The Guardian/Observer has a special report of the five British detainees at Guantanamo who are to be sent back to Great Britain. It's called To Hell and Back.

Lawyers for the detainees are now convinced that the releases were designed to head off growing disquiet in the White House about their cases being heard in the Supreme Court in April. Two of the soon to be released Britons - Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal - were subjects of a petition to the court arguing that Camp Delta, although in Cuba, fell under American jurisdiction and under US law their detention without trial would be illegal. That only leaves an Australian, Mamdouh Habib, as the case's sole remaining active petitioner.

Stephen Watts, a lawyer for the four men, said that he would not be surprised if Habib was either released or put up to a military tribunal before the Supreme Court hearing. 'By doing this the US government can try and show the court there is a proper process going on here or that the case is no longer a live one,' Watts said.

Though it has controlled Guantanamo Bay for years, the US argues that it is sovereign Cuban soil and that it just rents the land under the terms of an agreement reached with the pre-Fidel Castro government in Havana. Castro has always refused to accept the annual US rent payments. As a result of the dispute the US base has fallen into a legal black hole which the prisoners' cases will challenge at the Supreme Court.

'All these releases and other things are designed to preserve what is essentially an American gulag in the Caribbean,' Watts said.