The Great Debate UK

Torture ruling a victory for free speech

-Padraig Reidy is news editor at Britain’s Index on Censorship an organisation promoting freedom of expression. The opinions expressed are his own.-

The Court of Appeal’s decision on Wednesday to release material relating to the torture of “war on terror” detainee Binyam Mohamed is undoubtedly an embarrassment for David Miliband, the Foreign Office and the government.

The redacted evidence, itself a mere seven paragraphs, revealed reports that Mohamed, who has never been charged with any terror offence, was shackled during interrogation, subjected to sleep deprivation and suffered severe mental stress.

The paragraphs did not reveal any evidence of direct British intelligence involvement in torture, though the judges made it clear in the last paragraph: “The treatment reported, if had been administered on behalf of the United Kingdom, would clearly have been in breach of the undertakings given by the United Kingdom in 1972. Although it is not necessary for us to categorise the treatment reported, it could readily be contended to be at the very least cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of BM by the United States authorities.”

So one can understand the Foreign office’s attempts to cover up the evidence: but at a time when Barack Obama’s White House has revealed far more disturbing details of the treatment of renditioned prisones than the ones contained in these paragraphs, it seems disingenuous for Milliband to claim, as he did, that the publication of these paragraphs would endanger U.S.-UK intelligence sharing.

Miliband’s lawyers even went so far as to have a paragraph redacted from the Court of Appeal judgement at the last minute, in a scrabbling effort to defend the reputation of the security services.

So was there a motive beyond this? Embarrassment? Shame? Simple control freakery? Possibly a combination of the three. Both Miliband and his Conservative shadow, William Hague, have spun the judgement as upholding the “control principle” on intelligence sharing. This suggests that there would not be any significant difference in approach to secrecy by any future Conservative government. Meanwhile, Miliband has ruled out a public inquiry into Mohamed’s case — unsurprising when one considers the lengths to which the government went to conceal seven tiny morsels of information.

Bagram: Where the future of Guantanamo meets its tortuous past

- Moazzam Begg is Director for the British organisation, Cageprisoners. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Little seems to have changed regarding the treatment of prisoners held at the U.S. military-run Bagram prison since I was there (2002-2004). The recent study conducted by the BBC shows allegations of sleep deprivation, stress positions, beatings, degrading treatment, religious and racial abuse have gone unabated. On a personal level though, I can’t help wonder if British intelligence services are still involved.

In April this year, a report issued by Cageprisoners entitled Fabricating Terrorism II highlighted through eyewitness testimony the cases of 29 people, all of them either British residents or citizens, who had allegedly been tortured and abused in the presence of British intelligence agents or at their behest.

One of them, the case of Farid Hilali, featured in the Guardian newspaper, showed how allegations of complicity in torture against British intelligence predated the Sept. 11 attacks. The story of Jamil Rahman too – regarding allegations of British complicity in his torture in Bangladesh – would have been included in the report but he was worried at the time about the safety of his family. The recurrent factor in all these cases is the extent to which denial and prevarication remain as much a part of the intelligence services’ arsenal as outsourcing torture and abuse. The others include the British cases of Omar Deghayes, Bisher Al-Rawi, Jamil Elbanna, Richard Belmar, Shaker Aamer and Binyam Mohamed – all of whom were held at Bagram.

Shortly after I returned from Guantanamo my father showed me a letter he received from the British Foreign Office. The letter, written in 2002, claims that UK officials were not given access to prisoners in Bagram. At the time, I was being held captive there by the U.S. military and, amongst other alphabet intelligence agencies, was being interrogated by MI5, who were aware that torture, abusive and degrading treatment was being meted out to prisoners– including British citizens.

Britain’s torture memos: keeping up appearances

- Daniel Gorevan is head of Amnesty International‘s Counter Terror with Justice campaign. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Tony Blair’s government reportedly advised MI5 officers that the UK must not be “seen to condone” torture. However, evidence is mounting that British agents knowingly exploited torture perpetrated by others.

Take the case of Khaled al Maqtari, a Yemeni arrested by U.S. forces in Iraq in 2004. He told Amnesty International that he was frogmarched from a “torture room” at Abu Ghraib out to a UK special forces jeep, huddled in a wet blanket, with the marks of beatings clearly visible on his body.

The British agents did not mistreat him, but neither did they make any effort to find out what had happened to him. Instead they drove him through the darkened streets of Baghdad, asking him to identify suspect locations, before returning him at dawn to Abu Ghraib. Three days later he disappeared into the CIA’s secret jails, not to resurface for more than two years.

Turning a blind eye to torture or abuse, benefiting from the results of that mistreatment, and delivering a man back to certain further abuse begs serious questions about the UK’s understanding and respect for its human rights and humanitarian law obligations. The question is not just whether British agents are “seen” to be cheering on torture. Whatever else might be said about keeping up appearances, states and their officials are required to do much more in the face of torture than simply mutter politely that they do not condone it.

What we should be asking is whether the UK and its agents knew, or should have known, that detainees held in U.S. custody in Abu Ghraib, or by the secret police in countries such as Pakistan or the Gambia were likely to be tortured or abused. What did the UK and its agents do or fail to do in the face of that knowledge? These are serious questions, with legal and even criminal consequences, and urgently need to be publicly and comprehensively answered.

Other incidents highlight the need for broader public inquiry. The UK provided information leading to the arrest of several men who subsequently suffered  rendition and torture at the hands of the CIA. Jamil el Banna and Bisher al Rawi, for instance, were British residents arrested in the Gambia and transferred to U.S. detention in Afghanistan, finally resurfacing in Guantánamo Bay. British agents have also been involved in the interrogation of detainees in Pakistani custody, where the risks of torture or other ill-treatment are well known.

No we can’t: Obama’s Guantanamo

- Cori Crider represents 30 Guantánamo prisoners as an attorney with legal charity Reprieve. The opinions expressed are her own. -

You would be hard-pressed to find a kid more thrilled on Barack Obama’s first day in office than Mohammed el Gharani. On January 21, had you been standing at the right corner of Guantanamo Bay, you could have heard him whoop for joy when the U.S. President made history—so we thought—by closing the prison where el Gharani grew up.

It is four months since that decision. The president gave a speech, “clarifying” his plans for Guantanamo on Thursday. But I fear we will all look back on May 21, 2009, as the day real history was made—The Day President Obama Un-Closed Guantanamo.

In many ways the die seems already cast. The President revived the military commissions last week, a move that risks stretching the prison’s life out for months. Just two prisoners have left Guantanamo since January. One, Binyam Mohamed, had humiliated the U.S. and the UK over his torture; the other, Lakhdar Boumediene, had been ordered released by a federal judge.

It is unclear what the administration is waiting for in Mohammed el Gharani’s case. He was found innocent in court, just like Boumediene, and he has a country to go to. He could climb on a plane to Chad tomorrow, were the administration simply to wake up and do what it has been ordered to do.

In this, el Gharani is luckier than many—namely, Guantanamo’s sixty refugees, who require the U.S. or a goodwilled third country to save them from torture at home. For these men, the administration’s dithering spells disaster. For while the government frittered away the global goodwill that would have helped them house refugees in January, the right regrouped.