A former public schoolboy who was detained in Guantanamo Bay for four years has confirmed publicly that he was an informant for MI5.

Bisher al-Rawi, 39, an Iraqi who has lived in Britain since childhood, said that he had acted as an intermediary between the intelligence service and Abu Qatada, a radical Islamist cleric with ties to al-Qaeda.

In an interview with Channel 4 News to be screened today, Mr al-Rawi said that he had refused MI5’s offers of money and a British passport in return for his help.

His information helped the authorities to find Abu Qatada, who had been in hiding for ten months trying to avoid arrest under emergency antiterrorist legislation, in October 2002.

However, when Mr al-Rawi flew to The Gambia the following month, MI5 informed the CIA by telegram that he was an extremist.

The Americans arrested him in the West African state, held him under house arrest for several weeks then flew him to the notorious “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan where he was denied food and tortured.

In March 2003, shackled and hooded, he was flown to Guantanamo Bay on one of the CIA’s “ghost flights”.

Mr al-Rawi, who attended Millfield School in Somerset as a teenager, said that he felt he had been betrayed by the Security Service.

“I entered this relationship [with MI5] with goodwill and I think what they’ve done to me is very, very bad,” he told Channel 4. “People could make their own conclusions about this. My experience was very, very bad from beginning to end.”

Mr al-Rawi spoke of how he was visited at Guantanamo Bay by some of his MI5 handlers, whom he knew by the names Alex, Matthew and Martin.

He described the meeting, ironically, as “a reunion” but not one that he had planned. He claimed that during one visit the officers had tried again to recruit him as an agent.

They also promised to help get Mr al-Rawi released – but when he wanted them called as witnesses before a US military tribunal he was told they could not be produced.

Mr al-Rawi said: “I thought their promises to me, Matthew and Alex, meant this was the time to resolve this – if I just ask for them everything will be said, clarified, and this whole episode is over.

“Unfortunately the authorities in the UK refused to offer any explanation or say anything about the situation and that did not help me at all.”

Mr al-Rawi said that when he was first approached by MI5 in Britain he had been afraid he would get into trouble. He said: “We had a couple of initial meetings. There was not a problem. I asked them, ‘What do you want now?’ They wanted more. They wanted help to understand things. I was concerned they were trying to entrap me or get me into trouble. I was very, very clear and explicit about this.

“They started assuring me that this was absolutely not the way they operated and that was not their intention. I asked for their assurances and they gave me them in a way that was very, very solid.”

Last week the Intelligence and Security Committee criticised MI5 for its role in the arrest of Mr al-Rawi and his rendition to Cuba. The committee said that MI5 and MI6 had been “slow to detect” the CIA’s use of “extraordinary rendition” to take suspects to Guantanamo Bay. It added that British Intelligence “should always have sought assurances on detainee treatment” when dealing with US agencies in such situations.

The committee concluded: “The cases of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna and others during 2002 demonstrated that the US was willing to conduct ‘Rendition to Detention’ operations anywhere in the world, including against those unconnected with the conflict in Afghanistan.”

Mr al-Rawi was finally released from Guantanamo Bay in March after Britain agreed to let him return to his family in New Malden, Surrey.

The Government is, however, refusing to seek the return of Jamil el-Banna, Mr al-Rawi’s friend who was arrested with him in 2002, because he is not a British national, although his children were born in London and live there.

The High Court has given the Home Secretary a deadline of Thursday week to disclose whether or not she will accept Mr el-Banna’s return to Britain or face a judicial review of the Government’s stance.

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