human rights | ukwatch.net

What's it got to do with RIPA?

Ellie Keen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:00:09 +0000

Liberty called for an overhaul of RIPA yesterday after the European Court of Human Rights slapped the UK government over the way it applied the UK’s previous interception legislation.

But the Home Office today said it did not see that the judgement had any implications for the UK’s current suite of laws covering covert investigations.

The court ruled that the UK had violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, by tapping communications of Liberty, along with British Irish Rights Watch and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties between 1990 and 1997. Article 8 quaintly demands the right to respect for private and family life and correspondence.

The three human rights groups had claimed that the MoD’s Electronic Test Facility had eavesdropped on their phone, fax, email and data comms between 1990 and 1997.

The three had first lodged complaints with the UK’s Interception of Communications Tribunal, the DPP and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, to “no avail” with local courts ruling “there was no contravention to the Interception of Powers Act 1985”.

Liberty et al then took the case to the European Court Human Rights, which after a mere nine years decided that there had indeed “been an interference with their human rights as guaranteed by Article 8”.

The court found that the 1985 Act gave the UK government “virtually unlimited” discretion to intercept communications between the UK and an external receiver, and “wide discretion” to decide which communications were subsequently listened to or read.” The government had guidelines to ensure a “safeguard against abuse of power”, but these were not included in legislation, nor made available to the public.

The court concluded that the UK’s 1985 interception law “had not indicated with sufficient clarity… the scope or manner of the exercise of the very wide discretion of the conferred on the State to intercept and examine external communications” so as to guard against abuse of power.

The 1985 Act and the 1990s eavesdropping on Liberty and its Irish counterparts came against the background of the IRA’s armed campaign against the British state.

Over a decade on, and the 1985 Act has been replaced by RIPA. It has the same objective in detecting terrorism, serious crime and the like, but is more commonly known for being applied by local councils to people suspected to circumventing school applications procedures and not cleaning up after their dogs.

Gareth Crossman, Liberty’s Policy Director, said in a statement yesterday the judgement highlighted the need for a review of RIPA.

Liberty’s legal officer Alex Gask said: “While secret surveillance is a valuable tool, the mechanisms for intercepting our telephone calls and emails should be as open and accountable as possible, and should ensure proportionate use of very wide powers.”

Mark Kelly, Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, said the judgement had clear implications for many other Council of Europe member states, including Ireland. ”Our lax data interception regime will require a thorough overhaul in order to ensure that it meets the standards required by the European Court of Human Rights under Article 8.”

The Home Office was less vocal, saying it did not think the judgement had any implications for RIPA. While yesterday’s judgement concerned the 1985 Act, a Home Office spokesman said there were no legal challenges against RIPA.

Mugabe, Britain and the Abuses of Anti-Colonialism

eddie — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:28:33 +0000

Over forty years ago, as Africa commenced the long and arduous process of decolonization, one of its foremost liberationist thinkers issued a prophetic warning. Frantz Fanon, himself a freedom fighter, wrote that the national leader in the postcolonial era should not ‘fall back into the past and become drunk on the remembrance of the epoch leading up to independence.’ His powerful descriptions of a once effective leader who gradually secedes from reality and betrays the people who entrust him with their future has resonances for the tragic situation in which Zimbabwe finds itself today. Having reduced a once significant anti-colonialism to a self-serving dogma, Robert Mugabe is the kind of fallen leader Fanon cautioned Africa against. Hesitant African leaders who are being called upon to intervene might want to reread his classic essay, ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ from that classic liberationist text, The Wretched of the Earth,

As Zimbabwe spirals into further political chaos, Mugabe and his party’s addiction to power will further indulge an equally self-serving Western appetite for spectacles of Third World despotism. If Mugabe finds it convenient to invoke the demon of colonial oppression (which many Zimbabweans, barely thirty years out of colonial rule, remember all too well), he also enables British politicians to spout pieties condemning violence while their own nation is currently implicated in two dubious and bloody wars. Were the BBC and Channel 4 to show as many close-ups of injured and dead Iraqis as they do of Mugabe’s maimed victims, criticism of violence against innocents might be somewhat more evenly distributed than it currently is. The British government turns accusatory fingers in Zimbabwe’s direction while Mugabe shouts back anti-colonial slogans. It is a perfect symbiosis, a mutually convenient embrace of denunciation, with each party laying claim to the higher moral ground. The only innocents, however, are ordinary Zimbabweans.

