The British government has asked Washington to hand over a man held by US forces in Afghanistan after the appeal court ordered a writ of habeas corpus be issued seven years after he was detained.
The court ordered the writ last week after hearing that Yunus Rahmatullah was detained by UK special forces in Iraq in 2004, and then handed over to US forces who flew him to Bagram prison, north of Kabul.
The court heard on Wednesday that the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence had asked the US government to transfer Rahmatullah to British custody so that he could be released.
However, the US defence department replied three days later that the responsible official "is currently on travel", and that it would respond at some unspecified date in the future....
Rahmatullah, 29, is a Pakistani man who denies being a member of a terrorist organisation, but whose lawyers admit was in Iraq to wage jihad. For several years after his detention his family assumed he was dead.
He was one of two men captured by the SAS and handed over to US forces who were subsequently rendered to Afghanistan. The transfer to US authorities was permitted under the terms of a memorandum of understanding between the two countries that also allows the UK to demand their return.
The court also referred to an article of the Geneva conventions which forbids occupying powers from removing civilian prisoners from an occupied country other than in narrowly defined circumstances....
Ministers of the last Labour government repeatedly denied any knowledge of the matter before finally admitting in February 2009 that it had known about it for the previous five years.
