US Jail Camp Must End, Says Blair

London

The United States prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was an anomaly that must end, Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday.

Mr Blair said he had asked US President George Bush to free the remaining four Britons. But Washington insisted that the British Government must guarantee they would not pose an international threat.

"Guantanamo Bay is an anomaly that has, at some point, got to be brought to an end," Mr Blair told a committee of MPs.

"The American response has been the same all the way through. At the end, if the trial requirements do not meet our standards, they will come back, but we also have to make sure they will not be a threat either to this country or elsewhere."

Five other Britons who spent up to two years in the US base were released to British officials in March, and soon freed without charge.

Mr Blair is under pressure from political opponents and many of his own Labour Party MPs to resolve the issue. Some suggest the deadlock reveals he wields little influence in Washington, despite supporting Mr Bush in Iraq.

Yesterday, the Pakistani Government said the US had requested Mamdouh Habib, one of two Australians detained at Guantanamo Bay, be taken from Pakistan to Egypt for interrogation, where it has been claimed he was tortured.

The admission was made by Pakistan's Interior Minister, Makhdoom Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat, to SBS's Dateline program to be shown tonight. The program also contains an interview with a former Qatari justice minister, Dr Najeeb Nauimi, who says Mr Habib was tortured and interrogated in Egypt "in a way in which a human cannot stand up", to the point where, he said, Mr Habib would admit anything.

Tarek Dherghoul, a British man who knew Mr Habib at Guantanamo Bay and who has since been freed, told the program that: "(Habib) said something about a dog being put on him as he was naked. Cigars put out on his body, blindfolded."

Steve Watts, a lawyer with the Centre for Constitutional Rights in New York, claims the US routinely engages in a policy known as "rendition", which he describes as "state sponsored abduction".

This is where the American authorities remove people to countries, such as Egypt, where torture is used in interrogation.

Mr Watts claims this is what hap pened to Mr Habib.

Dateline's focus on Mr Habib begins with his capture on a bus in Pakistan in October 2001. He was also interviewed in Pakistan three times by ASIO and Australian Federal Police, which the Australian Government has confirmed.

Source: SYDNEY MORNING HERALD and ASSOCIATED PRESS