The British Government is under growing pressure to demand the return from US custody of two Pakistani men who were captured by British forces in Iraq, handed over to US forces and then sent to the infamous “Dark Prison” at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan.
In February the Government admitted that British forces captured the men in 2004 and handed them into US custody. They were then taken to Bagram, where both remain without trial. However, the Government had refused to reveal their identities.
The two men have now been identified by human rights workers as Amanatullah Ali, from Punjab in Pakistan, and Salahuddin, who was raised in the Gulf states but is a Pakistani citizen believed to be from Baluchistan.
Neither man has had access to a lawyer since their capture by the SAS during a raid in Baghdad in Iraq in 2004, and Mr Salahuddin is reported by other prisoners to have undergone a complete mental breakdown during his five-year incarceration. He is now held in the mental health wing of Bagram prison.
The case of the two men, which has mired the British Government in the illegal process of transferring prisoners to prisons beyond the reach of due legal process, sometimes for harsh interrogation, known as extraordinary rendition, has become a cause c?lèbre for human rights groups.
Advertisement
The human rights group Reprieve wrote to Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, at the weekend demanding that Britain exercise its right to reclaim custody of the men under the rules of a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the US Government on March 23, 2003.
The memorandum gives Britain, as the “detaining power” in the capture of the two prisoners, the right to determine their status and to demand their return. It also makes Britain responsible for the costs of maintaining the prisoners.
In February John Hutton, then Defence Secretary, delivered what he called a “full account” of the men to Parliament, claiming that the two were members of the al-Qaeda- linked Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that was responsible for the Mumbai attacks of 2008.
Mr Hutton said that the US transferred them to Afghanistan because of a lack of linguists, continued to review their status as “unlawful enemy combatants” and claimed that the detainees were held in a humane environment. Reprieve challenges the truth of this statement.
The Ministry of Defence said that the men “were a significant threat to the lives of Iraqi civilians and to coalition forces. Their initial detention was appropriate, legitimate and targeted at saving lives”.