Humiliate, strip, threaten: UK military interrogation manuals discovered.

We learned yesterday of the US ignoring Iraqis torturing Iraqis, and today The Guardian have managed to unearth British army training methods which appear to be in direct breach of the Geneva Conventions.

Training materials drawn up secretly in recent years tell interrogators they should aim to provoke humiliation, insecurity, disorientation, exhaustion, anxiety and fear in the prisoners they are questioning, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved.

One PowerPoint training aid created in September 2005 tells trainee military interrogators that prisoners should be stripped before they are questioned. "Get them naked," it says. "Keep them naked if they do not follow commands." Another manual prepared around the same time advises the use of blindfolds to put prisoners under pressure.

A manual prepared in April 2008 suggests that "Cpers" – captured personnel – be kept in conditions of physical discomfort and intimidated. Sensory deprivation is lawful, it adds, if there are "valid operational reasons". It also urges enforced nakedness.

The images which emerged from Abu Ghraib were supposed to be the work of a few American bad apples, but it is becoming increasingly clear that both the American and the British interrogation methods had been changed and that nakedness and humiliation had become part and parcel of the way in which both country's interrogators chose to elicit the maximum information.

More recent training material says blindfolds, earmuffs and plastic handcuffs are essential equipment for military interrogators, and says that while prisoners should be allowed to sleep or rest for eight hours in each 24, they need be permitted only four hours unbroken sleep. It also suggests that interrogators tell prisoners they will be held incommunicado unless they answer questions.

These are clear breaches of the Geneva Conventions which state that no "physical or moral coercion" is permissible.

I used to believe that this was simply an American problem, but the Guardian's discovery of this British training manual must lead one to conclude that this became official coalition policy during the War on Terror.

Next month, at the high court in London, lawyers representing more than 100 Iraqis who were held and interrogated by British forces, between the March 2003 invasion and April 2007, will argue that there is compelling evidence that they were tortured in a systematic manner.

The abuse, documented by a team of lawyers led by a Birmingham solicitor, Phil Shiner, includes 59 allegations of detainees being hooded, 11 of electric shocks, 122 of sound deprivation through the use of earmuffs, 52 of sleep deprivation, 131 of sight deprivation using blackened goggles, 39 of enforced nakedness and 18 allegations that detainees were kept awake by pornographic DVDs played on laptops.

At a preliminary hearing, a high court judge said it appeared to be accepted by the MoD that there were "arguable cases of ill-treatment" and added: "It appears also to be accepted that there is an arguable case of something systemic."

I, long ago, came to the conclusion that American use of torture was systemic, simply based on the fact that what was happening (everywhere where torture was alleged) all followed a familiar pattern: enforced nakedness, use of noise and light to produce sleep deprivation, and a myriad of other things, were almost always without aberration. One never heard of nails being pulled out, of eyes gouged. It really was as if they were following a textbook.

The Guardian today reveal the British version of that textbook.

Someone, somewhere, gave permission for this. Someone authorised it.

They ought to be prosecuted. They are criminals.

Click here for full article.

Tags: War on Terror, British Army, torture, war crimes

Iraq war logs: US turned over captives to Iraqi torture squads.

Until now, we had thought that the recent Wikileaks revelations had told us that the US ignored evidence of Iraqis torturing Iraqis, but it seems it was rather worse than that.

It now transpires that US forces handed over detainees to Iraqi units which they knew would torture them.

The 400,000 field reports published by the whistleblowing website at the weekend contain an official account of deliberate threats by a military interrogator to turn his captive over to the Iraqi "Wolf Brigade".

The interrogator told the prisoner in explicit terms that: "He would be subject to all the pain and agony that the Wolf battalion is known to exact upon its detainees."

It was bad enough when the charges were that the US was ignoring allegations of torture, but this is of another level altogether.

This is about the US handing over detainees in the full knowledge that they were about to be tortured.

And, for once, Nick Clegg is to be applauded for stepping up to the plate.

The evidence emerged as the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said the allegations of killings, torture and abuse in Iraq were "extremely serious" and "needed to be looked at".

Clegg, speaking on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show, did not rule out an inquiry into the actions of British forces in Iraq, but said it was up to the US administration to answer for the actions of its forces. His comments contrasted with a statement from the Ministry of Defence today, which warned that the posting of classified US military logs on the WikiLeaks website could endanger the lives of British forces.

Clegg said: "We can bemoan how these leaks occurred, but I think the nature of the allegations made are extraordinarily serious. They are distressing to read about and they are very serious. I am assuming the US administration will want to provide its own answer. It's not for us to tell them how to do that."

Asked if there should be an inquiry into the role of British troops, he said: "I think anything that suggests that basic rules of war, conflict and engagement have been broken or that torture has been in any way condoned are extremely serious and need to be looked at.

"People will want to hear what the answer is to what are very, very serious allegations of a nature which I think everybody will find quite shocking."

Lambasting Wikileaks for what they have done rather misses the point. Most of us are less concerned about how this information got into the public domain than we are about whether or not what is detailed here is true.

If this is true then we are dealing with war crimes. It is long past time for the US and UK to seriously look into what was done in Iraq.

And, unlike President Obama, I think that should go all the way to the top, and that the US should look at just who at the to gave the orders for this immoral crap in the first place.

Within the huge leaked archive is contained a batch of secret field reports from the town of Samarra. They corroborate previous allegations that the US military turned over many prisoners to the Wolf Brigade, the feared 2nd battalion of the interior ministry's special commandos.

In Samarra, the series of log entries in 2004 and 2005 describe repeated raids by US infantry, who then handed their captives over to the Wolf Brigade for "further questioning". Typical entries read: "All 5 detainees were turned over to Ministry of Interior for further questioning" (from 29 November 2004) and "The detainee was then turned over to the 2nd Ministry of Interior Commando Battalion for further questioning" (30 November 2004).

