'They think Guantánamo is a nice place for a trip' (Guardian)

[struggle4progress]

How the wife of detainee Jamil el-Banna explains his absence to their children

Vikram Dodd
Thursday April 5, 2007
The Guardian

For the past four years, Sabah el-Banna has being trying to keep one step ahead of her children's curiosity about where their father is and how he is being treated. The truth is that Jamil el-Banna is being held at Guantánamo Bay, accused of being a terrorist, that his mental and physical health are failing, and that no prospect of his release is in sight.

~snip~

Sitting in the kitchen of her north London home, she shifts between a resolve to keep going for her family and exasperation at the fate that has befallen her family. The oldest child is Anas, ten, followed by Mohammed, nine, Abdul Rahman, seven, and daughters Badeeah, six, and Maryam, four. She says: "Only God knows how it is with five children, they keep asking, where is our dad, when is he coming back? Maryam, she has never seen him. Forget everything, my tears, how much I'm sick, tired and exhausted, I'm worried about what to tell the children."

~snip~

Yesterday the Guardian reprinted an MI5 document detailing the attempt by security services to recruit Mr Banna as an informer eight days before he flew to Gambia in 2002 for a business trip, where he was seized by the US and rendered first to Afghanistan and then on to Guantánamo. Other documents show how MI5 passed wrong information to the US about him being linked to an attempt to smuggle parts for a bomb through a British airport.

Last week one of Mr Banna's business colleagues on the ill-fated trip to Gambia, Bisher al-Rawi, was released from Guantánamo after four years' imprisonment without charge or trial. Like Mr Banna, a Jordanian national, the British government at first refused to help Mr Rawi, an Iraqi passport holder who has lived in London for 20 years. But Mr Rawi had been helping MI5 gain information on the alleged Islamist extremist Abu Qatada, and this revelation caused Britain to change its position and press the US for his release.

~snip~

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,2050457,00.html

[angstlessk]

1. So NOW terrorists are those who fought against the Russians???

One accusation is that he financed Abu Qatada, and another that Mr Banna had fought in Afghanistan against the Russians.

WHEN DID THIS BECOME A TERRORIST CRIME???