Courted as Spies, Held as Combatants

Jamil el-Banna, prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. (Family Photo - Family Photo)

The case has caused a political uproar in Britain. Critics say the documents show the British government has helped place people in Guantanamo, despite its claims that the prison is strictly a U.S. operation.

A parliamentary committee is investigating. "The key issue that certainly concerns me is whether our government, the British government, was involved in something that I would consider to be unlawful," said Andrew Tyrie, the committee chairman. "I don't want to live in a country that could be complicit in such abuses."

Rawi came to Britain as a teenager in 1984 with his family from Iraq, where his father had been tortured by Saddam Hussein's secret police, family members said in interviews. He attended British schools but was a self-described poor student who didn't need to find a job because his family was wealthy. He retained his Iraqi citizenship in hopes of reclaiming confiscated family property if Hussein's government ever fell.

One day after the Sept. 11 attacks, two MI5 agents knocked on the door of the house where he lived with his sister and her husband, family members said. The agents asked about Qatada, whom he knew from the mosque. "He was completely gobsmacked," said Nomi Janjua, his brother-in-law. "He said, 'What? Secret services?' I started laughing because we couldn't believe it."

Rawi agreed to become an unpaid informer, according to the family and his attorneys, a claim that the British government has acknowledged in court without elaborating. Although he kept details of his talks with MI5 to himself, British agents quickly became a presence at the family's house. They telephoned so often that his relatives complained, forcing MI5 to give him a mobile phone and meet him elsewhere.

Sometimes the contacts were unfriendly, family members recalled. Once, when he took his mother to an airport, agents pulled him aside for a long interrogation.

MI5 documents show that some agents came to have reservations about whether he was carrying out their orders. He tried to end the relationship in the summer of 2002, upsetting his handlers.

Banna, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, came with his wife to London in 1994 from Pakistan. He had worked in an orphanage in Peshawar, where he met Qatada, a fellow Jordanian.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Banna also received a visit from two intelligence agents, one British and one American, according to his wife, Sabah. The agents inquired about Qatada. He resisted their pressure to become an informer, she said, but they kept it up.

In late 2002, Banna and Rawi made plans to go to Gambia. The purpose of the trip, they have said, was to help Rawi's brother, Wahab, set up a peanut-oil processing plant. In an interview, Wahab al-Rawi said he had invested $225,000 in the venture and had recruited his brother, Banna, and two other friends as partners.

On Oct. 31, 2002, as Banna was packing for the trip, an M15 agent called at his London home and pressed him again to infiltrate extremist circles on behalf of British intelligence, either domestically or in a Muslim country.

"He did not give any hint of willingness to cooperate with us," the unnamed MI5 agent wrote in a report. "I returned to the choice which he could make; he could either continue as at present, with the risks that entailed, or he could start a new life with a new identity. . . . It was quite possible that he could find himself swept up in a further round of detentions."