Guantanamo inmate breaks silence

Mr Begg is back with his family

A Briton freed from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has admitted going to two training camps in Afghanistan, but said he never took up arms against Britain.

Moazzam Begg, from Birmingham, told Channel 4 News that he went to observe a base run by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance for two weeks in 1993.

In 1998 he said he visited a camp run by Kurds opposing Saddam Hussein.

Mr Begg claimed he was tortured by the CIA while he was held in Afghanistan, but was not mistreated in Cuba.

The 37-year-old from the Sparkhill area of the city, was arrested in February 2002 and held at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan before being sent to Guantanamo Bay US naval base in Cuba in early 2003.

He said he was working on "humanitarian relief" when he was arrested, helping to dig wells and set up primary school education.

"I went to a country where people are a lot more impoverished and a lot more worse off, and I tried to help them if I could," he said.

What's kept me going is my faith and the thoughts of my children - more than anything else Moazzam Begg

While at Bagram he said his treatment included being tied up, left on a floor with a bag over his head even though he suffers from asthma, kicked and punched and left there for several hours, only to be interrogated again.

"And, after which they threatened to have me sent to Egypt, to be tortured, to face electric shocks, to have my fingers broken, to be sexually abused and the like," he said.

Mr Begg also said he saw two prisoners beaten so badly by their guards he believed they died.

At Guantanamo Bay, he said he was not tortured but the conditions were "tortuous".

He added: "...through the whole period of detention they have stated that I am a member of al-Qaeda but they have offered no evidence to prove that at all.

"I have offered them to give me some shred of evidence, some proof, tangible proof, that I am a member of al-Qaeda or I have been hostile to the United States in any shape or form whatsoever."

Signed document

Mr Begg said he finally relented and signed a "confession" which had been prepared in the hope that he would be taken to a public court and could then denounce the allegations as "rubbish".

He added: "The worst thing in that (document) somehow stated that a couple of hundred pounds that I had sent in 1993 or 94 had somehow in some crazy way made its way to supporting the 9/11 attackers, which in essence that was the worst thing that was on there."

Mr Begg concluded the interview by stating he could never get back to "normality".

"But what's kept me going is my faith and the thoughts of my children - more than anything else," he said.

Mr Begg was released in January with three other Britons, all from London: Feroz Abbasi from Croydon, Martin Mubanga from Wembley and Richard Belmar from St John's Wood.