I was quite astonished earlier this year when our Prime Minister met former Guantanamo Bay detainees and shook hands with them on a visit to Saudi Arabia. This was particularly disconcerting since I had gone to 10 Downing Street on 11 January last year, to mark six years of Guantanamo—accompanied by several others—to deliver a letter calling for the return of three British residents, and he didn’t even answer. In fact, he’s never met with any of the British former Guantanamo prisoners.

But I’ve got something a little different planned for this year. My lawyer in Guantanamo once explained to me the types of prejudices that seemed prevalent in the USA by drawing stark historical analogies of perceptions he encountered in his homeland. "They detested the African-Americans but never really feared them; they feared the Soviet Union but didn’t really hate them. But Muslims today are both feared and hated." This fear and hatred has produced a plethora of laws and wars that has targeted Muslims in quite an unprecedented way.

Who, then, could have imagined that the next president of the USA would be a black man with the Muslim name, Barack Hussein Obama? The president-elect, who takes office later this month, reached the White House under the banner of "change." The Sam Cooke civil rights classic: ‘A Change is Gonna Come,’ was the campaign-trail song and was paraphrased by Obama in his victory speech: "It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America."

But the notion of change in the US, particularly amongst the civil rights movements, was just as potent amongst more radical approaches to the struggle as it is today. Cooke’s protest song was played upon the death of Malcolm X, and was memorably featured in Spike Lee's biopic. But unlike Obama, Malcolm X embraced his Islamic roots and chose his Muslim name (Al-Hajj Malik El-Shabbaz) after his spiritual reawakening, which included his pilgrimage to Makkah. He saw Islam as a panacea for the problems facing America rather than as the menace it is seen as today. It was shortly after this marked change in his rejection of racist ideology, that this man—who was regarded by many as a threat to national security—was assassinated.

During my years in Guantanamo I came across many African-American US soldiers who understood something of their roots and acknowledged that the last time Muslims were taken across the Atlantic, en masse and in chains, by the Americans to the Americas, it was the enslavement of their ancestors. Even rendition, extraordinary as it is today, they accepted, was infamously used to recapture fugitive slaves who had no human rights. It was not surprising to see some of the black soldiers reading classics like The Autobiography of Malcolm X or The Souls of Black Folk. Since several detainees were English-speakers of African origin—including all three Britons who returned with me and one, Binyam Moahmmed, who is still in Guantanamo—for some soldiers, the Guantanamo mission triggered a desire to learn more about themselves.

Albania has stood out amongst European nations by agreeing to accept the handful of men who are unable to return to their countries of origin for fear of torture or even execution, like the Chinese Uighurs. Considering these men have all been scrutinised (and tortured) by the world’s most powerful military and intelligence agencies it would be far easier to establish the credibility of their asylum applications than most of the thousands of others who are granted asylum each year. In Britain, there is still the issue of three British residents in Guantanamo on whose behalf the British government has not acted: Binyam Mohammed, Ahmed Belbacha and Shaker Aamer. Aamer’s wife and four children—the youngest of whom is seven years old and has never seen his father—are all born and bred British citizens.

Detractors of the call to return the men to the UK conveniently ignore that dozens of European men—including myself—have returned from Guantanamo. We are not recipients of state benefits – despite the state (or States) owing us for having stolen irreplaceable years of our lives without charge or trial.

That it took a black president to close down the world’s most infamous prison will not be forgotten by history—if he remains true to his word—and that change will be most welcome. Yet, whilst the closure of Guantanamo and withdrawal troops from Iraq will be welcomed by most people, pouring more soldiers into Afghanistan means the war there will continue and, by default, so will unlawful detention and enforced disappearance.

Since my return home I’ve been in contact with several US soldiers. The ones I’ve spoken to have not only expressed a deep sense of shame for having been part of Bush’s war machine but have begun to reach out to some of the men they were charged with guarding – men who they had been told were the most dangerous on the planet. One of them was responsible for interrogations in Bagram, Afghanistan, where I was held during 2002, and has now begun speaking about the extent of the abuses that took place there – including murder. He was later redeployed to intelligence gathering at Abu Ghraib, Iraq and is now part of the anti-war movement.

Another, Christopher Arendt, a former Guantanamo guard, has agreed to come to the UK and speak about his experiences on opposing sides in the "war on terror" with me and other former prisoners there. We will be accompanied by former Guantanamo detainee and Al-Jazeera journalist, Sami Al-Hajj, and the brother of Ali al-Marri, a Qatari national who has been imprisoned without charge in the USA as an "enemy combatant" since 2003. The Two Sides, One Story tour starts on 11 January to mark seven years since the first prisoners were flown to Guantanamo Bay.