I have no faith that Obama will not sweep this under the carpet as he has swept the rest of the Bush regime's crimes under the carpet, but we now have the British Deputy Prime Minister saying that an investigation is needed into this. That ought to count for something.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Nick Clegg, Iraq war, war crimes, Wolf Brigade, torture

Iraq war logs: secret files show how US ignored torture.

Wikileaks has released a further 400,000 secret US army field reports detailing that the US turned it's back on evidence of torture carried out by the Iraqi forces.

It's yet another grim indictment of the Bush regime's callous attitude to the subject of war crimes and the blasé manner in which it ignored evidence of wrongdoing.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death.

The report named at least one perpetrator and was passed to coalition forces. But the logs reveal that the coalition has a formal policy of ignoring such allegations. They record "no investigation is necessary" and simply pass reports to the same Iraqi units implicated in the violence. By contrast all allegations involving coalition forces are subject to formal inquiries. Some cases of alleged abuse by UK and US troops are also detailed in the logs.

And, as is to be expected, Hillary Clinton has expressed her horror, not at what is contained in the reports, but at the fact that Wikileaks have had the temerity to release them.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, condemned the release of almost 400,000 secret US army field reports by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks claiming the disclosure could put lives at risk.

Speaking to reporters in Washington before the documents had been posted on the website, Clinton said she condemned "in the most clear terms the disclosure of any information by individuals and or organisations which puts the lives of United States and its partners' service members and civilians at risk".

One would hope that the Obama regime would react with immediate condemnation, not at the release of such documents, but at the horror stories contained within them.

In two Iraqi cases postmortems revealed evidence of death by torture. On 27 August 2009 a US medical officer found "bruises and burns as well as visible injuries to the head, arm, torso, legs and neck" on the body of one man claimed by police to have killed himself. On 3 December 2008 another detainee, said by police to have died of "bad kidneys", was found to have "evidence of some type of unknown surgical procedure on [his] abdomen".

But even now, even as we are reading of such horrors, Hillary condemns the fact that this information is available to us, rather than choosing to condemn the acts of brutality which we are reading about.

And the logs also appear to show that the US claim that it does not count the Iraqi dead - a callous claim which was always breathtaking - is actually false.

Although US generals have claimed their army does not carry out body counts and British ministers still say no official statistics exist, the war logs show these claims are untrue. The field reports purport to identify all civilian and insurgent casualties, as well as numbers of coalition forces wounded and killed in action. They give a total of more than 109,000 violent deaths from all causes between 2004 and the end of 2009.

This includes 66,081 civilians, 23,984 people classed as "enemy" and 15,196 members of the Iraqi security forces. Another 3,771 dead US and allied soldiers complete the body count.

No fewer than 31,780 of these deaths are attributed to improvised roadside bombs (IEDs) planted by insurgents. The other major recorded tally is of 34,814 victims of sectarian killings, recorded as murders in the logs.

It says everything about how much the truth has been a major casualty of this war that we now have a US Secretary of State expecting us to share her horror that the truth has emerged, rather than disgust at what these logs contain.

The Obama administration have decided that no member of the Bush administration shall face charges for war crimes, no matter what evidence of US torture emerges. They have decided to "look forward, not backwards".

I suppose, in those circumstances, it would be hypocritical in the extreme for Hillary to express horror at the news that Iraqis were torturing Iraqis. But it says a lot about the moral decrepitudes of the US position, that we can read of such events and feel sure that nothing will ever be done about it. We have lost our moral compass.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Wikileaks, Iraq war, torture, war crimes

The U.S. searches for war criminals.

This made me laugh out loud.

Apparently, the U.S. Government are aggressively trying to track down war criminals.

"I don't think there's any question that we're going to have a greater number of these cases and that these cases are going to reach (suspects from) more parts of the world," says Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, a child of Holocaust survivors who has pushed the more aggressive efforts to hold war criminals accountable. "It's something we have to do. We owe it to our citizens and we owe it to the world."

Congress passed the laws amid a broader international push after the Cold War to hold war criminals and human rights abusers accountable, says Eli Rosenbaum, who ran the Office of Special Investigations and now is director of strategy and policy in the new Human Rights and Special Prosecutions unit.

"Interest burgeoned all over the world in bringing these people to justice," Rosenbaum says. Among U.S. policymakers, "there was bipartisan support for doing this, and Congress gave us a lot of new tools."

Now, it's going full steam.

"We want to send a message to would-be human rights violators of the future," Rosenbaum says. "Their odds of getting away with it are shrinking rapidly."

As Greenwald points out, if the US wants to prove it's serious about this, it might want to start it's search here.

Tags: Bush, war criminals, war crimes

Tony Blair received early torture warning, court told.

There should be a day when people like Blair are called to account for what they did and didn't do.

Tony Blair was warned a matter of weeks after American forces began rounding up terror suspects that British nationals held by the US in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay were being tortured, secret documents disclosed in the high court reveal.

He expressed concern about their treatment after initially being sceptical, he admits in a hand-written note on a Foreign Office (FO) document dated 18 January 2002. It appears among heavily redacted MI5 and FO documents released in court hearings in which British nationals are suing the government, MI5 and MI6

Blair scribbled on the note, "The key is to find out how they are being treated. Though I was initially sceptical about claims of torture, we must make it clear to the US that any such action would be totally unacceptable and v quickly establish that it isn't happening."

But did anyone do what Blair's scribble asked for?

Evidence has since emerged that the British government knew the US was mistreating and torturing UK nationals and residents after January 2002 and for years afterwards, but did not seriously protest about it.

