British resident at Guantánamo faces bombing charge

A UK resident imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay is to be charged by the Pentagon over an alleged al-Qaida dirty bomb plot.

Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, an Ethiopian educated in the UK, is accused of planning to blow up apartment buildings in the US.

The Pentagon's chargesheet for the 30-year-old, who had training as an electrical engineer, states he was selected for "a specialised terrorist mission".

Mohamed allegedly plotted with other operatives in building remote-controlled explosive devices in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The alleged aim was to unleash a radioactive dirty bomb against an unspecified US location.

Yesterday, his lawyers condemned the charges as part of a US "rush to charge as many people as possible at Guantánamo Bay prior to President Bush leaving office".

Mohamed faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

The director of British legal rights group Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith, said: "The least the British government can do is insist that no British resident be charged in a kangaroo court on evidence tortured out of him with a razor blade."

Mohamed, one of two British residents still held at Guantánamo was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002 and taken to Morocco by the CIA.

Once there, it is alleged he was beaten and handcuffed during prolonged interrogations as well as being tortured with a scalpel. His mental state has deteriorated as a result, his lawyers say.

Mohamed is said by the Pentagon to have conspired with Jose Padilla, the US citizen and former Chicago gang member who was convicted by a federal court in Florida last year of conspiracy and material support for terrorism. Padilla, 37, was sentenced to 17 years in prison in January.

Mohamed's chargesheet also states that he and Padilla were instructed by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a confessed mastermind of 9/11, to rent apartments in large US cities, fill the corridors and air ducts with natural gas and then blow them up.

In August last year, Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband formally asked the Bush administration to release Mohamed, along with four other UK residents at Guantanamo.

Three of the men were sent home but the US refused to release Mohamed and Saudi-born Shaker Aamer, citing security concerns.

The Guantánamo Bay detention centre, situated on a US base in southern Cuba, currently holds around 270 men.

Prosecutors have indicated they intend to try around 80 of the prisoners in the first US war crimes tribunal since the second world war.