Two British residents held in Guantanamo Bay for more than four years were detained by the CIA after MI5 failed to recruit them as paid informants, according to documents released in the United States.

The extent of MI5’s involvement with Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna — including offers of new lives and new identities financed by the British taxpayer — is detailed in papers released under United States freedom of information laws.

British intelligence sent telegrams to the American authorities, alerting them to the travel plans of Mr al-Rawi, 39, and Mr el-Banna, 44, on the day that they were detained in November 2002. Both men were picked up on arrival in The Gambia, taken to Afghanistan and then put on a secret CIA flight to the Guantanamo Bay internment camp in Cuba.

Mr al-Rawi, 39, was released last weekend and returned to Britain without being arrested or questioned by police. But Mr el-Banna, 43, remains incarcerated at Camp Delta.

In a telegram sent to the CIA on November 8, 2002, which has been seen by The Times, British officials gave details of the flight the men had taken that day from London to Banjul in The Gambia. The communication identified the men as associates of the radical cleric Abu Qatada, a key al-Qaeda figure in Europe.

Three days later, in another telegram, the British officials described Mr al-Rawi as “an Iraqi Islamist extremist” and Mr el-Banna as a “veteran of the Afghan-Soviet war and assessed to be Abu Qatada’s financier”.

A month later another telegram was sent, saying that Britain would not offer the men consular protection because, although they were long-term residents, they were not British citizens. The pair were interrogated in The Gambia by unidentified Americans before being flown to Afghanistan where they were kept in an underground prison. They were then transported to Guantanamo Bay where both have complained of torture, abuse and ill-treatment.

The MI5 telegrams were produced as evidence by a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay and have been acquired by The Washington Post.

But their tone is markedly different from that of another document, headed “Note for file”, written by an intelligence agent on October 31, 2002 — a little more than a week before the men were detained.

The three-page note is a report of a “relaxed” visit by an MI5 agent called Michael and a Special Branch detective named Andy to Mr el-Banna’s home during which efforts were made to persuade him to become an informant.

The agent says he told Mr el-Banna that he was in danger of being detained in Britain with other extremists.

He wrote: “He did however have a choice. He could continue with his current life or — at this point he interrupted to ask what I meant by his current life. I told him that I meant his association with members of the extremist community and also his involvement in criminal activity . . .

“I returned to the choice he could make; he could either continue as at present with the risks that entailed or he could start a new life with a new identity, new nationality, money to set himself up in business and to provide for his family, and an opportunity to move to a Muslim country where his children could be brought up away from the bad influences of Western society.

“He asked if I wanted him to leave the UK. I told him that would be for him to decide but that I could help him if that was what he wanted . . .

“I again returned to the choice he had; if he chose to help us by providing details of all his activities and contacts, we would assist him to create a new life for him and his family.”

Lawyers for Mr el-Banna say he has repeatedly refused inducements to provide “false testimony” against Abu Qatada.

Mr al-Rawi, who denies any involvement in extremism, has testified to a US military tribunal that he faced similar pressures to become an informant and that he had passed messages from MI5 to Abu Qatada when the cleric, now in jail under a control order, was in hiding. He was freed after negotiations between Britain and the US. It is not clear what steps are being taken by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to achieve the release of Mr el-Banna.

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