The Life of a Detainee: Guantanamo Briton to Sue British Government

Excerpted from the Independent/UK:

A British terror suspect jailed for nearly three years in Guantanamo Bay is to sue the [British] Government because it was involved in his arrest, his lawyer said yesterday.

Martin Mubanga, 32, one of four Britons released from the American detention centre in Cuba last month, claims that an MI6 agent played an important role in having him sent there.

Mr Mubanga also claims that the agent asked him, while he was under arrest in Zambia, to spy on Islamic groups in South Africa and Leeds. "They wanted me to go where no one would know me. I suppose so I could be undercover. I refused," he said in his first newspaper interview, with The Observer.

Three weeks after he declined to co-operate, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay. Despite persistent doubts over his links to Islamic terror groups, he says that he was chained up, soaked in his own urine, subjected to conditions of extreme cold and heat, and physically abused by guards.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, said yesterday that he was not organising a "specific investigation" into Mr Mubanga's claims.

[snip]

Mr Mubanga's lawyer, Louise Christian, said she plans to launch lawsuits - against the British and Zambian governments - claiming her client's arrest, detention and transfer to Cuba breached national and international laws. Even though he was immediately arrested on his return to Britain on 23 January and questioned by anti-terrorist police officers, he was released without charge.

During the 33 months he was held, Mr Mubanga says he was humiliated by his guards. On 15 June last year, he says he was taken for routine interrogation but denied access to a toilet. His interrogator told him to go in the corner of the room. Taking a mop, the official "started covering me with my own waste, like he was using a big paintbrush, working methodically, beginning with my feet and working his way up my legs," he said.

A month before his release he says he was taken to Camp X-Ray, the higher-security part of Guantanamo. While there, he was placed under constant surveillance and denied all contact with his fellow prisoners.

Mr Mubanga said he is struggling to come to terms with his freedom, although he has been working on material for an album,Detainee, to be released under the stage name 10,007 - his Guantanamo prisoner number ... "For three years, I was locked in a room where I couldn't walk as far as this chair that I'm sitting in to that window, and now suddenly I'm back in London. It's hard to adjust ..."