Both Mugabe and Britain are guilty of avoiding historical truths in favour of a skewed story which legitimates their own position. Britain’s persistent refusal to acknowledge its own colonial legacies is contradictory. It reneged on its commitments to the land reform programme claiming, in Claire Short’s words, that there were no ‘links to former colonial interests’ while nevertheless concerning itself with the fate of the white farmers who represent these interests. Alongside an extremely selective use of human rights discourse, such contradictions mean that Mugabe’s denunciations have some truth to them even if their main purpose is to detract from the ruling elite’s own depravities. While Africa is ostensibly central to Britain’s international development agenda, the emphasis has always been on the paternalism of aid rather than acknowledging and making reparations for the economic devastation wrought by colonialism. Rarely do condemnations of land seizure, violence and intimidation extend back to the time Matabeleland came under British rule. This too was accompanied by the seizure of vast swathes of fertile land by a handful of British farmers while large numbers of Ndebele and Shona people were killed or forced into labour. Brutal modern regimes in that part of the globe didn’t begin with Mugabe.

Mugabe, meanwhile, should also reacquaint himself with the original aims of anti-colonialism and the people’s expectations of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. Having resisted the anti-poor agendas of international monetary institutions and initiated necessary land reforms, the Zimbabwean leader has also refused all responsibility for those many failures of his rule not reducible solely to the colonial past. A once dynamic band of freedom fighters have degenerated into a party who brandish their liberationist laurels while they subjugate, starve and brutalize an entire population in the name of anti-colonialism. The sanctions imposed by the West have, as they usually do in such cases, strengthened Mugabe’s brutish hold on power and further harmed the vulnerable. Real anti-colonialists like Fanon and Gandhi both insisted that that freedom was not about replacing the white tyrant with the brown or black one. Mugabe is the exemplary cautionary tale here, a freedom fighter who has essentially recolonized his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression and intimidation which the Zimbabwean leader whereas Mugabe has essentially recolonized his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression and intimidation deployed by the Zimbabwean leader, a knight of the British Empire until yesterday were taught to him by the colonial masters he professes to despise. Censorship, brutal suppression of resistance and the dismissal of any form of criticism as seditious were all part of the colonial arsenal. Quick to claim credit for spreading parliamentary democracy, Britain is less forthcoming about acknowledging the legacy of authoritarian rule also left behind by its empire.

Frantz Fanon died young, but one can imagine what he might have to say to his fellow former liberationist. Mr Mugabe, it is time for you to return the power which the Zimbabwean people once vested in you but which they now legitimately wish to reclaim. Liberate them from the tyranny of the rule you have exercised for too long and without a continuing mandate. Your actions weaken all of us who hold the accomplishments of liberation dear and only strengthen the hypocrisies of former colonial powers. The great tradition of African anti-colonialism to which you constantly refer has never been about blaming the colonizer alone; it has always taken account of the culpability and responsibilities of African leaders and elites.

As for those in Britain, it is time for the ‘proper analysis’ some commentators have called for, one which would include honest reflections on the imperial legacy rather than ‘shutting up’ because of colonial guilt. It is the only way to deprive Mugabe of his main moral weapon.This is not just about the kind of simple-minded ‘balance’ which the BBC generally advocates (though it has long since abandoned that value with regard to Zimbabwe), but also an informed sense of how history shapes the present. Failing this, Zimbabwe and the rest of us are destined to asphyxiate ourselves in what Fanon aptly termed ‘the tragic lie’ of the aftermath of colonialism.

This is an extended version of an article published in the Guardian which can be found
here

Israel has won the European cup: a special relationship

JamieSW — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:58:32 +0000

During her sixth visit to Israel since last November’s Annapolis summit, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained that the thousands of new housing units, built in Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land were damaging the peace talks with Palestinians. Meanwhile, at a joint press conference with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in Luxembourg, the same day, Slovenia’s Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, announced that the EU had decided to upgrade its political and economic relations with Israel. Rupel, who chaired the EU-Israel Association Council meeting, the body overseeing the relationship, stated that the EU and Israel are “elevating” their relations to a new level of “more intense, more fruitful, more influential cooperation.” Israel has now been granted the highest level of relations available to a non-member state.

