US officials agreed to return five terrorism suspects to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, last year as part of a secret three-way deal intended to satisfy important allies in the Iraq invasion, according to senior US and British officials.Under the arrangement, Saudi officials later released five Britons and two others who had been convicted of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, the officials said. British diplomats said they believed the men had been tortured by Saudi security police officers into confessing falsely.Officials involved in the deliberations said the transfer of the Saudis from Guantanamo initially met with objections from officials at the Pentagon, the CIA and the Justice Department. ‘‘To get people to take a chance on detainees who posed a threat was a new endeavour, so everyone moved cautiously,’’ said a senior US official who supported the releases. ‘‘It was the first time we were doing this, and people did not want to do it.’’The Saudi prisoners were transferred to Riyadh in May 2003. The five Britons and two others were freed in August. The releases were public-relations coups for the Saudi and British governments, which faced domestic criticism for their roles in the Iraq war. At the time there was no indication the releases were related. But a US official said: ‘‘There is a link, this was two courses that converged and had a mutual attractiveness to them.’’On Friday, a spokesman for the National Security Council denied that the Saudi detainees were transferred in exchange for the British prisoners.As part of the arrangement, the US authorised the outright release of one of the Saudi detainees. But a senior US official said the man was kept in custody by the Saudis after a terrorist attack raised concerns about militants’ activities. Saudi officials gave contradictory accounts of the whereabouts of the five men. Neither US nor Saudi officials would identify the five, or describe the evidence on which they were held at Guantanamo. A spokesman for Britain’s PM Tony Blair declined to comment. An official in the British Foreign Office said: ‘‘We were relieved to get the guys out of Saudi. We worked ceaselessly to get them out.’’A Defence Department official said a basic question hanging over the discussions was, ‘‘Why are we doing this for these guys when we haven’t done this for other, better allies?’’ The official added, ‘‘We were just told to do it.’’ —(NYT)
