Britons held at Camp Delta may not face trial

THE US has agreed to suspend the threat of secret military hearings against two British terror suspects, pending talks between legal authorities on both sides of the Atlantic, a Downing Street spokesman said yesterday.

Attorney General Lord Goldsmith will begin negotiations with American authorities over the fate of Feroz Abbasi, 23, from London, and Moazzam Begg, 35, from Birmingham.

Both had been on US President George W Bush’s list of six suspects who could face secret trials conducted by the American military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Solicitor Louise Christian, who represents some of the British detainees at Guantanamo Bay, said she had not been informed of the suspension.

She told Sky News: “Obviously it’s a relief if they are not going to have to face trial in front of these completely unfair military commissions.

“But it’s not a relief if they are going to continue to be held incommunicado without access to a lawyer or to a court in these dreadful conditions.

“They have been there for over 18 months already and it has taken the British Government 18 months to do anything about it. The Government should be demanding immediate access to a lawyer as a bottom line.”

Abbasi’s mother Zumrati Juma, from Croydon, south London, said earlier that her son “may have been foolish” but did not deserve to die.

In a rare public comment on Abbasi’s detention at the Camp Delta military base, nurse Ms Juma said that if Tony Blair did not stop the Americans “torturing and killing my son”, he would never again be able to say he upheld human rights.

“I was absolutely devastated to find out that my son Feroz is to be paraded before military judges even while they are building an execution chamber next door,” she said in a statement issued before yesterday’s breakthrough announcement.

“He has been held in this place for a year and a half.”

In a claim later denied by the Foreign Office, she said: “Feroz is a British citizen. So far the British Government has done nothing for him.”

Sally Begg has called for her husband to be freed so he can meet the one-year-old son he has never seen.

He was arrested in Pakistan, where he was working as a teacher and charity worker, in February 2002, and taken to Afghanistan. He was held for a year without access to consular staff, before being moved to Camp Delta.

His family maintained that he was a victim of mistaken identity.

Stephen Jakobi of Fair Trials Abroad told Sky News: “There is also a Spaniard, a Dane, a Swede and three Frenchmen sitting in Guantanamo.”