LONDON (AFP) — Two residents just released from the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison camp were let out on bail Thursday pending extradition hearings in London, while another was freed without charge.
Jamil El Banna, 45, who spent more than four years in the camp, was detained on a European arrest warrant after arriving back Wednesday night with two other British residents from the detention centre in Cuba.
"I'm tired. I want to go home and see my children," said the long-bearded El Banna, who is wanted by authorities in Spain. Later television pictures showed him hugging his children after returning by taxi to his home.
Omar Deghayes, 38, was arrested on a similar Spanish extradition warrant, Scotland Yard said.
Magistrates set bail for El Banna and Deghayes at 50,000 pounds (69,300 euros, 99,500 dollars) each.
The third man released from Guantanamo, Abdennour Samuer, was released without charge from London's high-security Paddington Green police station, Scotland Yard said.
The hearings at City of Westminster Magistrates Court were told that Spanish authorities alleged that El Banna and Deghayes were members of an Al-Qaeda cell called the Islamic Alliance.
El Banna is suspected of helping to recruit people to extremist training camps in Afghanistan and Indonesia.
The BBC's website quoted El Banna's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, as saying Spanish authorities had a recording of a conversation El Banna had with Imad Yarkas, who allegedly led an Al-Qaeda cell in Spain that disbanded in 2001.
But the conversation had been an entirely innocent one, he added.
Yarkas, also known as Abu Dahdah, is currently serving a 27-year prison sentence for conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and leading a terrorist organisation.
El Banna was granted bail, meaning he can finally be reunited with his family, including his youngest child, whom he has never seen as she was born after her father's arrest.
Meanwhile, Melanie Cumberland, a lawyer for the Spanish authorities, told the court that Deghayes was "a highly committed member of Al-Qaeda" and was "willing to participate in terrorist activities."
One of the financial guarantors for the men was said to be the human rights activist and actress Vanessa Redgrave. She declined to comment on the financial backing but said outside court she was "very happy" to be able to help El Banna's family.
"Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp. It is a disgrace that these men have been kept there all these years and today Jamil will be back home and justice has been done," she said.
The three had all been detained after their plane touched down Wednesday night at Luton Airport, north of London. They were all held on suspicion of the "commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism," police said.
El Banna -- who is said to have been asked by Britain's domestic security service to inform on his associate, the radical preacher Abu Qatada, once named as Al-Qaeda's European chief -- has claimed to be a Palestinian.
But the court heard he was a Pakistani national who first came to Britain on a false passport before applying for asylum and being given indefinite leave to remain.
He was originally detained in November 2002 on a business trip to Gambia with another man. The pair were thought to have been taken to Afghanistan, and then Cuba.
Deghayes, who is Libyan but lived near Brighton on England's south coast, was arrested in Pakistan. Samuer, an Algerian, was picked up on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
As part of his bail conditions Deghayes was ordered to obey a curfew order, wear an electronic tag, live at his address in Brighton, and was told he could not apply for or possess travel documents.
In a statement on Thursday night, Deghayes said he was "happy to be home ... I would have been happier if everybody in Guantanamo were released and that ugly, bad place was closed down if not demolished."
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