Former Guantanamo Inmate Hangs Out with His Former Jailer

Moazzam Begg, a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay and one of the most outspoken voices against the West’s “War on Terror," on Sunday posted a photo to Twitter of him with a former U.S. soldier who guarded his cell at the U.S. military prison, reporting that he had introduced his former captor to his family.

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“Ex-U.S. soldier who guarded me in #Gitmo just stayed with me and met my family. This time I had the keys #TheConfession,” Begg said in a tweet with a photo of the two holding hands at a restaurant on Sunday.

The tweet had more than 1,000 retweets and likes by Sunday evening and comes as Begg as is promoting a documentary, "The Confession."

In the new documentary, Begg tells the story of his time in Guantanamo, where he was unlawfully detained for three years, and how he was coerced into confessing to being part of al-Qaida.

He was released from Guantanamo in 2005 after campaigners in the U.K. pressured the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair to demand that Washington return him and other British citizens who had been held without charge or trial.

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Despite years of detention in one of the most notorious prisons in the world—where he was tortured and humiliated—Begg’s return to the U.K. was anything but quiet.

He is now one of the lead organizers and campaigners against British anti-terrorism laws that have placed him and others under the scrutiny of their own government in the name of combatting Islamic extremism.

Begg is now the director of CAGE, a London-based organization “working to empower communities impacted by the War on Terror,” according to its website.

The group works with former detainees at Guantanamo as well as Muslim prisoners who are currently being held under terror charges in the U.S. and the U.K.

Appearing alongside the former guard at Guantanamo, Begg said that his Muslim faith has allowed him to be able to forgive those soldiers who were involved in his incarceration.

Even after being freed from one prison, however, Begg risked being put back in another. In 2014, he was arrested by the British government upon returning from Syria after spending two years there working with rebel groups fighting against the government of Bashar Assad. Begg said he was merely providing humanitarian aid but was charged with several terrorism offenses.

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However, he was released just days before his trial because it was revealed that he had in fact been in contact with the British intelligence agency MI5 during his time in Syria and that they were aware that his activities there were in no way part of any terrorist actions but in fact in line with the British government’s foreign policy at the time.

Begg has rejected the idea that Islam is what needs to be reformed or changed, instead arguing that Western interventions must stop if the world is rid itself of extremist factions within Islam.

In an interview with Middle East Eye in April, Begg said the idea of Islamic reformation tended to originate from countries “that are tacitly or directly supporting wars of aggression” in places with Muslim-majority populations.

“You can’t on the one hand say that we want to bring about democracy, freedom, and human rights and then at the same time say that while we are invading and occupying these countries the problem is Islam,” he said.