Lawyer says Spain complicit in Guantanamo abuse

By Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - Spanish authorities were complicit in the secret U.S. transfer of two British residents to Guantanamo Bay and took part in their interrogation there, a lawyer for the two men said on Wednesday.

Edward Fitzgerald said Spain had facilitated the ordeal of the two men, Jamil el-Banna and Omar Deghayes, who were freed last month after suffering what he called years of "intensive interrogation and torture" in the U.S. prison camp on Cuba.

"The central point we will be making is that the Spanish authorities are clearly implicated in the ordeal of the past five years," Fitzgerald told a London court which is considering a Spanish request to extradite the pair from Britain to face terrorism charges.

He said Spain had acquiesced in the secret U.S. transfer of the two men through its airspace from Afghanistan to Guantanamo.

Spanish authorities not only provided U.S. authorities with material about which to question the two men, but sent their own investigators to take part in interrogations, the lawyer said.

He demanded to know whether Spain had sought the men's extradition while they were in Guantanamo, and said it was unjust that authorities were now seeking to question them on the same allegations from which U.S. authorities had cleared them.

"We do submit this is an overwhelming case of an abuse of power and an abuse of process," Fitzgerald told the court.

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