The cooperation is based on the European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan, an initiative launched under the Dutch EU Presidency in 2004, aimed at bringing the neighboring countries closer to the EU. This European move might seem surprising since a progress report on the implementation of the European Neighborhood Policy stated clearly that “little concrete progress” has been made on issues raised between Israel and the EU, such as restrictions on movement, the construction of the West Bank wall (its route ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice), administrative detentions, the dismantling of settler “outposts,” and the expansion of Israeli settlements.

Over the weekend, before the Monday announcement, the EU governments were still split between countries that wanted to link the upgrade to improvements in the moribund peace process or no link at all. A number of non-governmental organizations tried to press for linkages to Israel’s atrocious human rights record and the end to the siege of Gaza but Israeli diplomatic efforts and various national interests of member states proved to be stronger. A compromise was found in a softened link to progress in the peace process and the by now utopian two-state solution.

For years, Israel has ignored EU concerns about settlement construction on occupied territories, Israeli human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, house demolitions and other breaches of the EU-Israel Association Agreement and international law. As recently as January, top EU officials, including foreign policy chief Javier Solana and External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner called Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip “collective punishment,” defined as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Conventions.

Tzipi Livni said that the talks were a milestone in EU-Israel relations, even though the agreement did not completely satisfy the original wishes of Israel, which also sought the introduction of regular summits with the EU and meetings with EU ministers. Yet the upgrade includes enhanced cooperation in political, economic, scientific, legal, cultural, educational and counter-terrorism matters and, according to Rupel, is based on “a mutual commitment to important common values.”

Rupel added that “There are obvious reasons for which strengthened political cooperation between the EU and Israel should be understood as a cooperation which contributes to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” He did not address why Israel should be rewarded with unconditional ties, despite its violations, while Palestinians under Israeli military occupation should be subjected to harsh EU sanctions and a boycott that has intensified the suffering of the civilian population. Livni stated that “it is clear that Israel and Europe share the same values and the same interests.”

Until now, under the EU’s Neighborhood Policy Israel was the only country without a subcommittee on human rights.

Israel’s diplomatic relations with most European states and EU institutions have improved significantly in recent years. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany have been the closest allies of Israel within the EU. Even before she became Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel told the Israeli daily Haaretz that “it is of the utmost importance that we preserve the vitality of relations and avoid turning them into something that is only formal and ceremonial.”

On 19 May, at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen told Israel supporters at a symposium that he pressed the EU to intensify its relations with Israel and made good by inviting several Israeli government officials to The Hague. Earlier this year he told participants of the Herzilya conference in Israel that Israel’s association with the European internal market could be deepened, as well as “its involvement in various European agencies, programs and working groups.”

At that time, he said that “part and parcel of this process would be strengthening the human rights dialogue between Israel and the EU” but those familiar with past human rights dialogues in the context of the EU-Israel Association Agreement know that these are empty words as the Luxembourg announcement clearly demonstrates.

He also said that “halting the expansion of settlements and dismantling outposts would make a great difference in this respect” but the ongoing expansion of construction activities in a hundred settler colonies at this moment suggests that it didn’t make any difference.

With East European newcomers, the EU has now a bigger share of friends of Israel. Notably the Czech Republic and Poland opposed any linking of the upgrade of relations with Israel to its behavior. With the return of right-wing governments in France and Italy, EU policy has tilted more towards the line of the Bush Administration. As France, led by President Nicolas Sarkozy, takes over the EU presidency on 1 July, it is expected that the tilt towards Israel will continue.

UK uses lung-shredder

Ellie Keen — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Britain’s defence ministry admits use of ‘brutal’ missile to London paper

BRITISH troops have used missiles in Afghanistan which suck the air out of human targets, shred their internal organs and crush their bodies, according to a leading British newspaper.

The Hellfire missiles, also known as vacuum bombs, are condemned by human rights groups as “brutal”.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) admitted to the London Times newspaper that its soldiers had fired the controversial thermobaric weapons, used to kill fighters in buildings and caves, from Apache attack helicopters in Afghanistan.

