91Èȱ¬

91Èȱ¬ Radio 5 Live and 91Èȱ¬ Two's Newsnight reunite a former Guantanamo Bay guard with two of his former prisoners (two of the "Tipton Three") in an extraordinary tale of hope and reconciliation, Guantanamo Reunited.

Brandon Neely, a Guantanamo Bay guard who traced and met two of his former prisoners on Facebook, travelled to the UK to apologise in person for their treatment.

The three men met in London at a 91Èȱ¬ studio, eight years after they first met at the world's most notorious prison.

Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, who were part of the so-called "Tipton Three", were detained by the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan on 28 November 2001 and sold to US forces before being sent to Guantanamo Bay as suspected terrorists.

It is there they met Neely, a Military Police Officer who worked as a guard at Camp X-Ray, who began to have doubts about the guilt of some of the prison inmates and the treatment they received.

In the documentary Neely is reunited with Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul to personally apologise for his role in their imprisonment.

Neely, now a Texas police officer, says the six months he spent working as a guard in Cuba made him complicit in a great unjustice.

Neely says: "If you read the definition of torture it's a very vague definition. Physical, mental, it can be anything. Well, to me, torture is taking an innocent man and locking him up in a cage for two-and-a-half years. So if that's how they do it, then everyone who has ever set foot in Guantanamo should be held responsible for torture, including myself."

Neely goes on to be openly critical of the US authorities and the use of "torture" techniques by interrogators at the prison.

His two former prisoners, from Tipton in the West Midlands, said they were deeply moved by his visit, which they say supported their allegations that detainees were mistreated.

"When people like yourself come out and basically say the same things that we were saying, it helped us so much for people to believe what we were saying was true," Shafiq Rasul, 32, told Brandon. "So I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart what you've done."

Ruhal Ahmed, 28, said: "It takes a lot of courage to say that 'I was wrong'. A lot of courage."

The meeting between the three men will be broadcast on Newsnight on 91Èȱ¬ Two on Tuesday 12 January 2010 (10.30pm), with the full story of Ruhal's and Shafiq's imprisonment and the journey to reconciliation with Brandon broadcast in a special half-hour programme, Guantanamo Reunited, on 91Èȱ¬ Radio 5 Live on Thursday 14 January at 10.00pm.

91Èȱ¬ Radio 5 Live's Victoria Derbyshire programme also has an exclusive interview with Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul, on Tuesday 12 January (10.00am), to hear their thoughts on the meeting with their former Guantanamo guard.

Notes to Editors

The extraordinary reunion can also be seen on 91Èȱ¬ World News America. Find out more at news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/world_news_america.

AB