LONDON, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- U.K. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw left for Washington Wednesday to press U.S. officials to allow London to try British citizens being held at a U.S. base in Cuba for links to the al Qaida network.
Straw is scheduled to meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice Thursday after meeting the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, R-N.C. Diplomatic sources said the issue of the British prisoners is at the top of his agenda for these meetings.
At least three Britons are reported among the 150-plus prisoners under close guard by U.S. troops at Guantanamo Bay, and Straw said last week the British government felt it would be "far preferable ... for them to come to the United Kingdom and face justice here."
The foreign secretary's comment represented a shift in Britain's position on the issue. Earlier, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government had insisted it was up to the United States to decide the fate of the prisoners, who were captured during fighting in Afghanistan.
Diplomatic sources said Straw was expected to stress his government's concern over the possibility that, if they were tried in the United States, British citizens could face the death penalty. British policy is strongly opposed to the death penalty.
"We don't know the exact circumstances," Straw has said, "and we continue to be in discussions with the Americans."
The three Britons being held at Guantanamo Bay include Feroz Abbasi, a 22-year-old former computer studies student from the London suburb of Croydon, and Shafiq Rasul, 24, and Asif Iqbal, 20, from Tipton, England.
The British Broadcasting Corp. has reported that two other Britons are being held in Afghanistan.
A spokesman for Amnesty International told journalists that the human rights organization would prefer trials in Britain. "We feel that in the present circumstances," he said, "the form of justice proposed by President George W. Bush would be unlikely to provide a fair trial."
