I find Tony Blair's weasel words on the closure of Guantanamo Bay (The Argus, February 25) absolutely sickening.

Would this be the same man who for four years stood by and said nothing while this stain on Western democracy allowed the torture of inmates and deprived them of even the most basic elements of justice and human rights.

Guantanamo Bay is an ongoing crime against humanity and the British Government has fully and willingly participated in this crime.

The simple truth is Blair and his ministers are back-peddling following a scathing UN report on the camp, while the cases of the British residents are very much in the public eye.

A three-day trial in the High Court examining whether the Government should have made representations to the US on the behalf of three UK residents begins on April 11. Full details of the murky involvement of the UK in support of Guantanamo may hopefully be exposed.

For so long, Blair has tried to ignore the plight of those caught up in the Guantanamo nightmare. Firstly the British citizens and then the British residents.

Recently, the Government, somewhat defensively, has often seemed to suggest the residents have only the most tenuous connections with the UK and, in any case, are in fact ex-residents.

Well, they are technically ex-residents as they have been out of the country for more than two years. But they have been absent for so long only because they have been locked up for four years.

They have families and established roots in this country and should be brought back here. They should face trial here if there is any legitimate evidence against them - though I suspect there is not a shred.

They should definitely not be returned to countries to which they have little connection where they may well face torture or death - the reason they left those countries in the first place.

Tacit complicity is suggested lower down the "food chain". Once the plight of Omar Deghayes came to public attention last year, Des Turner, the Deghayes family's MP, was frantically lobbied by the group Save Omar.

He constantly reassured us he was making approaches to the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke. When some members of the group later took it upon themselves to approach Charles Clarke directly last September, he denied all knowledge of Omar's case.

The involvement of the UK secret services in the residents' capture and interrogation cannot be conveniently forgotten, either.

Tony Blair and his ministers should be condemned totally for their involvement, along with many other human rights abuses they support.

Any "changes of heart" by the Government are cynically driven by political expedience and a realisation of the possibility that, despite the climate of fear they are actively propagating, there are some evil misdeeds they may yet be held to account for.

-Glenn Williams, Brighton