The MoD said the Hellfire AGM-114N, which creates a human-crushing vacuum with a second explosion, had proved so successful that the missile will now be fired from unmanned predator drones.

The Soviet Union’s forces in Afghanistan were the first to test thermobaric weapons on the enemy.

The world condemned Russia’s use of the weapon during its fight against Chechnyan rebels in the 1980s.

“We no longer accept the term thermobaric [for the AGM-114N] as there is no internationally agreed definition,” said an MoD spokesman talking to the London Times. “We call it an enhanced blast weapon.”

Human Rights Watch says the weapons are “brutal” and that their blast “makes it virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter”.

How many innocent people are going out of their minds today?

Ellie Keen — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:54:13 +0000

We shouldn’t be surprised to hear that George Bush dined with a group of historians on Sunday night. The president has spent much of his second term pleading with history. But however hard he lobbies the gatekeepers of memory, he will surely be judged the worst president the United States has ever had.

Even if historians were somehow to forget the illegal war, the mangling of international law, the trashing of the environment and social welfare, the banking crisis, and the transfer of wealth from rich to poor, one image is stamped indelibly on this presidency: the trussed automatons in orange jumpsuits. It portrays a superpower prepared to dehumanise its prisoners, to wrap, blind and deafen them, to reduce them to mannequins, in a place as stark and industrial as a chicken-packing plant. Worse, the government was proud of what it had done. It was parading its impunity. It wanted us to know that nothing would stand in its way: its power was both sovereign and unaccountable.

Three days before Bush arrived in Britain, the US supreme court ruled that the inmates at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to contest their detention in the civilian courts. This is the third time the supreme court has ruled against the prison camp, but on this occasion Bush cannot change the law: the court has ruled that the prisoners’ rights are constitutional.

Symbolically the decision could scarcely be more important. Practically it could scarcely be less. The department of defence can transfer its prisoners to an oubliette in another country, where the constitution’s writ does not run. The public atrocity of Guantánamo Bay has provided a useful distraction from something even worse: the sprawling system of secret detention camps the US runs around the world.

We don’t, of course, know much about this programme. Bush first acknowledged it in September 2006. “Of the thousands of terrorists captured across the world, only about 770 have ever been sent to Guantánamo.” Other suspects, he said, were being “held secretly” by the CIA. “Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged.” He went on to claim that all the secret prisoners had now been transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

Several lines of evidence suggest that this claim was false. The CIA appears to have overseen or controlled, and in some cases appears still to be running, black sites in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia, Kosovo, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand and, possibly, Diego Garcia. The US appears to be using ships as secret prisons. In just two years the CIA ran 283 flights – which the Council of Europe believes were used for transporting secret prisoners – out of Germany alone. It admits that it possesses 7,000 documents about its ghost detention programme. Are we to believe all this was done for the 14 men transferred to Guantánamo Bay? In Iraq, the US now admits to holding 22,000 prisoners without charge in its own facilities, some of whom are known to be kept away from the Red Cross and other visitors.

Apart from those moved to Cuba, hardly anyone, so far, has come out of this system. At the end of last year salon.com interviewed Muhammad Bashmilah, who was arrested and tortured by Jordanian police, handed to the Americans, flown to an unknown country in autumn 2003, and held secretly by the CIA until he was transferred to Yemeni custody in May 2005. He reports that he was kept in a cell about the size of a transit van throughout the 19 months of his confinement, without any human contact except during interrogation. The lights and a source of white noise were left on permanently. Driven mad by isolation and sensory deprivation, he tried to kill himself several times. Eventually, when it became obvious even to the CIA that he had nothing to do with terrorism, he was handed over to the Yemeni government, who held him for another year until he was released without charge.

Lawyers for some of the men transferred to Guantánamo Bay claim that, while in secret detention, their clients were left hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beaten with electric cables, yanked around on a dog’s leash, chained naked in a freezing cell, and doused with cold water. “The CIA worked people day and night for months,” one prisoner reports. “Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off.”