I remember that in "A Man For All Season's" Thomas More pointed out that, in such circumstances, British law relied upon the Latin phrase, "Qui tacet consentit", - silence equals consent - which would imply that, if Blair did not adequately protest against torture, that the law would assume he was consensual to it's practice.

I have yet to find any evidence that Blair protested against these American practices, and plenty of evidence exists to show that he must have been aware of them at the time that they were practiced.

A separate, previously classified Ministry of Defence document now released in heavily redacted form and dated 13 January 2002, warns that "the US treatment of the prisoners could be judged to be... [phrase blacked out]".

After noting that the ICRC was denied access, the writer of the note continues: "It is clear that the US is pushed logistically but my understanding of the Geneva Convention is that this is no excuse".

We can only surmise what the writer of the note was hinting at, but it seems pretty clear to me.

In one document, an official at the British embassy in Washington warns the FO in London reported back on discussions with the US in October 2001 about detention and treatment of detainees. "I drew attention to ECHR Article 3 [the European human rights convention's ban on torture and inhuman or degrading treatment] ..."

In January 2002 an MoD official noted: "From my visit to Bagram [prison in Afghanistan] and watching the reception of the 80 plus prisoners, it would seem that this detainee issue is one that has the potential to reflect badly on the US/coalition ... the US treatment of the prisoners could be judged to be [redacted]".

Another document, a 19-page appendix to a cabinet briefing paper dated 14 January 2002 and headed "UK nationals held in Afghanistan" is completely redacted.

During the court hearings, Jonathan Crow QC, for the security and intelligence agencies, said it was difficult and time-consuming for MI5 and MI6 to collate the documents relating to the case. Mr Justice Silber intervened at one point, saying: "But it is important in a case of this magnitude".

Richard Hermer QC, for the former detainees, told the court that at the heart of the case was the question of when MI5 and MI6 first became aware of the prisoners' treatment by the US. They were "pretty straightforward questions", he said.

Indeed, they are "pretty straightforward questions". When did we know of the torture allegations and what did we do about it?

To many of us, it appears that we did nothing.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Blair, war on terror, torture, Guantanamo Bay

State Secrecy and Official Criminality.

Scott Horton looks at the real reason that the Obama administration denied torture victims their day in court:

The Holder Justice Department would have us believe that it is protecting state secrets essential to our security. That posture is risible, and half of the court saw through it. The dilemma faced by the Justice Department was rather that evidence presented in the suit would likely be used in the future (not in the United States, obviously) to prosecute those who participated in the extraordinary renditions process. Twenty-three U.S. agents have already been convicted for their role in a rendition in Milan. Prosecutors in Spain have issued arrest warrants for a further 13 U.S. agents involved in a botched rendition case that touched on Spanish soil. Prosecutors in Germany have opened a criminal investigation into the use of Ramstein AFB in connection with torture and illegal kidnappings. Prosecutors in Poland are pursuing a similar matter. And Prime Minister David Cameron was recently forced to brief President Obama on his decision to direct a formal inquiry which could lead to prosecutions tied directly to the subject matter of the Mohamed case. This is the remarkable background to the case decided by the Ninth Circuit, and remarkably not a single word about this appears anywhere in the opinion—or even in most of the press accounts about it.

The scandal here is that this was done to hinder other nations who are seeking to bring prosecutions against clearly illegal behaviour.

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have called the Department on its acts of constitutional treachery. From the West Coast:

The decision to short-circuit the trial process is more than a misreading of the law; it’s an egregious miscarriage of justice. That’s obvious from a perusal of the plaintiffs’ complaint. One said that while he was imprisoned in Egypt, electrodes were attached to his earlobes, nipples and genitals. A second, held in Morocco, said he was beaten, denied food and threatened with sexual torture and castration. A third claimed that his Moroccan captors broke his bones and cut him with a scalpel all over his body, and poured hot, stinging liquid into his open wounds.

From New York:

The state secrets doctrine is so blinding and powerful that it should be invoked only when the most grave national security matters are at stake — nuclear weapons details, for example, or the identity of covert agents. It should not be used to defend against allegations that if true, as the dissenting judges wrote, would be “gross violations of the norms of international law.” All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.

Other nations will continue with prosecutions. International law won't go away no matter how much Obama and his administration will it to do so.

The Bush administration committed crimes. All Obama is doing is trying to make it more difficult for other nations to have access to the information they need to secure convictions.

But, three of Britain's most senior judges have already rejected the argument Obama relied upon and ordered the British government to reveal evidence of MI5 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed – unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary. Miliband's argument was very similar to the one Obama used in the United States. And the British court rejected outright the argument which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have accepted by a single vote.

So, this information will come out, even if it has to come from governments which are allied to the United States. David Cameron had this to say when he announced his inquiry into torture:

"The longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger the stain on our reputation as a country that believes in freedom, fairness and human rights grows," the prime minister told the Commons.

It's a real source of shame that Obama isn't prepared to go as far as Cameron to answer the same questions which plague America's reputation.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Obama, torture, war on terror, Bush, crimes, war crimes

Victims of extraordinary rendition cannot sue, US court rules.

Victims of George Bush's policy of "extraordinary rendition" will not be able to sue the companies which transported them according to a US court.

A California court has sided with the Obama administration, which argued that a case led by the British resident Binyam Mohamed against the aerospace giant Boeing was bound to reveal state secrets and sensitive intelligence information.

Legal supporters of Mr Mohamed raised uproar at the decision, which the judge in charge of the case said had presented a "painful conflict between human rights and national security".

