By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 30, 2007

BERLIN, March 29 -- An Iraqi resident of Britain who was seized in West Africa in a 2002 operation orchestrated by the CIA will be released from the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, British officials announced Thursday.

Bisher al-Rawi will be allowed to return to the United Kingdom as soon as this weekend after spending four years at Guantanamo, according to his U.S. attorney, George Brent Mickum IV. Rawi, 39, will be permitted to go free in Britain and will not face criminal charges, Mickum said.

Rawi's pending release comes after contentious negotiations between U.S. and British authorities over his fate following his arrest in Gambia, a small West African nation, in an operation coordinated by the CIA and British intelligence. The outcome of the talks was announced in a statement Thursday by British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on Rawi's case.

British and U.S. documents show that Rawi was not suspected of planning a terrorist attack and was detained in Gambia and later taken to Guantanamo after he resisted pressure to work as an informer for the CIA and for MI5, the British security service. His family and attorneys contend that the seizure was retaliation for that refusal. Rawi had previously given information to MI5 regarding the whereabouts and activities of Abu Qatada, a radical London cleric close to al-Qaeda leaders, but he stopped cooperating.

Rawi had lived in London since 1984. "He's happy to be going home, and he's looking forward to being a free man," said Mickum, a Washington lawyer who spoke with the prisoner by phone last week. "He's been through a harrowing experience."

Rawi and two business partners were arrested Nov. 8, 2002, as they arrived in Banjul, the Gambian capital, from London's Gatwick Airport. Records show that MI5 had obtained their travel plans in advance and transmitted them to "a foreign intelligence agency," presumably the CIA. Rawi and one of his partners, Jamil el-Banna, now 44, were interrogated for a month by CIA and Gambian officials, taken to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan and transferred to Guantanamo. Banna had also been pressed by MI5 for information on Qatada but refused, documents show.

British authorities declined for years to seek the pair's release from Guantanamo, saying the men were not entitled to diplomatic assistance because they lack British citizenship. After a lawsuit filed by Rawi's family resulted in the disclosure last year of MI5's role in his capture, however, the British Foreign Office agreed to intervene in his behalf.

The Foreign Office has continued to decline to assist Banna and eight other Guantanamo prisoners who had lived in the United Kingdom but are not British citizens. The U.S. government previously offered to send all 10 of the residents of Britain back to that country, but British diplomats rejected the overture, according to court records made public in London in October. The sticking point was a U.S. request that the men be kept under police surveillance; British officials said they did not want to shoulder the expense.

Rawi's relatives said they were eagerly awaiting his release but also were wary of last-minute snags. "Our fingers are very, very crossed," Wahab al-Rawi, an older brother, said by phone. "I don't know what to think or what to do. Jamil, my partner and friend, is still there, and we want to get him out as well."