“I’m afraid I lost my temper and demanded to see the British High Commissioner and my lawyer. They said it was much too late for that.”For the next three to four days the four men were moved around the building from room to room, alternately questioned by Americans and Gambians.Says Wahab: “I agreed to answer the Gambian questions but refused to answer any of the Americans’. It was the intelligence obtained from these interviews and searches that was passed on to Gambian and US authorities.As Wahab approached his brother at Banjul airport he became aware of a problem with immigration. Gambian officials had confiscated their passports and they were being taken to an interview room.”They began by saying there was an irregularity with their visas.

They were taken to Paddington Green police station in west London on suspicion of carrying an explosive device which turned out to be the harmless battery charger. “I needed to know whether, under Islamic law, it was allowed for partners in a firm to be paid wages – he told me it wasn’t and so I thanked him and left.”Four days after Wahab had arrived in Gambia he went to Banjul airport to meet his brother, Mr el-Banna and Abdullah el-Ganudi, a British citizen.Three days earlier, the three men had been arrested at Gatwick airport when they first tried to fly out to Gambia. The brothers had come to rely on him as an authority on Islamic law and that was why Wahab had gone to see him. Mr Qatada is now imprisoned in Britain as a terror suspect and was once called Osama bin Laden’s spiritual representative in Europe. On the day of his departure flight, Wahab was detained at City Airport in east London by two men who described themselves as airport security officers but whom Wahab suspected of being MI5 officers.The men wanted to find out about an alleged terror suspect called Abu Qatada whom Wahab had known for many years and had met four days before his flight. “I had this business idea for a mobile peanut-oil processing factory,” he told The Independent “I had done the feasibility study, it was all ready to go. I had my team and we brought Bisher in on the deal towards the end.”From the start there were ominous signs that the trip was not going to be straightforward.

Wahab read mechanical engineering at Salford and Bisher read material engineering at University College London. In 1992 Wahab took British nationality while his brother decided to retain his Iraqi citizenship as he did not want to damage his ties with his home country.It was Wahab’s business interests that brought the two brothers to Gambia in November 2002. They lived in Cambridge where they took their O-levels before continuing their schooling at Millfield School, Somerset, and Concord College, Shropshire.They later attended separate universities. MI5 “intelligence” on the men also revealed that they carried copies of the Koran and had had an electronic device which turned out to be an ordinary battery charger.Bisher al-Rawi, 38, and Wahab, 40, came to this country in the early 1980s after their father fell under the suspicion of Saddam Hussein.

His brother, Bisher, and Jamil el-Banna, both residents in Britain, were flown to Bagram air base in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantanamo.Intelligence reports made by MI5 which have been submitted to the all-party group on extraordinary rendition support Mr al-Rawi’s testimony and show the weakness of the case against the four men.Part of this evidence, which was passed on to the Americans, includes allegations that Bisher al-Rawi had an interest in “extreme sports” while Wahab was described as playing a lead role in setting up a peanut-processing factory in the Gambia. The new claims confirm previous allegations that Britain has played a major role in the “extraordinary rendition” of terror suspects by handing them over to the Americans without legal authority.
In his first interview since his arrest in November 2002, Mr al-Rawi says soon after his detention he asked to see someone from the British High Commission in Gambia but was told by the Americans: “Who do you do think ordered your arrest in the first place? They don’t want to talk to you.”Mr al-Rawi claims that the only reason he and another man were allowed to return to Britain after 28 days of questioning by US intelligence officers was because they could claim British citizenship. Wahab al-Rawi, whose brother Bisher has been held in the US naval base in Cuba for three years, says that US interrorgators told him the British were directly responsible for his arrest and detention. One of four British citizens and residents seized by the Americans in Africa before two of them were flown to Guantanamo Bay has told The Independent that they were victims of an MI5 plot. Some Tory donors are said to be worried that their companies could miss out on government contracts if their names become public.The Tories’ annual report disclosed that they had struck agreements with some donors under which the party was allowed to delay the repayment of loans if they could not meet the scheduled repayments.The commission may regard such flexible arrangements as a backdoor donation which should be disclosed under a law brought in by Labour in 2000 rather than a loan on a commercial basis.A former Tory treasurer Lord McAlpine called on his party to release the details of the loans, telling BBC’s Today programme: “If the loans are completely honest and straightforward there should be no reason why anyone would worry about that.”. We are not doing them a favour by putting them on the policy group. They are doing the party a favour by agreeing to serve on it.

All these people are highly successful entrepreneurs with a huge amount of knowledge on economic competitiveness.”The Electoral Commission has given the political parties until today to provide assurances that any loans they received were on commercial terms similar to those obtainable at high street banks.Jonathan Marland, the Tory treasurer, has resisted pressure to disclose the names of supporters who made loans because they were made on a confidential basis. “This is another example of Mr Cameron’s hypocrisy.” A spokesman for the Conservative leader dismissed Labour’s charge, saying: “It’s frankly ludicrous to suggest that membership of the policy group has been affected by donations to David Cameron’s leadership campaign. He now acts as a fundraiser for the party.”It looks like dodgy Dave is rewarding his personal paymasters by handing them control over party policy,” said a senior Labour official. His family firm, Jayroma, donated to the leadership campaign and he is credited with helping to raise £415,000 for it. The other co-chairman is John Redwood, the former cabinet minister.The group, which will help to draft new Tory policies by next year as part of Mr Cameron’s root-and-branch review, also includes Adam Afriye, MP for Windsor, who gave money to his leadership campaign and donated £11,000 to the Conservative Party last year.Another member is Andrew Feldman, a friend of Mr Cameron from Brasenose College, Oxford. An economic competitiveness policy group, appointed by Mr Cameron, is co-chaired by Simon Wolfson, chief executive of the Next fashion group, who gave £10,000 to his leadership campaign. The revelation may undermine Mr Cameron’s attempts to distance himself from the controversy over the estimated £24m of secret loans accepted by the Conservatives.
The Tory leader became embroiled in the row as Scotland Yard warned MPs at a private meeting that a police investigation into the “cash for peerages” allegations against Tony Blair could be widened to cover corruption charges.