Ben Wizner, attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued the case, called it "a sad day not only for the torture victims whose attempt to seek justice has been extinguished, but for all Americans who care about our nation's reputation in the world", and vowed to appeal to the US Supreme Court. "To date, not a single victim of the Bush administration's torture programme has had his day in court," the attorney said.

Reprieve, which campaigns for the human rights of prisoners, said the California court had "derailed another precious chance at a legal reckoning with the excesses of the war on terror". The group's executive director, Clare Algar, said: "Yet again, those responsible for torture and rendition have used 'state secrecy' to avoid facing up to their crimes in court."

There are times when I despair at the Obama administration, and this is one of those times.

The excuse of "state secrecy" has once again been used to deny victims their day in court. It appears that we can all agree that a historic wrong was committed against these men, but that the Obama administration are more concerned with preserving the secrets of Bush's thugs than ensuring that these men are ever compensated for the wrong which was done to them.

Ethiopian-born Mr Mohamed and fellow complainants accused Jepperson Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary, of arranging illegal rendition flights for the CIA and sought damages. In a narrow 6-5 ruling that reversed a lower court decision, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said this was a "rare" case where national security concerns trumped the right to a trial.

Judge Raymond Fisher said: "We have tried our best to evaluate the competing claims of plaintiffs and the government and resolve that conflict according to the principles governing the state secrets doctrine set forth by the US Supreme Court."

The ruling stands in contrast to a UK Court of Appeals judgment earlier this year which forced disclosure of intelligence documents detailing how much MI5 knew about Mr Mohamed's case. And in a signal that the US appeals panel decision was a complex one, it ordered the government to pay the plaintiffs' legal costs.

Paying their costs is all well and good, but that still falls woefully short of compensating them for the horrors which they had to endure.

And let's never forget what was done to Binyam Mohamed:

They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor's scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face. But maybe I was going to be raped. Maybe they'd electrocute me. Maybe castrate me.

They took the scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Maybe an inch. At first I just screamed ... I was just shocked, I wasn't expecting ... Then they cut my left chest. This time I didn't want to scream because I knew it was coming.

One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. "I told you I was going to teach you who's the man," [one] eventually said.

This is the behaviour which Obama is seeking to protect from the scrutiny of a court. It is shameful that he is doing this.

He has never lifted a finger to see that the Bush administration face any charges for the serious crimes which they committed, and now he moves to stop the victims from ever being compensated for the suffering which they have endured.

This is a stain on his presidency which even his most ardent supporters - and I count myself amongst them - will find impossible to remove. Obama should not be doing this. And those of us who supported him have every right to feel bitter disappointment at this betrayal of our ideals.

UPDATE:

The New York Times get it right:

Torture Is a Crime, Not a Secret.

Click here for full article.

Tags: torture, Binyam Mohamed, war crimes, Obama, Bush

Study: Newspapers stopped describing waterboarding as 'torture' during Bush years.

I'm late to this:

Is waterboarding torture? If you picked up a major U.S. newspaper before 2004, the answer would likely be yes, according to a new Harvard University study.

But in the post-9/11 world, when the practice of immobilizing and virtually drowning detainees became a politically charged issue, that straightforward definition grew murky. The study, conducted by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, examined coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and found a noticeable shift in language concerning waterboarding.

“From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture,” the study noted. But the study found that things changed in the years when “war on terror” became part of the American lexicon.

The New York Times defined waterboarding as torture, or effectively implied that it was, 81.5 percent of the time in articles until 2004, the study found. But during 2002-2008 — when the George W. Bush White House made a concerted effort to normalize harsh interrogation methods for use on terror detainees — the Times “called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles." That’s 1.4 percent of the time.

But it's the reason given by editor of The New York Times for this change of stance which fascinates me.

“As the debate over interrogation of terror suspects grew post-9/11, defenders of the practice (including senior officials of the Bush administration) insisted that it did not constitute torture,” a Times spokesman said in a statement. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves.

The editor who wrote that is utterly missing the point here. If waterboarding was considered torture for over a hundred years, then there is no debate on the subject.

By pretending that there is a debate on the subject is to take sides. And, sadly, the side chosen is the side of the torturer.

Throughout history, torturers like Saddam would have loved to claim that there was "a debate" as to whether what they did constituted torture, but I am sure that the New York Times would not have accorded it to them.

Likewise, the Bush administration, of course, claimed that waterboarding was not torture for no better reason than the fact that they were the ones doing it.

To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, "Well, they would say that wouldn't they?

Everyone accepts that this is torture and the place for Saddam, Bush and the other torturers to have their "debate" is in front of a judge and jury.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, Cheney, torture, New York Times

British army's alleged torture of Iraqis goes to judicial review.

There has been a substantial High Court victory for lawyers representing 102 men detained after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The high court today gave permission for a judicial review of the government's failure to hold a public inquiry into the British army's detention policies in Iraq amid allegations that large numbers of civilians were tortured.

The court said it could be argued that "the alleged ill-treatment was systemic, and not just at the whim of individual soldiers". It went on to criticise the effectiveness of Ministry of Defence proposals to investigate the claims.

If a full inquiry is now ordered, it is likely to run alongside the judicial review David Cameron announced last week into the UK's role in rendition and torture in the so-called war on terror.

The notion that torture could be "systemic" was one of the first things I argued on here when talking about the stories of mistreatment coming from prisoners held by the Americans.

I was struck at the time by the uniformity of the allegations; nudity, stress positions, use of loud noise, freezing temperatures, use of dogs.

It didn't appear to matter whether the prisoners were held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the stories all had a creepily familiar ring. It occurred to me then that either all of these "bad apples" had a singular lack of imagination, or they were working to a set of instructions.

Now we, of course, know that the Bush administration received a memo from the Justice Department in August 2002 which set out to justify the use of torture.

