UK Resident: Guantanamo Tough to Endure

Apr 1, 7:15 AM (ET)

By DAVID STRINGER

LONDON (AP) - A British resident released from Guantanamo Bay after nearly five years in captivity said Sunday his detention at the U.S. prison camp was "profoundly difficult" to endure, his first comments since his release.

Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi national, had been held at the U.S. base in Cuba since it opened in 2002, but was reunited with his family in south London this weekend.

British officials have long refused to represent resident foreigners held at Guantanamo, but took up al-Rawi's case after it was disclosed he had provided assistance to MI5 - Britain's domestic spy agency.


U.S. military guards keep watch from a tower overlooking the perimeter of Camp Delta detention center, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba, in this June 29, 2006 file photo. David Hicks, an Australian detained at Guantanamo since 2002, pled guilty earlier in the week and was found guilty Friday of providing material support for terrorism, marking the first conviction at a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

U.S attorney George Brent Mickum IV said al-Rawi had agreed, during one of at least six interviews with British agents at Guantanamo, to work for the British service in exchange for his release.

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