Could it be worse than this? Yes. In 2003, a US official admitted to the Sunday Telegraph that the CIA was detaining and interrogating children. Discussing two boys aged seven and nine held in secret detention by the CIA, the official explained: “We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.” According to another prisoner, the boys had already been tortured by Pakistani guards. A former CIA official told the New Yorker that “every single plan [in the secret detention programme] is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level – meaning the director of the CIA. Any change in the plan – even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added – was signed off by the CIA director.”

Never mind detention without trial; this is detention without acknowledgement. When men and women disappear into this system, neither they nor their families know where they are. The Red Cross cannot reach them; they are beyond the scope of the law. They have been disappeared in the Latin American sense of that word.

Do I need to explain that this treatment breaks just about every article in the Geneva conventions? Do I need to tell you that – without charges, trials, lawyers, scrutiny or even recognition – it is just as likely to net the innocent as the guilty? In 2006 George Bush maintained that “these aren’t common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield – we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantánamo Bay belong at Guantánamo”. But a new and detailed investigation by the McClatchy newspaper group has found that many of them were indeed either common criminals or bystanders, or men sold to the authorities in order to settle a feud. Who knows how many innocent people are going out of their minds in the CIA’s secret prisons today?

Along with its innocent victims, the US government has locked itself into this system. As the justice department has argued, these prisoners cannot be released in case they describe the “alternative interrogation methods” (the euphemism it uses for torture) the CIA used on them, which could “reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage”. Like almost everything Bush has done, this programme promises to backfire. George Bush will be remembered not only for the lives he has broken, but also for smashing everything he claimed to defend.

Report: UK children's rights systematically violated

Tim Holmes — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:04:12 +0000

You can hardly have failed to notice that the children’s commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have combined forces in a joint report to the United Nations to condemn the treatment of children in the United Kingdom. But you may not have taken on board their central message, and you very likely missed an equally significant report last week on the effects of poverty on education and social mobility in the UK.

The point of this unprecedented initiative is to insist that children have human rights, separate from the family, and that their rights are being systematically abused. The commissioners have presented a dossier of human rights abuses of British children in violation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that, in the words of the Guardian report (Monday, 9 June) have “denied hope and opportunity to many of Britain’s 14 million children and adolescents”.

The report is to the UN committee set up to review compliance with the Convention; in its last review of the UK, in 2002, the Committee found “serious violations” of the Convention. An additional report from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, a coalition of more than 100 civil society organisations, says that the government has passed 30 laws that breach the Convention since then.

The biggest complaints centre on the punitive juvenile justice system and public attitudes that demonise adolescents. But there is a deeper-lying cause for complaint and concern. At a Sutton Trust conference on social mobility in New York last week Ed Miliband, the Cabinet Office minister, and UK educationists, heard the results of a massive study of children born in the UK and US in 2000 and 2001. The study found that the damaging effect of being in a low-income home was more pronounced in the UK than in the US and that “there is a stronger income differential in the UK than in the US,” meaning that (as a US academic told the conference) “there are more behavioural problems among low-income children in the UK”, and that the transition from home to school was harder, especially for boys. (The gap between the UK and the US would be even wider were it not for Britain’s childcare provision.)

Meanwhile, the Department of Work and Pensions is said to be releasing figures on Tuesday (10 June) that show that the government is nowhere near meeting the target of halving child poverty by 2010; and that 200,000 more children fell into poverty in 2005-06, measured after housing costs.

For me these reports reinforce the need for us in Britain to press for a “rights-based democracy”. The UNCRC provides for a five-yearly review of the rights of children in the UK. The UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights similarly involves a five-yearly review of such rights here. Britain has signed up to both these UN instruments without taking seriously the commitments that they entail. Neither of course is written into UK law; and there is no domestic equivalent.

If Gordon Brown’s pledge to consult on a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities is to command any credibility, then he must rescind his ban on consideration of economic, social and cultural rights in any consultations that may yet occur. Not that much good would come of it. Brown made a great fuss about consulting on the extension of detention without charge, but he and his Home Secretary have set that process and all informed opinion aside in a blind and obstinate offensive that is now reduced to arm-twisting Labour MPs and apparently concluding dirty deals with the Ulster Unionists.

One of the Labour whips’ argument is said to be that Labour MPs who vote against 42 days could put David Miliband in No. 10. Well, I don’t know about that, but I have very reluctantly come to the conclusion that Gordon Brown is no more fit to be there than his immediate predecessor.

