Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib | Legacies of 9/11

Moazzam Begg was seized in Islamabad in February 2002 and held at Kandahar, Bagram and Guantanamo for nearly three years. He was released in January 2005 without ever being charged.

In 2014 he was charged again, over travel to Syria. Those charges collapsed when it emerged MI5 had known of and consented to his journey. In August 2025 he was arrested in Parliament Square for holding a placard, one of more than 500 detained that day under the Terrorism Act.

Now outreach director at CAGE International, he joins Middle East Eye to examine what became of the cases that justified this era's laws.

Hamid Hayat, convicted in 2006 on the word of a paid informant, walked free in 2019. Dr Ali al-Timimi, sentenced to life in 2005 for a speech, was fully acquitted in March 2026 on free speech grounds.

Guantanamo is still open. Fifteen men remain. The trial of the man accused of planning 9/11 is now listed for 2028.

MEE’s Mathilda Mallinsons asks why the architecture outlived the allegations that built it.