Britain: Relatives and rights lawyers urged Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday to demand the release of all Britons and other Europeans from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay when he meets President George Bush this week.
Campaigners said a ruling by a Washington judge that a military trial of one detainee was illegal, exposed the whole Guantanamo regime as an expensive embarrassment and "a major source of international tension".
"The Washington Federal decision has blown another hole in Bush's strategy of Guantanamo Bay," Mr Stephen Jakobi, director of the British legal pressure group Fair Trials Abroad, said.
"Now the presidential election is over, it is an embarrassment. The whole show is expensive, going nowhere - and the problem is how to wind it down."
In what was seen as a major setback to the Bush administration, a Washington federal court judge on Monday halted the military tribunal trial of a Guantanamo prisoner accused of being Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and driver.
The judge ruled the trial was unlawful and could not proceed until a decision is made on whether he is a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions, and until rules are changed so he can see evidence against him and be present at all proceedings.
Four Britons - Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga, Richard Belmar and Moazzam Begg - and seven further Europeans are being held at Guantanamo. Ms Louise Christian, a British lawyer acting for Mr Abbasi's family, welcomed the ruling as "very, very significant".
"It's a hopeful sign that the whole attempt to persuade people there is any kind of judicial process surrounding Guantanamo Bay is being completely destroyed by the US courts.
"That has got to be a positive thing. These people have been there for three years now."
Guantanamo is an on-going headache for Mr Blair, who is under fire from his own Labour Party and the British public for failing to make progress despite close relations with Bush.
Christian noted that despite government requests for the British prisoners to be returned, four remain in detention. "We know that lots of Afghans have been released recently at the request of (Afghan President) Hamid Karzai - so it seems that Karzai has more influence over Bush than Blair."
Mr Azmat Begg, the father of one of the British detainees insisted that if Blair really saw it as a priority, he could secure the release of the Britons almost immediately.
"It's in Blair's hands," Mr Begg said. "If he wanted to, he could sort the whole thing out in minutes."
A spokesman for Britain's foreign office declined to comment on the US court ruling, but said the government had long argued that military tribunals did not constitute fair trials. - (Reuters)