Arrest of Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza

Tim Holmes — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 18:00:47 +0000

Hicham Yezza, a University of Nottingham member of staff, faces the threat of deportation to Algeria. On June 2, he was forcibly moved to the Citadel detention centre at Western Heights, near Dover.

Yezza and Nottingham student Rizwaan Sabir were both arrested on May 14 under the Terrorism Act 2000. Sabir is a master’s student in politics and was researching his dissertation on “the American approach to Al Qaeda in Iraq.” As part of his preparation, he downloaded, from a US government web site, a copy of an Al Qaeda training manual. He e-mailed the document to his friend, Yezza, and asked if he could print it for him. Sometime after this, a university employee contacted the police stating that the manual had been seen on Yezza’s computer.

The two were held for six days and then released without charge on May 20. Subsequently, Yezza was rearrested on immigration legislation. He was denied the right to attend a scheduled hearing, and, on May 23, the Home Office issued an order to deport him to Algeria. The planned deportation was cancelled on May 30, due to an application to the High Court that same day, seeking a judicial review of the Home Office’s decision.

On June 2, Yezza’s solicitor, David Smith of Cartwright King of Nottingham, said,

“Following the issue of our client’s Judicial review last Friday, the case is now with the Home Office’s legal advisers (the Treasury Solicitor), to whom we have put detailed representations about certain aspects of the case. We very much hope that this will shortly lead to our client’s release, if necessary on restrictions, while the case is thoroughly and properly reviewed at the most senior level.”

Students and academics in Britain and internationally have stated their opposition both to the arrests of Sabir and Yezza and to the attempt to deport Yezza, despite the University of Nottingham continuing to justify the decision to call the police on to the campus.

Previous arrests at Nottingham

What makes the arrests of Sabir and Yezza even more disturbing is the fact that both have been high-profile political campaigners at the university.

During his time as a student, Yezza served as a member of the Students’ Union Executive Committee and on the University Senate. He was the president of the Arabic Society and the editor of Voice magazine, a journal for international students. For the past five years, he has been the editor of Ceasefire, the political journal of the Nottingham Student Peace Movement.

On November 29 last year, Sabir was involved in a protest, organised by the Palestinian Society, against the construction of the Israeli West Bank wall. The protest included erecting a mock “wall” outside the campus library that was painted with slogans and images. After the students were approached by University of Nottingham security, the police arrived. According to the Indymedia website, “This resulted in the threat of arrest to a number of students. For ‘breach of the peace’, ‘assaulting a police officer,’ ‘filming a police officer’ (!), obstructing a police officer and obstruction of the highway. One student was arrested to ‘apprehend a breach of the peace.’ ”

Sabir was the student who was arrested for a “breach of the peace.” Following his arrest, he said, “A University campus is meant to be a place where an exchange of ideas and beliefs through peaceful means is encouraged. The University’s clamping down on this fundamental right highlights the restrictions that peaceful protestors face when undertaking peaceful protests on issues such as Israel, which it seems to me is becoming taboo to even talk about.”

Students at the university mounted a further protest on February 19 to demand “Freedom of Speech” and to oppose the November arrest of Sabir. Among the demands of the demonstration were:

* The right to free speech on campus and the official recognition of students’ right to engage in protest, demonstration or campaign on university property.

* The right to engage in a peaceful protest without the fear or threat of having police called on campus to break up non-violent demonstrations.

* The right not to fear intimidation or arrest by university authorities, university security or the police when engaging in a peaceful demonstration.

* The right not to be fined for or prohibited from having or distributing a petition or having or holding a peaceful demonstration.

* The right to engage in the aforementioned activities without having to request prior permission.

Sabir spoke at the demonstration.

These events were the immediate background leading up to the arrests of Yezza and Sabir on May 14, when the university authorities called in the police once again.

These events have rightly caused widespread concerns amongst students and staff members at the university. On June 5, dozens attended a roundtable discussion called by the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (Politics) and the Centre for Research on Identities, Citizenship and Migration (Sociology & Social Policy). The remit of the meeting was to “foster debate among staff and students on the important questions arising from the Nottingham arrests under the antiterrorism legislation. It seeks to discuss critically but constructively the Nottingham arrests and their ramifications for academic life and community relations.”

