LONDON, Jan. 25 -- Britain's last remaining prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, arrived home on a military transport jet Tuesday night and were immediately detained for questioning by anti-terrorist police, despite protests from Muslim leaders.
The British government has "accepted responsibility" for the four men, the Pentagon said in a statement, and had given assurances they would not pose a continuing security threat to the United States and its allies.
A Royal Air Force plane carrying the last four British detainees to be freed from Guantanamo Bay lands at a base near London. The men were held for questioning.
(Kieran Doherty -- Reuters)
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A senior U.S. administration official said the British had promised to investigate the men but had made no promise to indict them. However, they would not be allowed to travel outside Britain, according to the official.
The men -- Moazzam Begg of Birmingham and Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar of London -- had been held by U.S. authorities for as long as three years. They were released only after extensive negotiations between the U.S. and British governments.
Prime Minister Tony Blair pressed for their return, and the long delay became a political embarrassment to him. His government is also facing criticism at home that its new anti-terrorism laws violate human rights.
U.S. officials alleged that all four prisoners had trained at al Qaeda camps; at one point, two of the men were designated for trial by a military tribunal. Their attorneys say the men did nothing wrong but were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were detained.
After landing at an air force base outside London, the four were taken in armored vans to a high security police station in London. Members of Muslim groups chanted anti-American slogans and waved placards outside the building.
The men were examined by doctors and psychiatrists and permitted to visit with family members.
Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police Service's Anti-Terrorist Branch, said in a statement: "We have discussed this case with members of the Muslim community and recognize that there are strong feelings about the return of these men to the U.K. But the fact is that we have an absolute duty on behalf of all communities to investigate the circumstances leading to the men's detention."
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, met with one of the homeland security ministers, Hazel Blears, to discuss the case. He later told Britain's Press Association: "These men have of course already been questioned extensively by our security services in Guantanamo, and we can see no justification for them to be detained any longer than absolutely necessary."
Last year, five of the original nine British citizens held at Guantanamo were brought home and released without charge. Some later alleged they had been mistreated at the U.S. prison. Begg, one of the men who returned Tuesday, has said he was subjected to "vindictive torture" after he was captured in Pakistan and handed over to U.S. agents at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Begg's father, Azmat, told the BBC on Tuesday he was "nervous and emotional" about his son's return. He said his son had experienced "mental torture for three years, and I don't know what that has done to him. Also at the same time I am happy my son is coming home."
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights welcomed the release of the four British prisoners and an Australian detainee, Mamdouh Habib, but repeated its demand for federal court hearings for all the remaining 550 or more detainees and the closure of the military detention complex.
"It is an American Gulag and we will not be satisfied until this experiment with human lives is ended," the center's president, Michael Ratner, said in a statement.
