Lawyer: Guantanamo inmate to go free

February 23, 2009|Associated Press

LONDON - A Guantanamo Bay inmate who says he was tortured while in US custody will be released today and returned to Britain, his lawyer said yesterday.

Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and former British resident, has been kept at the military prison camp in Cuba even though terrorism charges against him were dropped in October.

His release had been widely anticipated after President Obama took office pledging to close Guantanamo and return as many detainees as possible to their home countries. Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband, has been lobbying for Mohamed's return to Britain since 2007.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith said he was "confident it will happen on Monday."

Stafford Smith acts as Mohamed's civilian lawyer. Military lawyer Lieutenant Colonel Yvonne Bradley said she had no confirmation of when her client was due to return to Britain.

She added that she was often the last person to know what the US government was doing with Mohamed. "You'd think counsel would know, but this is what I've been dealing with for the last three years," Bradley said.

Mohamed, 30, who moved to Britain as a refugee when he was 15, was arrested in Pakistan on a visa violation and turned over to American authorities, according to rights group Reprieve, which Stafford Smith directs.

Mohamed alleges he was beaten in Pakistan and tortured in Morocco and Afghanistan before being moved to the US facility in Cuba in September 2004. Washington has never publicly acknowledged extraordinary renditions to places such as Morocco and still refuses to say where Mohamed was before he was taken to Guantanamo.