The main speakers were Vanessa Pupavac, a lecturer in international relations, and Sofia Mason, a postgraduate student involved in the campaign to defend Yezza. Julia O’Connell Davidson, professor of sociology at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, chaired the event.

The registrar of the university was invited to attend the meeting as was the university spokesman Jonathan Ray. Both declined. The university stated that it had set up a committee that was looking into the matter but gave no further details.

Mason said there was a real threat that guidelines would be issued by the university detailing what activities students could undertake. She raised the danger that these guidelines may be particularly aimed at political activists and groups on the campus.

There was a general concern both from the platform and from the floor as to the implications of the arrests. One member of the audience said that some students have already said they will be careful now as to what they research. Another said that they feared that peace activists might be brought in for questioning. One member of the audience said it was important to find out what measures are in place at the university for calling the police onto campus. He said in the case of Sabir and Yezza, the police had arrived in about two minutes.

Some of the students and academics at the meeting said that more was at stake than the particular events at the University of Nottingham.

What was the role of the university in the arrests?

A speaker from the International Students for Social Equality spoke in the discussion and said, “What has been discussed today is very important, particularly the discussion on the role of the university. The fact that the university has refused to speak here today is indicative. It is not able to speak to students and academics about arrests that took place on its own campus.”

“It is necessary to look at the wider political dimensions of this case. Both Rizwaan and Hicham were politically active people on the campus. For several years now, there has been increasing state surveillance, and in the last few years, this has increasingly included university campuses. At Brunel University in London, guidance was drawn up by one of its departments advising the government to increase surveillance of activists on campus.”

He said that it was very important to establish what role the universities are playing in monitoring political activists. “If it is the case that the police arrived in two minutes after being contacted by the university, it is important that questions are asked. Were Rizwaan and Hicham being monitored, and, if so, for how long?”

A member of the audience said he “did not think it was helpful” to bring up the question of “surveillance and conspiracies” in the meeting. In reply, Bettina Renz, the tutor of Rizwaan Sabir, said, “You could not rule out a link to political activism.” She said that when she was interviewed by the police following the arrests, they constantly asked about Sabir’s political activities.

Sofia Mason also addressed these questions in her summing up. Speaking about the arrests, she stated that “it would be naive to see these arrests as not politically motivated.” One had only to look at the amount of time the police spent on asking about the political views of Yezza and Sabir and about politics on the campus.

Professor Pupavac said that the campaign had won a lot of sympathy and that these questions were also close to the hearts of journalists and those who work in the media. Sometimes, journalists had of necessity to undertake research that some may find offensive.

The ISSE urges all our readers to demand the release of Hicham Yezza. Letters of protest can be addressed to the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith below:

E-mail: indpublicenquiries@ind.homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Fax: 0208 760 3132

The web site set up by the Stop the Deportation of Hicham Yezza campaign can be accessed at the link below:

http://freehichamyezza.wordpress.com/

Letter from Guantánamo to Gordon Brown

Ellie Keen — Sat, 31 May 2008 20:40:55 +0000

Today’s Independent runs a front-page story, The Last Briton in Guantánamo faces death penalty, focusing on the plight of British resident Binyam Mohamed. Seized in Pakistan in April 2002, Binyam was subsequently rendered to Morocco, where proxy torturers, working on behalf of the Americans, tortured him for 18 months, in interrogation sessions that included regularly cutting his penis with a razor blade. He was then transferred to the “Dark Prison,” a secret CIA prison near Kabul, modelled on a medieval torture dungeon, but with the addition of ear-splitting music and noise, which was blasted into the cells for 24 hours a day, and finally arrived in Guantánamo in September 2004.

In November 2005, Binyam was put forward for trial by Military Commission –- a novel system of trials for “terror suspects,” invented by Vice President Dick Cheney and his advisers in November 2001 –- but in June 2006, after one farcical episode in front of a judge, which ended up with Binyam holding up a sign declaring that the “Commissions” were “Con-missions” instead, the entire system was ruled illegal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Commissions were revived later that year, when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, and it is expected that Binyam will imminently face charges under this second version of the “Con-missions,” even though they have yet to demonstrate that they can actually function, and even though Binyam and his lawyers at Reprieve, the legal action charity that works on behalf of over 30 prisoners in Guantánamo, have always maintained that not a shred of evidence of Binyam’s alleged involvement in a bomb plot conceived with various senior al-Qaeda figures was produced without the use of torture.

