Ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg has been charged with providing terrorist training and funding terrorism overseas, West Midlands Police have said.

The 45-year-old British citizen, from Hall Green, Birmingham, was one of four people arrested earlier this week on suspicion of terrorism offences linked to the Syria conflict.

He will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court today alongside a woman, Gerrie Tahari, 44, of Sparkbrook, Birmingham, who is charged with facilitating terrorism overseas.

Both were arrested on Tuesday with two other men held on suspicion of facilitating terrorism overseas.

The pair – a 36-year-old man from Shirley, Solihull, and a 20-year-old man from Sparkhill, Birmingham, who is the son of Tahari – remain in police custody.

Begg was held by the US government at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for nearly three years after being arrested in Pakistan in February 2002.

He was detained on suspicion of being a member of al Qaeda before being released without charge in January 2005.

He was allowed to return to the UK where he was arrested by police before being released without charge.

Begg is a director of Cage – which campaigns “against the War on Terror” – and has always maintained that he has never been involved in any kind of terrorist activity.