Relatives and rights lawyers urged Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday to demand the release of all Britons and other Europeans from the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay when he meets President George W. Bush this week. Campaigners said a ruling by a Washington judge that a military trial of one detainee was illegal exposed the whole Guantanamo regime as an expensive embarrassment and "a major source of international tension".
"The Washington Federal decision ... has blown another hole in Bush's strategy of Guantanamo Bay," Stephen Jakobi, director of the British legal pressure group Fair Trials Abroad, told Reuters.
"Now the presidential election is over, it is an embarrassment. The whole show is expensive, going nowhere - and the problem is how to wind it down."
In what was seen as a major setback to the Bush administration, a Washington federal court judge on Monday halted the military tribunal trial of a Guantanamo prisoner accused of being Osama bin Laden's bodyguard and driver.
The judge ruled the trial was unlawful and could not proceed until a decision is made on whether he is a prisoner of war under the Geneva Conventions and until rules are changed so he can see evidence against him and be present at all proceedings.
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