FRFI 216 August/September 2010

Government sets up toothless torture inquiry

Evidence of war crimes grows

The government hoped that the long-awaited announcement on 6 July of a judicial inquiry into state complicity with torture would cap the seemingly unstoppable flow of evidence of British war crimes. These hopes were at least temporarily dashed by the release of 900 previously classified government and intelligence service documents in the High Court on 14 July.

The inquiry, Prime Minister David Cameron said, would restore the ‘tarnished’ image of the intelligence services. In reality, however, its remit is to be as weak, ineffectual and secretive as possible, functioning as little more than a damage limitation exercise, in exchange for the silence of former detainees who suffered torture.

Judicial inquiry – the price of silence

The inquiry is to be headed by Sir Peter Gibson, who has been Intelligence Services Commissioner since 2006 – an appointment that is being contested by human rights organisation Reprieve. In addition, the Inquiry will hear evidence in secret and will have no power to:

• compel witnesses to attend;

• establish legal liability;

• order financial settlement; or

• call witnesses from abroad (eg former or serving CIA officers.)

Most contemptible of all, there will be immunity from prosecution for those who do give evidence.

But the main point of the inquiry is to prevent any more highly damaging disclosures. Cameron made it clear that any inquiry is dependent on six British residents formerly detained in Guantanamo, who are pursuing civil actions against MI5, MI6, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Attorney General’s office, agreeing to mediation and an out-of-court settlement.

One of the men, Omar Deghayes, told the Daily Mail:

‘It feels a little bit like blackmail, in a way. They want us to keep quiet and shut up … I must stress that we did not begin civil proceedings to get a bit of money, we did it to raise awareness and try and stop the same thing happening again’.

Secrets, torture and lies

Bisher Al Rawi, Binyam Mohamed, Omar Deghayes, Jamil El Banna, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar have, however, refused to be silenced and have ruled out mediation until they have heard more of the government’s case. The government is arguing that it would take its 60 lawyers the best part of a decade to scrutinise more than 500,000 documents that may be relevant. It has so far failed to hand over many documents and flouted the court deadline to disclose the secret interrogation policy that governed MI5 and MI6 from 2004 until earlier this year. However, the documents that have been released give a shocking and unprecedented glimpse of the blatant disregard for law, humanity and ethics of the former Labour government and of the callous connivance of the secret services with an illegal policy of torture and rendition.

For example, in 2002:

• The Foreign Office, under Jack Straw, decided that the transfer – ie illegal rendition – of British citizens from Afghanistan to Guantanamo was its ‘preferred option’. This is the same Jack Straw who in 2005 told the Foreign Affairs Committee: ‘Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, I’m lying and that behind this there is some kind of secret state in league with some dark forces in the US, and we believe Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice is lying, there is simply no truth in claims that the UK has been involved in rendition.’

• Jack Straw also asked that rendition be delayed until suspects held in Bagram airbase in Afghanistan – a notorious torture centre – had been questioned by MI5.

• Tony Blair overruled Foreign Office attempts to provide British citizen Martin Mubanga, detained without trial in Zambia, the consular support to which he was entitled. Instead, Mubanga was rendered by the CIA to Guantanamo to be tortured.

• Despite being told by Omar Deghayes, a British resident held at Bagram base, that he was being ill-treated by his US captors and was suffering from internal bleeding, MI5 officials continued to question him and then deliberately left him to be rendered to Guantanamo, where he was so badly beaten that he lost the sight in one eye.

These are war crimes under international and national law. The Criminal Justice Act 1988 makes it a

specific offence, punishable by life imprisonment, for a British official to instigate or consent to the inflicting of ‘severe pain or suffering’ on any person, anywhere in the world, or even to acquiesce in such conduct. Tony Blair, Jack Straw, the heads of the security services and all the others who were complicit in this clear policy of cooperation with torture are war criminals; none should escape prosecution.

The cover-up continues

While these abuses – the tip of a vast and appalling iceberg – were sanctioned and committed under the Blair government, the Brown administration continued the cover-up, well-served by former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, now standing for the Labour leadership. Miliband fought tooth and nail to suppress evidence of MI5 complicity with torture in the trial of Binyam Mohamed (see FRFI 214); in July he could be found on the BBC’s This Week, still robustly denying any wrongdoing, despite the wealth of evidence and findings of the court.

Now the coalition government is continuing the cover-up, keen that the British intelligence services should be free to continue to defend the interests of British imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan by any means necessary. In a cynical attempt to prevent such crimes ever being exposed in this way again, a new Green Paper seeks to prevent the courts disclosing such damning evidence in future. At the same time while the hastily-published ‘revised’ guidelines for the intelligence services stipulate a ‘presumption’ against handing a detainee over where he may face torture, the final decision will be made at ministerial level. Not only is this illegal – the Convention Against Torture states categorically that there is no exemption whatsoever for torture or complicity in torture – we can only wonder precisely what could have been in the previous guidelines, which three administrations have now refused to make public. Meanwhile, British resident Shaker Aamer remains in Guantanamo, despite being cleared for release in 2007, and this government is doing nothing to bring him home.

However, so far the High Court is continuing to demand the government release documents in the case of the six detainees, and another six are waiting to take up their cases against the state. On 16 July 102 Iraqis, who claim they were tortured by British forces, won the right to seek a judicial review to force a public inquiry into their case. And Rangzieb Ahmed, who was tortured in Pakistan at Britain’s request in 2002 and had three finger nails extracted, has won the right to appeal his conviction; no details of his torture were permitted in the original case. Despite all official attempts to suppress the evidence, through the struggles of the detainees and their lawyers and supporters, the iniquity, illegality and crimes against humanity committed by the British state are being forced out into the open.

Cat Wiener