Parents tell of their moving reunions with Guantanamo inmates

When Azmat Begg greeted his son for the first time in three years, there were no tears. "It was just two dignified persons meeting each other. We shook hands. We didn't talk. We embraced each other and then we smiled. I gave him a hug and he gave me another hug and then another," Moazzam Begg's father said yesterday.

Zumrati Juma, from Croydon, south London, Feroz Abbasi's mother, made sure that she brought plenty of new clothes when she met her son, who she said had lost a lot of weight in captivity. The 30-minute reunion was a short but emotional one, she explained: "I was overwhelmed with joy but at the same time I was tearful - they were tears of joy."

The past few days have been marked by a multitude of emotions for the families of the Guantanamo Bay returners, Mr Begg, 37, Mr Abbasi, 24, Martin Mubanga, 32, and Richard Belmar, 25.

First came the excitement and "palpitations" of watching the plane touch down at RAF Northolt, followed by the fury of realising they had once again been incarcerated, to be questioned by anti-terrorist officers amid protest from lawyers and campaigners.

For Mr Begg, Wednesday began with nerves and excitement as he arrived at Paddington Green high-security police station to see his second son. But it was swiftly followed by tempered disappointment when Moazzam refused to meet within the undignified surroundings of a police station. "I will only see him when he is free," Mr Begg insisted calmly.

And that is just what happened a few hours later. At 9pm on Wednesday night the men were released without charge and Mr Begg met his son at an undisclosed location in Oxford.

"There were a lot of people there. I didn't get much chance to talk to him for more than 15 or 20 minutes," he explained. "I asked him how he kept himself so strong and he smiled. I said, 'I think you must have had a lot of problems.' And again he smiled. That was a sign that yes, he had suffered, but he was smiling now."

Mr Begg said his son was thinner, physically feeble and obviously exhausted by the events of the past few days. Despite the fact that he remained very quiet, he believed he was all right and did not appear bitter or angry. Nevertheless, he could not assess how the three years of captivity, including months in solitary confinement and alleged beatings, had affected him mentally.

A clinical psychologist who interviewed previous Guantanamo detainees warned that they would suffer from lack of sleep and constant thoughts about their ordeal. They would, he added, be plagued by guilty memories of those they had left behind.

Moazzam Begg, now under police protection at a safe house, was also reunited with his wife, Sally, and their four children, the youngest of whom was born after he was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002. The youngsters were, the family said, overjoyed.

Azmat Begg, 66, said he himself felt as if he had won the lottery: "It is fantastic. I have great respect for him. He is a very brave man. He didn't break, even after three years."

He denied that his son was a "significant threat" to security. "I have heard from my son that they have taken more than 300 interviews and interrogators came down to his cell. Everything has been done and nothing has been proved," he said.

The father and son from Birmingham remained together for almost six hours before parting company. Mr Begg added: "He was happy, although he has come from hell. He is very quiet, he is very determined. He wants to fight for people who are still there and he is definite and sure that they are not terrorists or anything like that, they haven't done anything wrong."

Ms Juma, said that her son was smiling and insisted he was all right. He had explained, she said, the nightmare of the camp, the small cells and horrible conditions.

"The isolation was very hard to bear," she said, adding: "He was physically OK but I was glad he could still communicate with me normally and was smiling. He has changed because he is older now and has lost weight. He wasn't really angry. He was smiling. He is not bitter."

Ms Juma said her son would remain in the safe house and not return home for a while.

Despite the mother's insistence that her son seemed "OK", his lawyer, Louise Christian said she feared for the 24-year-old former computer studies student's mental state. "He has an air of unreality about him. He doesn't know where he is," she said. "Like all victims of torture he's finding it difficult to talk about it."

Mr Mubanga, from Wembley, north-west London, she added, was also "very traumatised".

But for Mr Abbasi's mother the difficult time ahead is a gift compared to what she had dreaded: "My worst fear was he wasn't going to come home at all. I thought he would either die in the camp or face the death penalty."