Even the head of the notorious religious police has since acknowledged the existence

Even the head of the notorious religious police has since acknowledged the existence of a local gay population.The treatment of gay men here received international attention when an Interior Ministry statement reported in January 2002 that three men in the southern city of Abha had been “beheaded for homosexuality”. The report provoked widespread condemnation from gay and human-rights groups in the West – and a swift denial from an official at the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC. In the glass and marble shopping malls of this cosmopolitan and comparatively laid-back city on the Red Sea, young Saudi Arabian men are taking advantage of the emergence of an increasingly tolerated Western-oriented gay scene.
Certain malls are known as cruising areas, and there are even gay-friendly coffee shops. A big gay disco takes place at a private villa in the north of the city once a week. And young Saudis who frequent these venues, many returnees from the United States after the 11 September 2001 attacks, say that they get to know one another through the internet.The paradox of Saudi Arabia is that while the executioner’s sword awaits anyone convicted of the crime of sodomy, in practice homosexuality is tolerated.”I don’t feel oppressed at all,” said one, a 23-year-old who was meeting in one of the coffee shops with a group of self-identified “gay” Saudi friends dressed in Western clothes and speaking fluent English. He told his family he decided to stay to help refugeesOmar Rajab Mohammad Rajab Amin Nationality: KuwaitiMarital Status: MarriedDate of Capture: 10 January 2002Location of Capture: Kohat, PakistanOmar was an agricultural supervisor for the Kuwaiti Ministry of Social Affairs and LabourSaad Madai Saad Al-AzmiNationality: KuwaitiMarital Status: SingleDate of Capture: 19 January 2002Location of Capture: Karachi, PakistanTraveled to Kabul, n July 2001 to supervise charitable projects Detained in Pakistan and taken by to Guantanamo. He is married with one son, Abdul Karim, who was born in June 2002.

He has never met his son.David HicksNationality: AustralianMarital Status: SingleDate of Capture: January 2001Location of Capture: Tora Bora, AfghanistanOfficers seized his belongings from his family’s house in late 2001. His family had last heard from him two months earlierFouad Mahmoud Al RabiahNationality: KuwaitMarital Status: MarriedDate of Capture: 4 January 2002Location of Capture: Kandahar, AfghanistanFouad, 44, is an aviation engineer for Kuwaiti Airlines. He worked on a rescue campaign in Kosovo in 1988Mamdouh HabibNationality: AustralianMarital Status: MarriedDate of Capture: not knownLocation of Capture: PakistanSydney terror suspect Mamdouh Habib is expected to face a US military court when US authorities try the next group of prisonersKhalid Abdullah Mishal Al MutairiNationality: KuwaitiMarital Status: SingleDate of Capture: 10 January 2002Location of Capture: Kohat, PakistanIn 2001, the 28-year-old travelled to Pakistan to visit the mosque his family had funded to see if it needed any repairsFawzi Khaled Abdullah Fahad Al OdahNationality: KuwaitiMarital Status: SingleDate of Capture: 10 January 2002Location of Capture: Kohat, PakistanTheteacher taught in poor countries in the summer. These are just ten of them Abdulaziz Sayer Owain Al- ShammariNationality: KuwaitiMarital Status: MarriedDate of Capture: 10 January 2002Location of Capture: Kohat, PakistanAbdulaziz is a 30-year- old teacher and a father of two,who went to Pakistan in October 2001Abdullah Kamal Al KandariNationality: KuwaitiMarital Status: MarriedDate of Capture: 10 January 2002Location of Capture: Kohat, PakistanWent to Afghani Pakistani border in 2001 to help refugee relief.

Family says he was sold to Pakistan by local villagersAhcene ZemiriNationality: AlgerianMarital Status: MarriedDate of Capture: 2001Location of Capture: Afghan-Pakistan borderHe was born in Algiers in 1967. Nor should we forget that Britain has its very own Guantanamo Bay at Belmarsh Prison, in south-east London, where 14 men have been held for up to two years without charge, or prospect of trial.”…but 660 other men remain trapped in a legal quagmire. “With the election set for November, George Bush doesn’t want that from the court that put him in office in the first place.”Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: “We are delighted that the five have been released, but let us not forget those that are remaining. The four who will remain in Camp Delta are Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar.

Almost all of the prisoners were picked up in Afghanistan or in Pakistan following the Anglo-American overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.Clive Stafford Smith, the British human rights lawyer representing a group of detainees, has challenged the legality of the prison in Guantanamo Bay in the US Supreme Court. He said the decision was a “cynical” attempt to avoid embarrassment over the court’s likely ruling, which is expected in June – months before the US presidential election. “The US Supreme Court will say the Bush administration has been acting illegally,” Mr Stafford Smith told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme. In November 2002, the Court of Appeal said the British detainees were being held in a “legal black hole” and described their treatment as “objectionable”. In the first clear indication of London’s frustration with George Bush, Mr Straw said that Lord Goldsmith QC, the Attorney General, had rejected US proposals to try the remaining four Britons in US military tribunals.”In the Attorney General’s view, the military commissions, as presently constituted, would not provide the type of process which we would afford British nationals,” he said.The discussions that led to their release began in July when the US ruled that two of the other British detainees were eligible to be tried by military commissions. The families of the British men have consistently protested the men’s innocence. Critics pointed out that the lack of progress underlined the weakness of Mr Blair’s claim to have a “special relationship” with the US.