guantanamo.

Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna are among eight foreign nationals who have recently lived in the UK who are still in the detention camp in Cuba after more than three years and are demanding their freedom.

They claim they were asked by MI5 to work for them but were later handed to the CIA for 'rendition'.

Neither of the men were picked up in Afghanistan but were associates of the Muslim cleric, Abu Qatada in London.

Their lawyer, George B Mickum, a partner in a respected Washington law firm, who had privileged access to classified evidence, reported in The Independent yesterday they were arrested in the African state of Gambia in November 2002.

They were flown by the CIA to Afghanistan where they were manacled, interrogated and imprisoned underground before being transferred to Guantanamo.

They claimed that, while in Kabul, they were beaten, kicked and hit with blunt objects, as well as being held in solitary confinement and kept in freezing conditions to induce hypothermia.

The Prime Minister in the past has said holding the detainees in the camp in Cuba outside the normal rules of war or criminal courts was an 'anomaly' which had to be ended.

Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, recently went further by calling for the camp to be closed but Mr Blair had been reluctant to do so to avoid allowing a diplomatic breach with the US President George W Bush over Guantanamo.

Questioned yesterday about their claims, Mr Blair said: "I can't comment on individual cases. I think they are the subject of a court action.

"I have said that I think it would be better if it (Guantanamo) was closed for all the reasons that we have given over a long period of time."

He added: "The only thing I always do to balance it out is remind people that it arose out of the circumstances of 9/11.

"In fairness to the Americans, they dispute many of these claims that are made. And there are things, certainly, that I have read about the circumstances of some of the British who were in Guantanamo that are strongly disputed in certain quarters."

- INDEPENDENT