One minute, Omer Almagboul says, he and his fellow Sudanese flatmate were lazing at their student flat in England, recovering from a big night out. The next, their lives changed for ever.
Dozens of armed police stormed in, forced them to kneel on the floor facing the wall and interrogated them as terrorism suspects in Brighton.
Almagboul was caught up with his friend Shadi Abdelgadir in a police net trawling for people who helped the men who tried to blow up London buses and trains on July 21, 2005 - two weeks after suicide bombers in the city killed over 50 people.
Their Sudanese friend, Mohamed Kabashi, had brought one of the would-be bombers, Hussein Osman, to their flat one night, the first time they had met him. He stayed one night then left.
"We thought he was just another visitor - we showed the usual hospitality." said Almagboul, now 23 and sitting in his family's home in Khartoum.
"I couldn't believe he (Kabashi) would do that to us. He played us like fools."
After an ordeal lasting nearly three years, a jury cleared the two last month of all charges including failing to disclose information under the Terrorism Act and aiding and abetting a criminal. Kabashi was convicted.
Almagboul, a thin man who was friendly and hospitable, anxiously tapped his cigarette on the table as he recalled in his first media interview the emotional turmoil and extreme paranoia he lived with.
The trial was a farce, but the jury was good, he said - leaving him with anger towards Britain's government which he says is trying to introduce a police state, but admiration for its people.
"The British people don't know. The public lost millions of taxpayers' money and for what? Politics?" said the former electrical engineering student.
"These terrorism trials aren't about justice, they're about manipulating the law to guarantee convictions and make up numbers."
He said he and his friend agreed to be witnesses for the prosecution to help convict one of the would-be bombers, having been promised they would not face charges - but were tricked.
PRISON
They spent six months in London's high-security Belmarsh prison alongside some of the country's most dangerous criminals, then got bail but had to wear a tracking tag, stay in for 12-1/2 hours of each day and had to report twice a day to a police station.
Even then, police would bang on Almagboul's door at all hours of the night or telephone to check he was in.
"It was unnecessary harassment," he said. "I didn't sleep properly for 2-1/2 years - I was a walking zombie."
In Belmarsh, he was afraid to openly practise his religion, Islam. Once as he and other Muslim prisoners tried to pray in the yard, guards shouted and pushed them and dragged them back to their cells.
