THE wife of a British resident detained without trial at Guantanamo Bay is to seek a court order requiring the Foreign Secretary to press the Americans for his release.
Sabah el-Banna believes that there is compelling evidence that the Government was complicit in the illegal detention of her husband, Jamil, who was arrested on a business trip to The Gambia in November 2002 and shipped to Guantanamo Bay, via Afghanistan, by the United States.
This year Mr el-Banna lost a legal challenge in the High Court to force the Government to petition the US for his freedom. An appeal has now been lodged in the Court of Appeal.Mrs el-Banna hopes that Secret Intelligence Service telegrams, which were made public during the earlier hearing but which could not be admitted as evidence, will lead to a judgment in her husband’s favour.
The documents show that British security services provided information on her husband’s travel arrangements to The Gambia and one other country, believed to be the United States, leading to his arrest by the Gambian secret service and his rendition.
Mrs el-Banna said that she believes British security services tipped off the Americans because her husband had rebuffed their attempts to recruit him as an informant on the Muslim community in Britain. “I think they sent him to Guantanamo because he would not work with them,” she said. She hopes that a separate memo, made public at the same time, will also help her husband’s case. In it a British intelligence officer, who calls himself Michael, describes a visit to the el-Banna family home in the following words: “I again returned to the choice he had; if he chose to help us by providing details of all his activities and contacts, we would assist him to create a new life for himself and family.”
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The memo noted that Mr el-Banna, a Jordanian who arrived in Britain as a refugee in 1994 and had permanent leave to remain, replied by saying that his life was now in Britain.
Mrs el-Banna said that she remembered the visit to the family home in North London well. “They had ID cards. It was around 8.30am and I was getting the children ready for school. They came in and were speaking to Jamil. They left after a short while. Because we were busy getting ready for his trip [to The Gambia] we never really talked about what they said.”
Mrs el-Banna, whose five children are British citizens, said that the security services’ interest in her husband stemmed from his links with Abu Qatada, who has been described as al-Qaeda’s “spiritual leader”.
“We knew them in Pakistan,” Mrs el-Banna said. “They were our neighbours. In London they lived far away. But his wife had a baby. The son had a lot of illnesses and Jamil took the child and mother to his appointments. I was wary that it could be dangerous. I started to feel fear when I read about Abu Qatada in the papers or saw things on television.”
Sarah Teather, Mrs elBanna’s MP, urged the Government to act on behalf of her husband. “His continued detention must be a source of massive embarrassment for the Government,” she said. “This is a clear example of rendition.”