More4 News Blog

Inside the prisons of Guantanamo Bay

Our reporter Keme Nzerem had rare access to Guantanamo Bay, where the US military keeps its prisoners in the War on Terror. Here's his account:

As our minders ushered us to the recreation enclosure in Camp 4 - where Guantanamo's most complicit detainees are being held - 4 or 5 them were playing basketball in the Caribbean sun.

Fantastic images for us - and a great PR coup for Gitmo's press team tying to mend America's sullied image. We'd been warned the detainees usually hide in the shadows when television crews show up.

But we never got to shoot a frame - because the Camp Guards shooed them away. My initial reaction - disappointment, this clear evidence of a disconnect between Gitmo's image consultants - and its workers on the ground.

We filmed on as the detainees chatted in the background, one of them riding an exercise bike. Our guide asked me what I thought of the scene before me.

Where is Prescott?

When the improbably titled COBRA (wasn't that a film with Sylvester Stallone?) or civil contingencies committee met today to discuss the foiled terror plot, someone wasn't on the guest list, it appears. Despite being in London, whilst his boss catches the rays in Carribean, Mr Prescott was conspicuously absent from the meeting. Hard-man John Reid took the lead instead.

It seems that the Deputy Prime Minister's office is claiming that it's "normal practice" for the Home Secretary to take the lead on terror issues, and not the Deputy Prime Minister. But wasn't it Prezza, not Clarke (the then Home Secretary) who headed up COBRA after 7/7?

Prescott's absence is not going to endear him to the print press who are baying for his blood ever since the stories of his affair with his secretary and his visit to an American tycoon's ranch broke. Though some might think his absence is just as well, given the fact that Scotland Yard is still looking into whether his acceptance of hospitality from Philip Anschutz, the billionaire who wants to open a casino in the Millennium Dome, breached anti-corruption laws.

Blair tells us he is on the phone. Reid is on the television. And Prescott? Not totally on the job, it seems.

A (very short) conversation with Alistair Campbell

Overheard just now in the newsroom.

"Hello, is that Alistair Campbell?  This is Channel 4's More4 News, and we we are doing a piece tonight about Tony Blair. Oh.  Uhm. Thanks for your time."

He probably has plans to go out jogging.

Rocking with the Poles in Southampton

Adam Arseniuk likes English winters. Of all the reasons to come to Britain, our winters wouldn't normally top the list. But for Adam, our winters are warmer than the ones back home and that's one reason here's here, writes Andrew Thomas.

That and the money, of course. Adam earns four times here what he would make in his native Poland. And that's assuming he could find a job there.

I'm at a wholesale nursery on the outskirts of the New Forest, interviewing a Polish plant-tenderer for a piece on the extent of Polish immigration. It's illegal immigration that currently makes headlines, but the quiet phenomenon that's been underway over the last two years is legal immigration from the new accession countries of Eastern Europe.

Podcast: From Isfahan to the Internet

Jon Snow broadcasts from the ancient Persian capital, and finds that the bloggers got there first. Listen to the podcast

What a country! Look at this place for a start. Where are we? The sumptuous centre of Persian Islamic art a few miles from... the far less sumptuous rather more contentious centre of Natanz, where nuclear enrichment continues somewhere under the mountains marked only by stacks of excavated earth, a few low-lying buildings, watchtowers and anti-aircraft batteries.

Yet it feels a million miles from here as does the amazingly ill-tempered row between America and Iran. Funny old world...

Podcast: Chasing Larijani

Jon Snow tells the behind the scenes - seat of your pants - story of our exclusive, live interview with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani.

You can listen to the audio here or subscribe to our podcast guaranteeing you get to hear subsequent broadcasts.

This post first appeared on Channel4's News from Iran blog.