MI5 'tried to recruit Guantanamo captive as informer'

A British resident now in Guantanamo Bay was approached to become an MI5 informant days before he was incarcerated, it was reported today. The Guardian said Jamil el-Banna, 44, was seized by the CIA and flown secretly to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 when he embarked on a business trip to Gambia. The newspaper says it obtained an MI5 document in which an intelligence officer details a visit to Banna's home to attempt to recruit him as an informer.

Banna knew Abu Qatada, a cleric accused of being Al Qaeda's spiritual leader in Europe. On Friday, his companion Bisher al-Rawi was released without charge from the Cuban detention centre after four years after it emerged he had helped MI5 keep track of Qatada. Banna, a father of five from London, remains incarcerated in Guantanamo. The Guardian says he was taken to Cuba after MI5 "wrongly" told the Americans his travelling companion was carrying bomb parts on a business trip to Gambia.

He was granted refugee status in Britain after arriving in Britain in 1994 alleging he had been tortured in Jordan. His application for British nationality was ongoing at the time he was taken to Guantanamo. The newspaper quotes the report, in which the un-named intelligence officer tells Banna he has a choice: "To continue with his current life...I meant his association with members of the extremist community and his involvement in criminal activity such as a recent arrest for shoplifting...

"Both men had been approached by MI5 to work with them. These cases reflect very badly on the British government who have used these men and their families as expendable pawns."

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said she could not comment on issues of national security.