Briton held in Guantanamo charged with war crimes despite pleas to free him

A British man held at Guantanamo Bay is to be charged with war crimes, despite pleas from the UK to release him.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, has been accused of plotting with al-Qaeda to bomb apartment buildings in America.

The Government requested last year that he be released from the notorious U.S. Navy base in Cuba, but the Pentagon have confirmed they have filed charges against him.

Mohamed, who is originally from Ethiopia, is the 20th detainee selected to face the military tribunals at Guantanamo, and the fifth in the last week.

Susan Crawford, a Pentagon official who oversees the tribunal system, must approve the charges before an arraignment is scheduled.

Lawyers for Mohamed have argued that the U.S. case against him rests on evidence obtained in Morocco.

They allege his genitals were slashed with a scalpel and he was repeatedly beaten during two years of confinement following his capture in 2002.

All the evidence against him appears to have been "derived from coercive interrogation and torture," civilian attorney Clive Stafford Smith and military counsel Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley said in a letter urging Crawford to dismiss the charges.

His lawyers filed a lawsuit back in the UK last month seeking to force the British government to hand over documents they claim prove the prisoner was tortured before being sent to Guantanamo in 2004.

Mohamed, moved to Britain when he was 15, travelled to Afghanistan in May 2001 and trained at an al-Qaeda camp, according to the U.S. charge sheet released yesterday.

They allege he later accepted instructions from al-Qaeda kingpin Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to conduct terror operations inside the United States.

At a meeting in Pakistan, the Ethiopian allegedly agreed to rent apartments inside large buildings in America, fill them with natural gas and blow them up with timing devices.

Mohamed faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted on charges of conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

In August, Foreign Secretary David Miliband formally asked the Bush administration to release Mohamed along with four other British residents at Guantanamo.

Three of the men were sent to Britain but the U.S. refused to release Mohamed and Saudi-born Shaker Aamer, citing particular security concerns in those cases.

Five British citizens were freed from Guantanamo in March 2004 and four in January 2005, according to Britain's Foreign Office.