BRITAIN: Lawyers acting for the Britons released on Tuesday from Guantanamo Bay last night criticised police who were continuing to question four men at Paddington Green high-security police station in London.
Solicitor Ms Gareth Pierce, who represents Mr Shafiq Rasul and Mr Asif Iqbal, said procedures had been unnecessarily protracted and continued late into Tuesday night and that the police were "compounding two years of injustice." And Ms Louise Christian, representing Mr Tarek Dergoul, declared her "very strong view" that there was no basis for holding her client under the Terrorism Act.
The publicist Mr Max Clifford, who has been engaged by Mr Dergoul's family to help them deal with media attention, said Mr Dergoul appeared mentally "OK" but "physically he is in quite a bad way and walking is a problem." And the strain on the relatives of the four men still held (the fifth Briton returned from Guantanamo was released on Tuesday night) was showing as a Muslim leader in Birmingham urged the British government to caution and reflected fears in his community of a move "from a democracy to totalitarianism."
Speaking outside Tipton Muslim Community Centre, the chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, Dr Mohammed Naseem, said it was "deplorable" that the men sent home from Camp Delta - who Home Secretary Mr David Blunkett has said pose no threat to British national security - should have been further detained.
As West Midlands Police directed a warning to the far right against any attempt to incite racial hatred after discovering an effigy of a Guantanamo Bay detainee hanging in the Tipton home of three of the men, Dr Naseem said: "The wider issue of the freedom of people, their right to express their opinion, their right to their own time and life, is being threatened under present laws."
With the spotlight again turned on Mr Blunkett's internment of nine foreign nationals at Belmarsh jail - dubbed by critics "Britain's own little Guantanamo" - Dr Naseem added: "It will be the same situation as in Nazi Germany. In that time people used to be caught and dispensed with and that is happening here."
It was for the law to determine whether a person was guilty or not, he said: "But someone has to answer for why they were held." However, the National Co-ordinator for Terrorism, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, stressed British law and procedures would be "followed to the letter."
The fifth man, Mr Jamal Udeen, was released on Tuesday night. The Terrorism Act enables police to hold the others for up to 14 days.