Guantanamo Guard Reunites With Former Inmates

(Jan. 13) -- Brandon Neely, an Army veteran from Texas who spent six months as a guard at the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was poking around on Facebook in 2008 when he came across a name from his not-so-distant past.

Neely recognized Shafiq Rasul as a former inmate at the controversial camp. So he sent Rasul a message and, surprisingly, got a response back. The exchange eventually led to a reunion of Neely, Rasul and ex-inmate Ruhal Ahmed that the BBC broadcast on Tuesday. (Follow the link for video of the extraordinary meeting.)

Pat Sullivan, AP

Brandon Neely, shown here in February, has said he is haunted by his six months as a guard at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Neely, 29, who also served in Iraq before leaving the military in 2005, said he reached out to the former detainees because of the guilt he felt over his time at Guantanamo. "The news would always try to make Guantanamo into this great place, like [prisoners] were treated so great," he told the BBC. "No, it wasn't. You know, here I was basically just putting innocent people in cages."

The meeting, which the BBC arranged, was awkward at first. "You look different without a cap," Ahmed told Neely. "You look different without the jumpsuits," he replied.

Rasul and Ahmed were arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 while they were traveling with an aid convoy. Neely said he believes the two men were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Both detainees were released in 2004. They have pursued legal action against the U.S. for their time at Guantanamo, The New York Times reported.

Neely has spoken out about his time at Guantanamo before. In an exclusive interview on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" in February, he told about the time he beat an older detainee soon after the camp opened. You can watch his appearance in the video below, or read the transcript.

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Neely told Maddow that talking about his experience has helped him cope with it.

"You know, this helps me in an aspect to get it out," he said. "But, also, you know, you got a lot of detainees that were innocent and had [been] proven innocent. And they are trying to tell their stories, and people don't believe them."

Neely recounted the beating again during his reunion with Rasul and Ahmed. The story left Ahmed speechless for a moment, the BBC reported. But he said he thought he could eventually forgive Neely.

"He's realized what he did was wrong, and he's living with it and suffering with it, and as long as he knows what he did was wrong, that's the main thing," Ahmed told the network.