I guess kissing America's ass to the point of your own political annihilation does have its benefits:
US prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for two British nationals detained at the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith said.
He said that British nationals Feroz Abbasi and Moazzam Begg, accused by the US of being members of al-Qaeda, will not face the death penalty should they be tried and found guilty before a US-style military commission.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair took up the matter of the death penalty with US President George W. Bush during a visit to Washington last week.
Blair signaled Sunday his willingness to let a US military commission try British citizens detained at Guantanamo, so long as its rules met British standards and no death penalty was handed down.
I guess that begs the question of whether we will still execute citizens of other countries while sparing the British detainees. If so, what will be our excuse? It sounds a bit like Breaker Morant in reverse to me. Yahoo! Singapore (of all places) has the full story here. UPDATE: The NYT now chimes in here. Mo' UPDATE: We've now made the same concession to Australia, Reuters reports here.