Diplomats have made a humiliating apology to six Pakistani men close to President Pervez Musharraf's ruling elite after they were wrongly arrested at Gatwick on suspicion of terrorist activity, interrogated and held for 21 hours.

The men - relatives or supporters of Chaudhry Shujat Hussain, a Musharraf lieutenant - flew into Gatwick on January 21 from Barcelona to be met by about 20 armed police and Scotland Yard detectives.

The Pakistanis were escorted to a Sussex police station where they were questioned, fingerprinted and photographed. At one point officers considered switching their suits for jail uniforms.

Eight hours later they were informed they were being arrested "on suspicion of operating or planning a terrorist activity", Haaris Elahi, an American citizen who is Hussain's nephew, said at the family mansion in Lahore.

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They were asked whether they supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who they thought was responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and - most bizarrely - whether they supported Musharraf and his Pakistan Muslim League (Q) party. "I said 'obviously - we are in it'," said Elahi.

His interrogator was interested in his collection of Bollywood and Hollywood movies. "He asked if they contained any training guides, and if I knew how to use explosives," said 25-year-old Elahi. "I got all emotional and teary-eyed. So he said 'Maybe you're the innocent one, maybe it's not you. Maybe it's one of your friends.'"

The men were transferred to Paddington police station, west London, in handcuffs, and soon after their lawyer arrived the police seemed to realise their mistake. The group were escorted to Heathrow and put on a flight to Pakistan with an apology.

The arrests have infuriated Musharraf's inner circle. Sir Mark Lyall Grant, the director general political at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, met Hussain, a former prime minister, in London.

"He explained that the police had acted on the basis of information that subsequently proved to be inaccurate," a statement said. "The British government deeply regrets the incident and is sorry for any personal distress that was caused to the individuals concerned."

Hussain said that the FCO initially blamed the debacle on false information from the Spanish authorities but later shifted the blame to French intelligence. The government promised to erase the arrested men's fingerprint and DNA testing from police databases, he said. He noted that the arrests had come five days after 12 Pakistanis and two Indians were arrested in Barcelona on terrorism charges.

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