If a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network," said the memo, from the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It added that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later.

We also know that the Bush administration approved certain "enhanced interrogation techniques", which is why the torture we heard of was always so uniform.

They were actually following a script.

Now, the High Court is implying that torture may also have been systemic on the British side of the war on terror.

One of the lawyers, Phil Shiner, said: "There are now hundreds of Iraqi civilians making thousands of allegations of being subjected to repeated sexual, physical and psychological abuse. The MoD's claim that this is the result of the actions of a few bad apples has been shown by the high court to be untenable.

"The court has today sent a clear signal that they expect the truth to be uncovered and these matters efficiently and fully investigated. This must take place in a public forum, not behind closed doors at the MoD."

The MoD has conceded that there needs to be an investigation, but does not wish to see a full public inquiry.

I bet the MOD would like any inquiry to be held behind closed doors, but they have no right to be granted such privacy.

If we have had a torture policy then we have the right to know about it. And, the people who put such a policy into place should be prosecuted. Perhaps, only by us doing that, will Obama's administration ever get serious about looking into the crimes which were committed by Bush and Co.

There have now been changes of administration on both sides of the Atlantic, so there really is no excuse for this not to be vigorously examined.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, Cameron, Brown, Blair, Torture, war on terror

Classified documents reveal UK's role in abuse of its own citizens.

A number of highly classified documents, disclosed during high court proceedings, appear to show that the British government colluded in the torture of British citizens. And that the British government had decided that British prisoners being flown to Guantanamo Bay was its "preferred option".

Among the most damning documents are a series of interrogation reports from MI5 officers that betray their disregard for the suffering of a British resident whom they were questioning at a US airbase in Afghanistan. The documents also show that the officers were content to see the mistreatment continue.

One of the most startling documents is chapter 32 of MI6's general procedural manual, entitled "Detainees and Detention Operations", which advises officers that among the "particular sensitivities" they need to consider before becoming directly involved in an operation to detain a terrorism suspect is the question of whether "detention, rather than killing, is the objective of the operation".

Other disclosed documents show how:

• The Foreign Office decided in January 2002 that the transfer of British citizens from Afghanistan to Guantánamo was its "preferred option".

• Jack Straw asked for that rendition to be delayed until MI5 had been able to interrogate those citizens.

• Downing Street was said to have overruled FO attempts to provide a British citizen detained in Zambia with consular support in an attempt to prevent his return to the UK, with the result that he too was "rendered" to Guantánamo.

Blair's reputation will finally be shot be pieces when the extent to which the British government acquiesced in the treatment handed out to it's citizens is revealed, I suspect.

What is undeniable at the moment is the government's almost casual indifference to the fact that it was taking part in criminal activity:

At this time, the fact that "rendition" – abducting an individual and moving them against their will from one country to another – was illegal appears not to have been a concern. A document disclosed by the Foreign Office, dated 10 January 2002 and entitled Afghanistan UK Detainees, expresses the government's "preferred options". It states: "Transfer of United Kingdom nationals held by US forces in Afghanistan to a United States base in Guantánamo is the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objectives, to ensure they are securely held." The "only alternative", the document adds, would be to place these individuals in the custody of British forces in Afghanistan, or to return them to the UK.

At around the same time Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, was sending a telegram to several British diplomatic missions around the world in which he signalled his agreement with this policy, but made clear that he did not wish to see the British nationals moved from Afghanistan before they could be interrogated.

"A specialist team is currently in Afghanistan seeking to interview any detainees with a UK connection to obtain information on their terrorist activities and connections," Straw wrote.

"We therefore hope that all those detainees they wish to interview will remain in Afghanistan and will not be among the first groups to be transferred to Guantánamo. A week's delay should suffice. UK nationals should be transferred as soon as possible thereafter."

The notion that one is innocent until proven guilty was clearly dispensed with as Blair made a priority out of making sure that there was not a sliver of light between his administration and that of George W. Bush.

So far just 900 papers have been disclosed, and these have included batches of press cuttings and copies of government reports that were published several years ago. However, a number of highly revealing documents are among the released papers, as well as fragments of heavily censored emails, memos and policy documents.

Some are difficult to decipher, but together they paint a picture of a government that was determined not only to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States as it embarked upon its programme of "extraordinary rendition" and torture of terrorism suspects in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but to actively participate in that programme.

The extent to which Blair's government participated in illegal torture activities will eventually trickle out. Cameron will do his best to limit this, especially as he is anxious to preserve the UK's intelligence links with the US, but one gets the feeling that the people who were tortured are determined to have their story told and there are strong indications that the courts are inclined to agree with them.

Today the government failed in an attempt to bring a temporary halt to the proceedings that have resulted in the disclosure of the documents. Its lawyers argued that the case should be delayed while attempts were made to mediate with the six men, in the hope that their claims could be withdrawn in advance of the judicial inquiry. Lawyers for the former Guantánamo inmates said it was far from certain that mediation would succeed, and insisted the disclosure process continue.

Cameron appears determined to try to buy the silence of these men before the inquiry starts, but I don't get the feeling that these guys are up for sale.

They want the truth to come out. Cameron appears to want an inquiry which doesn't put any pressure on our relationship with the United States. But, as it was the United States, in collusion it appears with Blair's government, who were doing the torturing, I can't see how Cameron can have an honest inquiry and avoid embarrassing our American ally.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed, Martin Mubanga, Guantanamo Bay, torture, rendition, Blair, Bush, war on terror

Andrew Napolitano: Bush and Cheney Should Have Been Indicted for Torturing, for Spying and Arresting Without Warrants.

It astounds me that these words are being spoken by a regular contributor to Fox News.

Napolitano: So what President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantanamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the Constitution was blatantly unconstitutional and is some cases criminal.

