It's a trend -- first Australia, now Britain!
 The Government is refusing to issue passports to some of the Britons released from Guantanamo Bay last month under a rarely used law. Home Secretary Charles Clarke used powers under the Royal Prerogative to deny passport facilities to Martin Mubanga and Feroz Abbasi, the BBC Radio 4 Today programme said. It is not known whether the other two British detainees, Richard Belmar and Moazzam Begg, have also been refused passports under the powers, only used 13 times since 1947 and for the last time in 1976. The Home Office's letter to Mr Mubanga, a 32-year-old former motorcycle courier from Wembley, north London, who was arrested in Zambia and sent to the US base in Cuba, said the Home Secretary has the power to refuse passport facilities "if past or proposed activities were so demonstrably undesirable that the granting of the passport would be contrary to the public interest". |