Moazzam Begg yesterday spoke of the extraordinary friendship he struck up with guards during his three years in Guantanamo Bay – and how he hopes to be reunited as friends with some of them.
He told The Birmingham Post how one guard brought him a Cadbury's creme egg after he described Birmingham's chocolate-making tradition, and how he became an "agony uncle" to some of his other captors.
Mr Begg described the unexpected face of his incarceration after a talk to students at Aston University about the abuses allegedly waged against terrorist suspects being held by the US.
The 38-year-old, from Sparkbrook, is now spokesman for Islamic human rights campaign group 'Cageprisoners'. He tours universities talking about his experiences and highlighting the plight of those still being held at the notorious Camp X-Ray.
Mr Begg, who went to Afghanistan in 2001 to work as a teacher, was detained in Pakistan in 2002 and held at Guantanamo Bay for three years.
His most abiding memory of Camp X-Ray, he said, was of unmitigated monotony.
"My experience of the guards, even some of the interrogators, was that they were decent ordinary people I would be happy to call friends, even after my experiences," he said. "One them, it was quite interesting, found out I was from Birmingham and I told her there was a Cadbury's factory there in Bournville.
"We talked about history and politics and her life and children, her family and her love life.
"She went on leave to the States and thought she was doing the decent thing and brought me back a Cadbury's creme egg. I can't stand creme eggs – but I devoured that one."
That same guard, he said, had contacted him to rekindle their friendship and they have since emailed and phoned each other.
"I've met up with some people since then, like an MI5 officer from Guantanamo," he said. "I don't think it would be strange to meet up with a guard."
In fact, he said, he became a sort of 'agony uncle' to some of them. "One of those guys was bringing my breakfast in one day and dropped the tray and he broke down crying.
"He had cheated on his wife, and adultery is punishable in the US army, so he had had to call his wife and tell her, and she had left him. He started crying and said everything was going wrong for him.
"I did think 'I'm in a cell here'; but I was 35-36 and he was only 18. There's no bitterness.
"Some of them know a part of me that other people do not because we were together day in day out. They saw me at my most vulnerable and my most raw."
His anger was reserved for "the system" that incarcerated him, he said, and those soldiers who abused their prisoners.
"It's given me more strength. I'm more confident in myself – people assume the opposite because of my experiences.
"It breaks you or makes you, and for me the experience has been one almost of self-empowerment. It's important for me to tell people about the bigger picture, about people being held in Guantanamo and other ghost prisons across the world."
Mr Begg also defended a controversial bookshop which was raided last month as part of an anti-terrorist operation in Birmingham which led to nine arrests.
Maktabah, founded by Mr Begg, had previously been raided in in 2000 by 60 anti-terrorist officers who seized books, files and computers from its former premises in Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook. Last month's raid was at its Stratford Road premises. No-one from the store was charged.
Mr Begg said: "The bookshop I opened seven years ago was a different address and run by different people. The shop has been open for many years and there had not been a problem.
"Once you start to tread the path of self censorship or censorship of literature, it's important to realise you have to apply it across the board on other types of things. Britain doesn't have that tradition of censorship of literature."