Nader: What's the sanction for President Bush and Vice President Cheney?

Napolitano: There's been no sanction except what history will say about them.

Nader: What should be the sanctions?

Napolitano: They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It's a moral crime.

Nader: So you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should even though they've left office, they haven't escaped the criminal laws, they should be indicted and prosecuted?

Napolitano: The evidence in this book and in others, our colleague the great Vincent Bugliosi has amassed an incredible amount of evidence. The purpose of this book was not to amass that evidence but I do discuss it, is overwhelming when you compare it to the level of evidence required for a normal indictment that George W. Bush as President and Dick Cheney as Vice President participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings.

But I am in complete agreement with him that the evidence that Bush and Cheney committed crimes is simply overwhelming. Indeed, they are both on the record admitting that they authorised war crimes.

UPDATE:

It's well worth watching the whole thing. You can do that here.

Tags: Napolitano, Bush, Cheney, war crimes, torture

British Ministers "will change" war crimes arrest law.

I was only made aware of this story yesterday when my attention was drawn to it in the comments section, as no national British newspaper seems to have covered this.

I find this staggering, as the spinelessness of the British government in the face of Israel's repeated acts of illegality appears to know no bounds. Most of us are still trying to come to terms with the most recent outrage when Israeli troops stormed a peace flotilla heading for Gaza and killed nine people.

The Israelis, of course, have refused to allow any international inquiry to investigate what has taken place.

But we all remember the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the use of white phosphorous and the fact that the UN found that both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes during that conflict. And, as I covered at the time, most of us will remember that Tzipi Livni was unable to visit Britain recently as an arrest warrant had been issued against her for her participation in the Gaza conflict.

Well, William Hague has promised to avoid that embarrassment from ever happening again.

Senior ministers and government officials are moving towards changing the law to prevent the arrest of visiting Israelis.

Jeremy Newmark, Jewish Leadership Council chief executive said: "We understand that cross-departmental meetings have recently taken place at ministerial and official level to discuss the best way of delivering a solution."

The issue resurfaced this week after a senior Israeli army commander, Colonel Udi Ben-Moha, pulled out of a move to study in Britain over fears he could be arrested for war crimes.

The government is eager to avoid a return to the major political row which erupted earlier this year after an arrest warrant was issued for Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni.

It hopes to improve relations with Israel so that Foreign Secretary William Hague can visit, and to ensure Israeli politicians can come to Britain for the party conferences this autumn.

The Foreign Office confirmed this week that Mr Hague stood by comments he made after May's election, when he said it was his intention to "act speedily".

Mr Hague had said the current situation was "unsatisfactory and indefensible" and "must be put right".

I find that staggering. We all remember that Israel sent Mossad agents to Argentina to capture Adolf Eichmann so the notion of universal jurisdiction is not one that the Israelis can have any objection to. They simply can't accept that this concept should ever apply to themselves. And Hague, disgracefully, appears to be buying into this argument.

Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor told an international conference of Jewish lawyers in London that a concerted effort was needed to amend the law on universal jurisdiction.

The envoy said that current laws were being abused by political activists as part of a campaign to "demonise and deligitimise" Israel.

The "political activists" currently "abusing" the law, according to Proser, are actually people who say that the UN has legitimacy and that it's findings count for something.

The UN has found that war crimes have been committed. The answer from the British government is to offer amnesty to one side and to promise that international law will not be upheld on these shores. It's quite one of the most shocking things I have ever heard of.

Because you can be sure of one thing, we will not be offering a similar amnesty to any member of Hamas who dares to visit the UK.

Only Israeli war criminals will be welcome here with a government guarantee that they will never be arrested and investigated for their crimes.

We are making a mockery of international law.

Click here for full article.

Tags: William Hague, Israel, Palestine, war crimes, United Nations

Government to compensate torture victims as official inquiry launched.

David Cameron has announced an unprecedented inquiry into whether or not British intelligence officers acquiesced in the torture of suspects during the war on terror.

Honouring a promise while in opposition that he would set up a judge-led inquiry into mounting evidence, emerging mainly from court hearings, the prime minister told the Commons he had asked Sir Peter Gibson – a former appeal court judge who privately monitors the activities of the intelligence agencies – to "look at whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees held by other countries that may have occurred in the aftermath of 9/11".

He said that while there was no evidence that any British officer was "directly engaged in torture" in the aftermath of 9/11 there were "questions over the degree to which British officers were working with foreign security services who were treating detainees in ways they should not have done".

Though he did not point directly to a particular case, he made clear he was referring to evidence disclosed by the high court that MI5 knew about the abuse of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held incognito in Pakistan in 2002 before being secretly rendered to jails in Morocco, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay.

That is to be applauded. However, Cameron is also having to be very careful not to upset the Obama administration, who have already threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with the UK should any details of US torture be made public.

Cameron told MPs the government intended to publish a green paper setting out "proposals for how intelligence is treated in the full range of judicial proceedings, including addressing the concerns of our allies".

Government officials made clear ministers are seeking legislation that would in future prevent judges release information passed to MI5 by the CIA or by any other foreign intelligence agency.

He said the government wanted to pursue "mediation" with six former Guantánamo Bay detainees who had brought civil claims about their treatment – and who are demanding the disclosure of MI5 and MI6 intelligence. They will be offered out-of-court compensation.

So what kind of inquiry is this actually going to be? At the moment Cameron is saying that he will pay off people who claim to have been tortured rather than have the Americans embarrassed by having these claims made in a court of law.

And he is saying that he is going to change the law to prevent judges from demanding that information be made public if that information would embarrass our ally in the United States.

So we are not searching for the truth, we are having an inquiry that will only reveal that which does not embarrass Obama.

