Feroz Abbasi

Feroz Abbasi is one of nine British men who were held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay detainment camps, in Cuba. He was released from detention on 25 January 2005 along with Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar, the other five having previously been released. Abbasi's Guantanamo Internment Serial Number was 24. The Department of Defense reports that he was born on October 29, 1979 in Entebbe, Uganda.

Background

Abbasi moved to Britain with his mother, nurse Zumrati Juma, and family when he was eight. They lived in Croydon, South London and Abbasi attended Edenham High School in Shirley, Croydon, gaining good GCSE grades. He is said to have been a well behaved and conscientious school pupil, interested in roller blading and Michael Jackson. He took his A-levels at John Ruskin College (1996–1998) and enrolled in a two-year computing course at Nescot College in Epsom, which he apparently did not finish to go travelling.

Abbasi was brought up a Muslim but had stopped attending his local mosque when he was twelve. His interest in Islam was apparently rekindled after he was mugged at 19 on his first trip abroad to Geneva and then met a Kashmiri refugee there. He began to frequent the moderate local mosque in Croydon. He then became more fervent, becoming involved with and in spring 2000 moving into the radical Finsbury Park mosque, where he helped set up a website for a militant Islamic group. Because his half-brother and half-sister...
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