UK Faces Suit Over Al-Qaeda Ugandan

London – The British government was threatened on Monday with legal action for “aiding or assisting” the U.S. in unlawfully detaining British terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Louise Christian, a solicitor representing Zumrati Juma, the mother of 22-year-old prisoner former Ugandan Feroz Abbasi, said she would launch proceedings in the high court in London unless the UK Foreign Office agreed by the end of Tuesday to use its influence with Washington to ensure access to lawyers and other basic rights for the detainees.The threat came as representatives of more than 100,000 lawyers in England and Wales, demanded that the detainees be given immediate access to legal advice.At a press conference in central London, Mrs Juma and Riasoth Ahmed, the father of Ruhal Ahmed, another Briton held at Camp X-Ray, called for their sons to be returned to Britain to be dealt with by the British authorities.Speaking out for the first time, Mrs Juma, a nurse, said of her son, “I’m frightened he is being treated badly and being kept in a cage without any exercise. I don’t believe Feroz is being given freedom to talk about the conditions he is being kept in or his health – the physical conditions or even the psychological.”She said the British Foreign Office had advised her on January 25 not to consult a lawyer until her son had been charged. This recommendation – eventually disregarded – led to a three-week delay in getting legal advice.A Foreign Office spokesman in London said: “We did not and would not give legal advice. “We have asked the U.S. to clarify the legal procedures under which the detainees might be prosecuted and we have passed on requests from the families for access by lawyers to the U.S.”In an interview published in the London-based Daily Telegraph on Monday, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said when the US authorities had finished questioning the detainees, “very likely we’ll let as many countries as possible have any of their nationals they would like and they can handle the law enforcement prosecution”. Guardian News ServiceEnds