Obama's almost fanatical need to prevent us from ever finding out what the Bush administration did undermines the claim he made when running for office that he would restore the US to a nation of laws.

He does himself and the US no favours by sticking to this stance. And Cameron, who is to applauded for commencing this inquiry, undermines his own good work by promising that nothing will come out that ever embarrasses our American friends.

An inquiry that offers such a promise cannot be said to be seriously searching for the truth.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Cameron, Obama, torture, inquiry

Cameron to launch inquiry into MI5 torture allegations.

It's so rare that Cameron and Clegg's coalition do anything which I agree with that it's nice to note that they are doing something with which I am in complete concurrence.

Victims of torture carried out with the knowledge of British agents could receive compensation, the Government has decided.

David Cameron is expected to announce a judge-led inquiry shortly into the long-running allegations that British intelligence officers were complicit in British residents being tortured by the security services of other countries.

Before the general election, both the Conservative and Liberal Democrats called for an investigation. Ministers from both parties hope the decision will clear the air after the repeated allegations and limit the spate of civil cases now being pursued in the courts. Compensation will be payable in cases where the inquiry finds someone was tortured and that British agents were aware of it.

It will be interesting to see how Labour react to this news. I am quite certain that they won't put forward the idiotic defence mounted by some Republicans in the United States that the Con-Dem coalition are attempting to "politicize policy differences" with the previous administration or voice the defence often used by Dick and Liz Cheney that "enhanced interrogation techniques" save lives.

Any Labour MP or minister who tried either of those tactics would face public condemnation, as it is widely understood here that torture is morally reprehensible and is justified under no circumstances.

I also wonder what effect it will have on Obama's "look forward, not backwards" policy if a British judge finds that the British government did facilitate torture of prisoners held in American custody. How long can you go on looking forward when another country's legal systems are saying that the techniques employed by the previous administration amounted to torture and were, therefore, war crimes?

This is the thing which I find most disappointing about the Obama administration. He came to power promising that he would restore the United States as a country of laws, and yet he seems reluctant to have any of those laws applied to the previous President and Vice President, when both are on public record admitting having authorised torture.

I don't see how he can say he is restoring the US as a country of laws whilst this anomaly exists.

Last night human rights groups welcomed the Government's move. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "Only this kind of inquiry can end the slow bleed of embarrassing revelation and expensive litigation and draw a line under this shameful business once and for all."

Clare Algar, executive director of the legal action charity Reprieve, said the inquiry should be as open and transparent as possible. "Torture, and complicity in torture, is morally repulsive, counterproductive, and illegal under both national and international law, and these allegations are, sadly, too numerous to ignore. We cannot learn from history and avoid repeating our mistakes if we do not know what that history is," she said.

Cameron and Clegg are doing what Obama appears afraid to do. They are going to shine a bright light into the shadows and ask what exactly Tony Blair and the Labour government did during the War on Terror.

And they are going to allow the victims of that torture to receive compensation.

That is the very least that the UK can do for these men. And that is the flip side of Obama's refusal to examine what Bush and Cheney did on a much larger scale.

I thought it shameful that Obama's government behaved the way it did in the recent case of Maher Arar. But, more importantly, Obama's refusal to ever examine the criminal behaviour of the Bush regime man that the victims of that criminality can never be compensated.

As The New York Times said at the time:

There is no excuse for the Obama administration’s conduct. It should demonstrate some moral authority by helping Canada’s investigation, apologizing to Mr. Arar and writing him a check.

Hopefully, Cameron and Clegg's inquiry will reveal enough to shame Obama into doing what he should have done long ago.

You can't turn the page without reading what is on that page. And yet that is what Obama is trying to do.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Cameron, Clegg, Obama, torture, war on terror, war crimes

Right-wing self-delusion.

National Reviews Jay Nordlinger quotes Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak stating that, "A million and a half people are living in Gaza, but only one of them is really in need of humanitarian aid."

It's a truly abhorrent statement, for he is implying that the only person in need of humanitarian aid in Gaza is young Gilad Shalit, who continues to be held by Hamas who refuse to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to him.

Now, of course, the continued kidnapping of Gilad Shalit is to be abhorred, but are we seriously arguing that he is the only person currently suffering in the Gaza Strip as the Israelis continue to impose their cruel blockade of that territory?

But Nordlinger takes this even further arguing:

After observing that neither "the Cuban dictatorship or Chinese dictatorship permit the Red Cross to see prisoners, Nordlinger then claims -- with the needy victimization that typifies the Right -- that "there'd be mass demonstrations in [Shalit's] behalf all over Europe, and on American streets, too" if "Shalit were other than Israeli." In other words, Nordlinger believes that the Western World would never tolerate the denial of ICRC access to detainees except when the detainee is Israeli.

That's simply fantastical. Is Nordlinger unaware that the US - operating secret prisons under the Bush regime - held countless prisoners secretly and refused access to those prisoners by the ICRC? Did he complain about this at the time? Or is it different when America holds prisoners secretly and refuses to allow access to them from the ICRC? Does the fact that George Bush was fighting his war on terror mean that we couldn't afford to allow access to the prisoners by the ICRC? And was Nordlinger okay with that at the time?

The US has admitted for the first time that it has not given the Red Cross access to all detainees in its custody.

The state department's top legal adviser, John Bellinger, made the admission but gave no details about where such prisoners were held. . . . He stated that the group International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had access to "absolutely everybody" at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which holds suspects detained during the US war on terror. When asked by journalists if the organisation had access to everybody held in similar circumstances elsewhere, he said: "No".

