UK refuses to accept return of Guantanamo prisoners: report
Regional-UK, Local, 10/3/2006

The US has offered to return nearly all British residents held at Guantanamo Bay but the UK has refused to accept them, according to reports today.

The Guardian newspaper said it had seen documents that show US authorities are demanding that the detainees be kept under 24-hour surveillance if they are set free but that the restrictions have been dismissed by Britain as unnecessary and unworkable.

"Although all are accused of terrorist involvement, Britain says there is no intelligence to warrant the measures Washington wants, and it lacks the resources to implement them," the report said.

It also quoted the head of counter-terrorism at the Home Office in London as saying British residents at Guantanamo, who are believed to number at least nine, "do not pose a sufficient threat." In addition, senior British officials were reported to be insisting that the residents, unlike the six British nationalists who have already been freed from the concentration camp, have no legal right of return.

The documents were said to have shown months of secret wrangling between the US and the UK over the prisoners, some of whom have been held at the military prison for nearly five years.

The Guardian said that it was told by a senior source that the UK government is interested in accepting only one man -- Bisher al-Rawi -- who is now known to have helped the country's MI5 security services.

Lawyers for the British residents have accused the US of still ill-treating the detainees, including four who are said to have been subjected to extreme temperatures varying from freezing cold to high heat.

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