"I Helped MI5. My Reward: Brutality and Prison"
By David Rose
The Observer UK
Sunday 29 July 2007
When Bisher al-Rawi agreed to work for the British government, he thought he
was doing the right thing. He spent four gruelling years at Guantanamo Bay
for his efforts. In this remarkable interview he breaks his silence and
tells his extraordinary story to David Rose.
James Bond used to interview informants in nightclubs and luxury hotels.
Le Carré's George Smiley preferred park benches, or safe houses in
Belgravia. But when Bisher al-Rawi met the men from MI5, they chose
somewhere more prosaic: a table in the basement of the Kensington High
Street McDonald's, just to the left of the stairs. 'I always had a
Filet-o-Fish,' al-Rawi says drily. 'They would only drink. One supposes they
didn't like the food.'
It wasn't the only difference between Britain's real and fictional
spies. Having risked his life and reputation to tell MI5 about Islamic
radicalism in London in the months after 9/11, al-Rawi has told The Observer
the sensational story of his betrayal.
A secret telegram was sent from the British Security Service to the CIA,
in which they told the Americans that al-Rawi was carrying a timing device
for a bomb - in reality, an innocuous battery charger from Argos - on a
business trip to Gambia. Al-Rawi, the telegram added, was an 'Iraqi
extremist' associate of the preacher Abu Qatada, later described as Osama
bin Laden's ambassador to Europe and now in a British jail
It did not, however, mention the fact that al-Rawi had been seeing
Qatada at the request of MI5.
Only a few months earlier, in the spring of 2002, while Qatada was
wanted and supposedly in hiding, al-Rawi had visited him numerous times with
MI5's knowledge, in the hope of arranging a meeting between him and his
handlers. In addition, he had told MI5 all about his life and tried to
provide an insight into Britain's Islamic scene.
All of it was thrown in his face. Arrested on arrival in Gambia and
interrogated, a month later, al-Rawi was flown on an illegal CIA 'rendition'
flight halfway across the world and spent four and a half years detained
without charge in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. From the beginning, he
says, the basis of his hundreds of interrogations was the information he had
already freely given to MI5.
Last week, in two days of interviews, al-Rawi told his story for the
first time. He was speaking out for one reason - to help his friend, Jamil
el-Banna, who was arrested in Gambia with him and shared his ordeal. Like
al-Rawi, he has now been deemed to pose no threat by the Americans. But
el-Banna, a refugee from Jordan long settled in Britain who has five British
children, is still in his cell in Guantanamo - because the UK government has
refused to allow his return.
Read the Full Report Here: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/072907A.shtml
Recommended Resources
<http://www.kpfk.org/> http://www.kpfk.org/
<http://www.commondreams.org/> http://www.commondreams.org/
Ara
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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