Welcome Back, Binyam Mohamed!

By Charley Brady

For some bizarre reason I thought that a few weeks in Scotland would be an escape from the current insanity in Ireland.

How dozy was that. There's the same craziness here as there is in Ireland, especially as regards the banks and the inability to bring certain people to justice.

In any case, I'm here for a few weeks and will be celebrating my half century on this mud ball in the demure, restrained and dignified manner that befits the noble name of Brady.

I was less than excited to see who was arriving in Britain at the same time to help me with my birthday.

Step forward, ex Al Qaeda suspect, 30-year-old Binyam Mohamed, late of Guantanamo Bay and now looking forward to a lengthy sojourn in Britain despite hardly being able to call himself a citizen.

Now before Amnesty International and The Usual Suspects start on my case as normal, let me make it very clear that I found the whole concept of that terrible camp quite appalling.

It seemed to me, even in 2002, to have been a knee- jerk reaction to the awfulness of 9/11.

While the claims of torture are still supposedly "alleged" I think that there are enough guards now coming forward that we can take most of these brutal tales as read.

It's easy for me to sit here at a keyboard and condemn these soldiers who would torture their fellow man, but they were pumped up by their masters, told that this was national security and that they were facing some of the most serious terrorists in the world.

No excuse, of course, but I throw it in anyway. Yet to reiterate: I was no fan of Guantanamo.

Back to Binyam Mohamed, however. While I touched down rather modestly by courtesy of Ryanair, Mr. Mohamed arrived in considerable luxury with his entourage into an RAF base on a twin-engine Gulfstream Jet.

He's a bit tired at the moment but he's looking forward to interviews where he intends to talk about the nasty Americans and the bad, bad, British who conspired with them. I can't wait.

Let's take a closer look at Mohamed, though, shall we?

An Ethiopian, he surfaced in Britain in 1994, claiming that he was a target in his home country because of his family's opposition to the government.

Smelling a king-size salmon that had been on dry land too long, the Government turned him down for asylum.

However, fast forward to 2000 and we find him being granted "exceptional leave" to stay in Britain for a period of four years.

Mohamed was so grateful that he immediately converted to Islam. Then in 2001, having gotten himself established, it was off to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he was eventually picked up.

The Americans claimed that he was training at a terrorist explosives camp at the same time as Richard Reid, the notorious British shoe bomber and prosecutors claimed that he was planning to rent several flats in an American apartment block, before blowing it up. They claimed that he had been recruited in this endeavor by Al Qaeda.

I find his travels in Pakistan and Afghanistan all very interesting as he was working as a cleaner at the time and was also studying electrical and electronic engineering.

Now I don't know what cleaners are paid in London but if it gives me the loot to swan around the world for a few months then I want a piece of that action, all right.

Now we get to his explanations as to why he was there in the first place and I love them!

Keep in mind that he had just been given his "exceptional leave" the year before.

Well, he claims that he went over because he had to kick his drug habit (these cleaners' wages again, eh?).

Well, it makes perfect sense to me: you have a drug habit so you head for Afghanistan to get rid of it.

I don''t know much about drugs - I'm paranoid enough without them - but I HAVE heard that there's quite a thriving industry there.

He then altered that "explanation" slightly to announce that he had in fact been searching for a deeper understanding of Islam. He also wanted to assess the Taliban way of life.

Seriously, I'm trying my best to write this dispassionately, something I don't do well, but would anyone really blame me if I burst into a tirade of angry expletives deleted?

He was flown back into Britain from Cuba at the cost to the taxpayer of £120,000-his security contingent bringing the figure closer to £250,000 and, once all of his "entitlements" are taken into account he will be raking in £5,000 a year more than a serving soldier in Afghanistan.

What a bloody shocking disgrace.

Over in Ireland, and I'm sure you have them in America, there are dinosaurs who rejoice every time a British soldier goes down. "Remnants of Empire" as one good sympathetic Christian Republican called them.

I'm not even going to argue with that kind of mentality.

I have no doubt, looking at photos of him with those big soulful brown eyes that a lot of people are going to be crying along with Mohamed.

Well, here's one guy that's not buying a story that has more holes in it than a bloody colander.

And here's a few more. Tory MP Philip Davies: "It's absolutely ludicrous. This guy isn''t even a British citizen, he just happened to be residing in Britain. I cannot see any advantage to the British taxpayer in him coming here. The likelihood is that he will be on benefits and we will be forking out for him while the country is going bankrupt.

"And is he a danger to public safety? Will the Government be putting him under 24-hour monitoring by the security services with the extra burden on the taxpayers? It is an astonishing decision."

Tory MP David Davies, replying to Foreign Secretary David Miliband's comment that he was "pleased" to see good old Binyam back: "I don't think it should be a source of pleasure to anyone that this man has returned to the UK. He is an Ethiopian national who was lucky ever to have been in Britain in the first place. If he was flown back to Addis Ababa, I think we would all breath a sigh of relief."

And finally, outspoken journalist Richard Littlejohn: "This is another one of those occasions when I wonder: is it me?... By no stretch of the imagination is Binman [sic] even a British 'resident'. He's an Ethiopian citizen, who left Britain voluntarily for Taliban-run Afghanistan in 2001 after converting to Islam, and was arrested a year later in Pakistan trying to board a plane using a false passport. That, alone, should have barred him from ever returning 'home'.

"His sister has flown from Ethiopia to be reunited with him. Why WASN'T he flown straight to Ethiopia? Or handed over to Pakistan?

"Soon he'll be on the chat- show circuit, followed by a lucrative book deal and, inevitably, a multi-million- pound claim for compensation under the human rights act. He must think that all his birthdays have come at once.

"Meanwhile, the usual useful idiots will have a field day, filling their boots with legal aid, and using unsubstantiated claims of torture to bash America and undermine our own security services."

Couldn't have put it better myself. Littlejohn is spot on: This guy has made it clear from his behavior since 2000 that one place he CERTAINLY doesn't regard as "home" is Britain.

My solution would be to simply boot him out. Let him go back to Afghanistan since he loved it so much. It's not going to happen though, is it? The British are as soft as the Irish.

As for his sister flying over to see him, well it kind of puts the lie to his "family in danger" squawks, doesn't it??

The big surprise for me, however, is that he didn't put in his initial appearance in Ireland. I guess he hadn't compared his "entitlements" with Britain at that point, otherwise we would have been stuck with this seriously dodgy character.

One thing is for sure: he would have been welcomed to Ireland by the usual shower of bleeding-heart eejits.

Hope to see you next week.

Same bat-time! Same bat-channel! (Different bat-cave!)

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net