Background
Belmar was born and brought up in Marylebone, London. His father is Catholic, and he attended Street George"s Roman Catholic Secondary School.
Belmar was born and brought up in Marylebone, London. His father is Catholic, and he attended Street George"s Roman Catholic Secondary School.
He was first detained in Pakistan in 2002 and sent to Bagram Theater Internment Facility, then Guantanamo. He was not charged, and was returned to the United Kingdom on 25 January 2005. In a letter he wrote to his family 10 days after the September 11 attacks, Belmar described living under a regime of "bad food" and intense physical training.
Belmar says he was in Kandahar, and tried to leave Afghanistan five times, once disguising himself in a burqa.
He says he walked across the mountains, reaching Pakistan in December 2001. He returned to Karachi, and says he did not contact the British Consulate as he thought that anyone who had been in Afghanistan was at risk of arrest.
United States officials said Belmar was captured at an al Qaeda safe house in Pakistan in February 2002. His family was told in October 2002 that he had been taken into custody due to an expired visa, and in December 2002 they were told he had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay.
In Pakistan, an Federal Bureau of Investigation/Central Intelligence Agency team investigating the murder of Daniel Pearl interrogated Belmar.
A senior United States official told The Observer that he recommended Belmar be released back to the United Kingdom, but MI5 officers who interviewed Belmar in Karachi decided against recruiting him, so he was sent instead to Bagram. En route to Bagram, Belmar says he was struck on the back of the head, leaving a dentist He was held and interrogated at Bagram for more than six months, then sent to Guantanamo.
Like the other nine United Kingdom citizens held at Guantanamo Bay, he was repatriated to the United Kingdom. He was flown into Royal Air Force Northolt on 25 January 2005, along with Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga and Feroz Abbasi, where he was arrested under the Terrorism Acting 2000 and briefly questioned at Paddington Green police station, before being released.
The police decided that confessions given to MI5 officers were not admissible evidence. In an interview after his release, he retracted what he said during interrogation, including having heard Bin Laden speak.
He claims to have been beaten and sexually humiliated during interrogations, and to have been hung in the strappado position. His father has said: "They have said he was in Afghanistan in 1998 studying chemicals at the terrorists" base but I know he was in London.".