Spain sought the extradition of two Arab men for alleged al-Qaeda links today, a day after the United States freed them without charge from Guantanamo Bay and let them fly to Britain.
British police said they had served European Union arrest warrants on Jordanian Jamil el-Banna and Libyan Omar Deghayes, both wanted in Spain on terrorism-related charges. The two men are British residents.
They were questioning a third man, an Algerian who is also a British resident and who arrived in Britain yesterday with the other two men after being freed from the US detention camp for terrorism suspects in Cuba.
Lawyers for Banna and Deghayes dismissed what they called "wild" and "stale" allegations by the Spanish authorities and criticised them for failing to ask the United States to extradite the men earlier.
Banna, who is 45 but looks much older with grey hair and beard trailing down to his chest, won a small victory when a judge granted him £50,000 bail until a full extradition hearing on Jan. 9. He must wear an electronic tag and will be subject to a curfew at night.
"I want to go home. I want to see my children," said the father-of-five, who has never met his youngest daughter, Mariam.
Melanie Cumberland, a lawyer representing the Spanish authorities, said Banna was accused of being a member of an al-Qaeda cell, known as the Islamic Alliance, in Madrid between June 1996 and July 2001.
She argued unsuccessfully against his bail application, saying years of detention in Guantanamo may have fuelled his views and made him likely to re-offend or flee.
"This defendant could with relative ease make contact with other members of al-Qaeda to obtain false travel documents to facilitate his absconding from the proceedings," she said.
Banna's lawyer Edward Fitzgerald said he only wanted to rejoin his family. "What possible incentive has this man to leave this country, to which he has been fighting to be returned?"
Banna's defence team said he had never been to Spain and the case against him was based on "just a bunch of phone calls he made" to people there.
They said exhaustive investigations by US authorities in Guantanamo had concluded he posed no threat to the United States and its allies, and British officials had acknowledged this in court documents.