Briton could be tried over terror links

A British terrorist suspect captured in Baghdad could face trial at the Old Bailey on charges of treason, it emerged today.

The Ministry of Defence confirmed that a British citizen had been interned at Shaibah military base in Basra "as an imperative threat to security".

Whitehall sources said the man was Razaq and that the intention was to bring him to Britain for trial.

Terrorist mastermind Zarqawi is the world's second-most wanted man after Osama bin Laden. He heads the al Qaeda operation in Iraq and has claimed responsibility for suicide bomb blasts against British troops.

The link to the deaths of Britons may allow Razaq to be prosecuted under the rarely-used 1351 Treason Act. If convicted he could face the rest of his life in jail. The death penalty for treason was only lifted in 1998.

Reports of Razaq's detention came as the last four British inmates at America's Guantanamo Bay detention camp prepared to be flown home tomorrow.

Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga, Richard Belmar and Moazzam Begg will be reunited with their families after a two-year ordeal at the camp in Cuba.

Also today, an influential legal body urged the Government to "resolve the plight" of nine men held in Britain under emergency anti-terrorist laws. The Law

Society, the solicitors' professional body, stepped up the pressure on Home Secretary Charles Clarke to release the detainees at Belmarsh and Whitemoor prisons.

Mr Clarke has promised a statement to MPs within weeks over the fate of the men, after the Law Lords ruled last month that their detention contravened human rights law. The men are being held under laws rushed through Parliament after the September 11 attacks, which allow the indefinite detention without trial of foreign nationals deemed to have terrorist connections.

Law Society president Edward Nally, who has not commented before on the issue, warned that the emergency law was becoming "muddled" with other anti-terrorist legislation.

He said the situation at Belmarsh was "really not acceptable", adding: "Some of these prisoners have been detained for three years and the time has come for them to be tried or released. The rule of law must prevail and the Government can no longer ignore the Law Lords' ruling."

Officials have been in talks with north African countries where the men are from, to secure a deal under which some of them could be deported without facing the risk of torture and execution.