U.S. to Send 5 Detainees Home From Guantanamo

Australian, Four Britons Allege Abuse

An Australian terrorism suspect who says he was tortured in an Egyptian jail after being sent there by the United States will be released from custody in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, along with the last four British citizens held there, the Pentagon announced yesterday.

Mamdouh Habib will be flown to Australia, while the four British citizens will be transferred to their home country. Authorities in those two countries have promised to investigate allegations against the men but have made no commitment to hold them indefinitely or prosecute them, according to a senior administration official involved in negotiations for the release.

As recently as November, the Defense Department accused all five of being hard-core terrorists, either as associates of al Qaeda or aspiring fighters who sought to harm Americans.

Most of the approximately 550 detainees at Guantanamo are believed to have been seized in Afghanistan. But four of the five men on the new release list were arrested in other countries and turned over to U.S. custody.

Many foreign governments have lobbied the United States to release citizens of their countries held at Guantanamo Bay. Those governments have often quickly released the men after questioning them on their return home, saying there was no legal ground to hold them. U.S. officials say five or 10 such people have returned to terrorist activities.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing that "it isn't easy" to make judgments about detainee releases. "And indeed," he said, "the United States government has made poor judgments in some instances, where people have been released and ended up back on the battlefield and had to be captured or killed."

Attorneys for some of the five suspects who are to leave Cuba contended Tuesday that U.S. authorities were freeing them out of embarrassment over allegations that they were tortured in detention.

The senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, denied that assertion, saying the releases were the result of long negotiations with home governments eager to bring back their citizens.

He said that to address U.S. security concerns, British authorities had agreed that the men would not be allowed to travel outside the country. "The U.K. has agreed to control their movements, particularly travel," he said. Britain and Australia may also keep the men under surveillance if they are freed.

The decision to release the four Britons followed months of what Foreign Secretary Jack Straw described to Parliament on Tuesday as "intense and complex discussions" with American officials over U.S. security concerns, including direct discussions between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

The four had been the focus at home of a long human rights campaign. Supporters view them as proof that the Bush administration has violated international law in its war on terrorism.

The U.S. government accused Habib of training several of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers in martial arts and of planning separately to hijack a plane. The military also said he admitted that he once contacted members of the radical group Hezbollah about helping with jihad in Afghanistan and helped transfer chemical weapons to a compound in Kabul.

In documents filed in federal court in Washington, Habib said he made several false statements while being tortured in an Egyptian prison, where the United States had sent him after his arrest in Pakistan in 2001. He said that while there he was nearly drowned, given electric shocks, hung from his arms in serial torture sessions and questioned repeatedly by interrogators with American accents.

The British detainees include Feroz Abbasi, 24, a South London resident who a U.S. military panel last fall ruled was an al Qaeda member who had volunteered for a suicide mission. Abbasi, who was captured in Afghanistan after the overthrow of the Taliban rulers in late 2001, denied the allegation. He was not allowed to have an attorney at the military hearing.

The others are Moazzam Begg, 36, a teacher from Birmingham, England, who was arrested in Pakistan in January 2002, and London residents Richard Belmar, 25, arrested somewhere in Pakistan, and Martin Mubanga, 31.

According to U.S. authorities, Mubanga, who was captured while visiting family in Zambia in 2002, was a terrorist-in-training who fled Afghanistan during the war and had a list of more than 30 Jewish targets in New York he was studying for attack.

All five detainees have alleged mistreatment in custody. Abbasi and Mubanga have said they were repeatedly abused during interrogations at Guantanamo through use of frigid and stifling temperatures, short shackles and random beatings.

The U.S. government "must know that it's hemorrhaging world credibility," said Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents several dozen detainees. Releasing the detainees "is a way to stanch the bleeding," she said.

Some attorneys for detainees say they believe the administration is hoping to avoid having to defend in court its alleged practice of sending suspects to foreign prisons where questionable interrogation tactics are used. "The political folks have decided this is now hurting the administration and they need to make it go away," said Brent Mickum, an attorney for Mubanga. "And they're looking to avoid having any bad precedent that would affect their ability" to transfer detainees to third countries.

Blair, who is the Bush administration's most staunch foreign ally, has continually defended the detention of the British men, even while negotiating for their freedom. But other members of Blair's government, including Straw and Attorney General Peter Goldsmith, have publicly declared that the military tribunals the Bush administration established for the detainees did not meet international standards of fairness.

On Tuesday, the British government portrayed the planned releases as a political triumph for Blair, who is often criticized for having extracted few tangible benefits from Bush, a highly unpopular figure in Britain. "Had it not been for our alliance" with the United States, Straw told the House of Commons, the men would not be going free.

Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, the third-largest party in Parliament, told lawmakers that "the detention of these men violated all legal principle. Their civil rights were systematically and deliberately abused and they were denied due process."

Geraint Davies, a member of Blair's Labor Party who represents the parliamentary district where Abbasi lives, welcomed his constituent's release. "Clearly he's not a person beyond suspicion," Davies said. "But if he's done anything wrong, he should be charged in a court of law. It's important that if Britain is to stand shoulder to shoulder with America to fight for peace and democracy, we can't have Guantanamo Bay stand as an example of injustice and double standards."

Frankel reported from London. Staff writer Dana Priest contributed to this report.