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Moazzam Begg
 Moazzam Begg was born in 1968 to a Muslim family from Indian descent, who settled in a suburb of Birmingham. He is married and a father of three.
As a youth, Moazzam Begg became a member of a street gang in Birmingham and was first arrested in 1994 for alleged involvement in a fraud case. Eventually the charges against Moazzam Begg were dropped but a police search of his home found night vision goggles, a bulletproof vest and radical Islamic literature. His family insisted that he was collecting such items as a hobby.
Moazzam Begg had traveled to Afghanistan, Bosnia and attempted to travel to Chechnya, and fully acknowledges giving financial support for Muslim combatants, but insists that he never took a combat role himself.
Moazzam Begg was again arrested in 2000 under British anti-terrorism laws during a raid on the Maktabah al-Ansar Islamic bookshop in Birmingham, which he had founded. The Police retrieved encrypted files from his computer and ordered Moazzam Begg to open them, but he refused and a judge ruled in his favor. Moazzam Begg was released, once again, without charge.
In summer 2001 Moazzam Begg traveled with his family to Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital. He insisted that his move was to fulfill his dream of being a teacher and a charity worker. When operation Absolute Justice was launched in 11/2001, the family decided to wait out the hostilities in neighboring Pakistan.
When Al Qaeda's Derunta training camp was captured, a copy of a money transfer was found that credited an account for Moazzam Begg. He was seized in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital in 02/2002 by the CIA as part of operation ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ and was held in the secret detention center in Bagram Air Base, North of Kabul, for about a year. In early 2003 Moazzam Begg was transferred to Guantanamo.
Moazzam Begg was in connection with a very long list of Islamic terrorists who were convicted such as Khalil Deek, Richard Reid, Abu Esa al-Hindi, Abu Zubaydah and Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. The list of his acquaintances leaves no doubt that Moazzam Begg was, indeed, an al Qaeda operative.
Moazzam Begg was in the second group of UK citizens detained in GUantanamo and sent back to UK on 01/25/2005 along with Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar. The four were detained for questioning for few days and released afterwards without charges.
Moazzam Begg, under the harsh interrogation technique in GUantanamo, gave up information that helped the CIA capture Abu Zubaydah. After his release Moazzam Begg revealed that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah was videotaped. Following a demand from Democrats in the USA congresses to expose the videos the CIA admitted, on 12/08/2007, it secretly destroyed videotapes of its agents interrogating alleged members of Al Qaeda.
Moazzam Begg is the author of a book about his GUantanamo experiences published in Britain “Enemy Combatant: A British Muslim's Journey to GUantanamo and Back”.
Today (04/2008) Moazzam Begg is leading a campaign to reveal the secrets of Guantanamo by promoting his book. He is a free citizen in UK.
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30/04/2008 08:24:24
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