Glenn Greenwald:

Many Americans defend the U.S.'s conduct not because they support it, but because they're completely unaware of what those actions actually are. Many of the people who support what they call the "enhanced interrogation" program really believe they're defending three instances of waterboarding rather than scores of detainee deaths, because they literally don't know it happened. And here you have Nordlinger -- a Senior Editor of National Review -- claiming that denial of access to the ICRC is the hallmark of brutal tyrannies (it is), and arguing that a country could only get away with it if they do it to an Israeli, making clear that he is completely ignorant of the fact that his own Government did this for years (without, needless to say, prompting a peep of protest from his magazine), and reportedly continues to do it. That the U.S. did this systematically just doesn't exist in his brain; he really believes it's something only China, Cuba and Hamas do. They really do live in their own universe and just block out whatever facts they dislike while inventing the ones that make them feel good.

There is a certain mindset, especially amongst the American right, which really believes their nation only ever engages in good and that it is other countries - usually Cuba, China, or almost any nation in the Middle East except Israel - which break international law and international treaties.

And when it proven against all reasonable doubt that their country is engaged in an activity which is illegal - including, but not limited to, torture, rendition, waterboarding, etc - then they see their task as to instantly defend this behaviour by claiming that "there are different kinds of waterboarding" or that "the normal rules don't apply at a time of war".

Of course, there is a very good reason why war crimes are known as war crimes and not peace crimes: it is because it is precisely at a time of war that one might be tempted to commit them.

But it's the instant cloak of victim-hood which they apply to themselves which I find most interesting. "The world wouldn't put up with this if it were anyone other than an Israeli."

And he says this apparently utterly unaware of the fact that his own nation had been indulging in this behaviour for most of the time that the last Republican administration was in office.

Greenwald explains the mindset which is on display here by quoting George Orwell:

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

That perfectly sums up the mindset which Nordlinger is exhibiting.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Right wing thinking, Israel, United States

No Price to Pay for Torture.

I can't be the only person disappointed with the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the claims of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen sent to Syria to be tortured under the orders of the George Bush administration.

Now, we can easily condemn the Bush administration for it's role in all of this, but it is increasingly harder not to also feel disgust at the Obama administration's insistence that torture cases such as this must not be brought before American courts.

Amazingly, Mr. Obama’s acting solicitor general, Neal Katyal, urged the Supreme Court not to take the case, arguing in part that the court should not investigate the communications between the United States and other countries because it might damage diplomatic relations and affect national security. It might even raise questions, Mr. Katyal wrote, about “the motives and sincerity of the United States officials who concluded that petitioner could be removed to Syria.”

Wouldn't it be simply awful to question “the motives and sincerity of the United States officials who concluded that petitioner could be removed to Syria”?

I mean there is already enough in the public record for us to question the motives of those who sent him there.

“The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar’s case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion,” Justice O’Connor wrote in a three-volume report, not all of which was made public. “They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar’s case in a less than forthcoming manner.”

The Syrian-born Mr. Arar was seized on Sept. 26, 2002, after he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia. On Oct. 8, he was flown to Jordan in an American government plane and taken overland to Syria, where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and beaten repeatedly with a metal cable.

Contrast the difference between the reaction of the Canadians to this case and the utter inaction from the Americans.

In Canada, the government conducted an investigation and found that Mr. Arar had been tortured because of its false information. The commissioner of the police resigned. Canada cleared Mr. Arar of all terror connections, formally apologized and paid him nearly $9.8 million.

In the US, Arar can't even get his case heard in court, and he can't get it heard because the Obama administration are the ones making the arguments insisting that his case should not be heard.

I am with the New York Times editorial board on this.

There is no excuse for the Obama administration’s conduct. It should demonstrate some moral authority by helping Canada’s investigation, apologizing to Mr. Arar and writing him a check.

Rather than helping to keep the crimes of the Bush administration away from American courts, Obama should be doing the opposite. They certainly should be acknowledging that this man has been wronged and making sure that they compensate him for the dreadful things which were done to him.



Here, Senator Leahy takes apart Gonzales for the way the Bush administration enabled torture. What was done to this man is no less outrageous now that Obama is in the White House.

Click here for full article.

Bush: I Am A War Criminal.

Bush has broken his silence to admit to a war crime.

In some of his most candid comments since leaving the White House, former President George W. Bush said Wednesday he has no regrets about authorizing the controversial waterboarding technique to interrogate terrorist suspects and wouldn't hesitate to do so again.

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," the former president said during an appearance at the Economic Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, according to the Grand Rapids Press.

"I'd do it again to save lives," he added.

But let's "look forward and not backwards"...

Of course, Dick Cheney has already admitted that he took part in these crimes.

"I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques..."

Jonathan Turley discussed this confession at the time:

It is an astonishing public admission since waterboarding is not just illegal but a war crime. It is akin to the vice president saying that he supported bank robbery or murder-for-hire as a public policy.

The ability of Cheney to openly brag about his taste for torture is the direct result of President Barack Obama blocking any investigation or prosecution of war crimes. For political reasons, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have refused to carry out our clear obligations under international law to prosecute for such waterboarding. Indeed, before taking office, various high-ranking officials stated that both Obama and Holder assured them that they would not allow such prosecutions. While they denied it at the time, those accounts are consistent with their actions following inauguration.

Bush can only make these statements because, like Cheney, he is utterly sure that the Obama administration will never have the balls to prosecute him.

What Obama is failing to realise is that, by failing to prosecute, he is allowing a narrative which states that Bush will do whatever it takes to protect the country and that Obama won't.

That's the old "the Democrats are soft on national security" gambit which has served the Republicans well for a very long time.

It's interesting. In the US, the true radicals are always on the right. It is they who are pushing the envelope of what is acceptable, never the left.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, Cheney, Obama, war crimes