A BRITON held at Guantanamo Bay has admitted attending prayer meetings in London led by a radical Muslim cleric with alleged links to Al-Qaeda but claims he travelled to Afghanistan because he was in trouble with the British police.

American court papers that were revealed for the first time this weekend accuse Richard Belmar, 25, of receiving weapons training at a terrorist camp and pledging allegiance to Osama Bin Laden.

Following the Afghan conflict, the papers say that Belmar fled to Pakistan but was captured during a raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda safehouse where 16 others were staying.

The new documents have been filed in a federal court in Washington DC where lawyers acting for Belmar and three other Britons held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are challenging their detention.

The court papers outline the proceedings of a military tribunal convened at Camp Delta last November to determine whether Belmar, a former Catholic schoolboy from north London, should continue to be held as an “enemy combatant”.

On the basis of the evidence presented to it — only some of which has been unclassified — the three-man tribunal panel unanimously found Belmar to be “a member of, or affiliated with, Al-Qaeda”.

At the tribunal hearing, Belmar, a former Post Office worker who converted to Islam in 1999, said he had attended Friday prayer meetings hosted by Abu Qatada at a youth club near Baker Street on three occasions.

“He was there and would give a talk before the prayer,” said Belmar, who claimed that he normally prayed at a more moderate mosque in Regent’s Park. “I just wanted to catch the prayer; I didn’t really care about the talk.”

Qatada has been described by the Spanish authorities as Bin Laden’s “European ambassador”. His prayer meetings were attended at one stage by Richard Reid, the British “shoebomber” jailed in America for trying to blow up a transatlantic airliner, and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker” in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The cleric has been held at Belmarsh high-security prison, southeast London, since 2002 for his alleged links to international terrorism.

At his hearing, Belmar — who was denied access to a lawyer — also confirmed that he travelled to the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southwest Afghanistan in July 2001. His journey from Britain, via the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, was partly paid for by unnamed “friends”.

Yet he claimed he had not originally intended to undergo military training. “In the United Kingdom I had a problem,” he told the tribunal panel. “I was in trouble with the police on an assault charge.

“At the time, I thought it would be worse; I thought it might be accessory to manslaughter. I was arrested and told to come back for a line-up.

“In that time I decided I was out of there. I was also prompted to leave because of problems I had with my family. I figured ‘what the hell’, I would just go and start a new life somewhere else.”

Belmar’s family have previously claimed that he travelled to Pakistan to study the Koran and learn Arabic and believe he was arrested for overstaying a visa.

According to the court papers, Belmar said he was persuaded by people he was staying with in Afghanistan to attend the training camp.

He claimed he did not realise until he had nearly completed courses in “basic weapons, war tactics and navigation” that the camp was run by Al-Qaeda.

At the camp, Belmar witnessed one of Bin Laden’s lectures, but he claims that a confession he made to his captors about swearing an oath of loyalty to the terrorist leader was not true and had been extracted “under pressure”.

Following his arrest in Pakistan in February 2002, Belmar was taken to Bagram airbase in Afghanistan for interrogation by American officials.

“They told me they would do this and that to me, and I wouldn’t get any sleep and they would punish me,” he said.

“They put you in cold rooms and make you sit for 20 hours . . . At the time I thought Cuba was a very bad place and I would be tortured and raped. I was very afraid.”

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