Moazzam Begg, the British citizen who was held for three years without charge in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, will be giving a free public lecture on human rights at Cambridge University this week.

Mr Begg will be one of a number of well-known speakers visiting during a three-day series of lectures and panel discussions on human rights. The talks form part of “A World To Believe In” – a rolling, two-year programme marking the University’s 800th anniversary in 2009.

Other speakers appearing for the event will include Joel Edwards, who became the first black general director of the Evangelical Alliance in 1997, and Nicholas Sagovsky, the Canon Theologian at Westminster Abbey, who has written extensively on theology, ecumenism and social justice.

Moazzam Begg was born and raised in Birmingham, but moved with his family to Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2001 to start a school for basic education and to work on providing local communities with water pumps. Following the onset of the operation led by the US military to remove the Taliban, the family moved to Pakistan. On January 31st 2002, while living in a temporary home, Mr Begg was arrested and taken to a detention site at Bagram, near Kabul, where he was held for a year.

From there he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he spent a further two years before finally being released in January 2005 without any charges being brought. On his arrival back in Britain, he was arrested by British police, but released the following day.

Since his release he has acted as a spokesman for the prisoner human rights organisation, Cageprisoners, and lectures extensively on issues surrounding torture, anti-terror legislation and community relations. He has also written a book: “Enemy Combatant” – the first to be published by a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner.

His talk is entitled Habeas Corpus – 800 years on and will focus on illegal detentions and the use of torture in the 21st century, as well as touching on some of the torture techniques – such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation – commonly used.

The “A World To Believe In” series began earlier this year. Over three days of each term, international and national speakers, academics, opinion formers and politicians visit the university to explore the role of faith in some of the most important issues facing the world in which we live.

This term’s programme will begin on Wednesday, May 7th, at Great St Mary’s Church at 5pm with a panel discussion on “Freedom or Fear”. Mr Begg will give a short talk at Border’s bookshop on Market Street, followed by the lecture in Great St Mary’s at 8pm.

Further presentations, discussions and debates will be held on Thursday and Friday and all are open to the public and free to attend. For a full programme, please click on the link to the right of this page.

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