The Independent’s article featured excerpts from a letter to Prime Minster Gordon Brown, which was dictated by Binyam to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, the director of Reprieve, during a visit at Guantánamo last week. Below is the full text of the letter, which was delivered to 10 Downing Street yesterday.

Note that Binyam’s mention of the intervention of the British government refers to the government’s request for the return of five British residents –- including Binyam –- last August. Although three residents were subsequently returned (in December), he was not one of them, as the US authorities refused to release him. His mention of the Treasury Solicitors refers to a recent lawsuit filed by Reprieve and solicitors at Leigh Day demanding that the government release any information they have regarding British knowledge of Binyam’s rendition to Morocco, and any information that was provided to US intelligence.

Guantánamo Bay

Thursday, May 22nd 2008

Dear Prime Minister Brown,

I have been held without trial by the U.S. for 6 years, 1 month & 12 days. That is 2,234 days (very long days, and often longer nights). Of this, about 550 days were in a torture chamber in Morocco, and about 150 in the “Dark Prison” in Kabul. Still there is no end in sight, no prospect of a fair trial.

Because I am a Londoner, your government states publicly that you support my right to return home there as soon as possible. I am grateful for that. I always viewed Britain as the country that stood up for human rights more than any other. That was why I came to Britain as a refugee.

Before the intervention of your government to help me, I was more resigned to my fate, to be held forever without a fair trial. When your government intervened I had hope. But it has been a cruel hope. Nine months later I am still here, no closer to home, still in this terrible prison.

When I learned that my Moroccan torturers were using information supplied by British intelligence, I felt deeply betrayed. When I learned that your government’s lawyers (the Treasury Solicitors) had told my lawyers they had no duty to help prove my innocence, or even that I had been tortured, I felt betrayed again.

It is long past time to end this matter. I have been next to committing suicide this past while. That would be one way to end it, I suppose.

Binyam Mohamed

22/MAY/08

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.

Burma and the Making of Iraq's Ghost Towns

JamieSW — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:19:29 +0000

The Rules Of The Game

The psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan once commented on “how suavely we simply ignore great bodies of experience, any clearly analysed instance of which might present us with a very real necessity for change.” (Quoted, Daniel Goleman, Vital Lies, Simple Truths – The Psychology of Self-Deception, Bloomsbury 1997, p.124)

The problem for professional journalists is that they are not free to change. Or at least, they are not free to change and flourish in their chosen careers. Ex-CBS producer Richard Cohen explained the relationship between media and politics:

“Everyone plays by the rules of the game if they want to stay in the game.” (Quoted, Daniel Schechter, The More You Watch, The Less You Know, Seven Stories Press, 1997, p.39)

The rules include focusing intently on the crimes of others while suavely ignoring comparable, or worse, crimes at home.

Consider the intense criticism heaped on the Burmese government for failing to accept foreign add in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis. Gordon Brown said:

“There are people suffering in Burma, there are children going without food, there are people without shelter.

“It is utterly unacceptable that, when international aid is offered, the regime will try to prevent that getting in.

“And I’m determined to work with the rest of the international community to make sure that people in need of help, people who face a long and terrible time ahead…” (http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page15495.asp)

And so on… Foreign secretary, David Miliband, talked of “malign neglect”. French president Nicolas Sarkozy found Burmese government inaction “utterly reprehensible”. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/14/burma.china)

As ever, the British media rallied to the cause. In the Guardian (May 19), Kim Fletcher lambasted the Burmese generals for having done “a most effective job in preventing the world from witnessing the wholly ineffective way in which they appear to have dealt with the devastation.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/may/19/pressandpublishing.chinathem…)

An outraged May 18 Sunday Telegraph leader actually raised the possibility of military action:

“The inevitable violation of Burmese airspace would certainly require that the cargo planes be protected by fighters. It would not amount to an invasion of the country. But it would mean the use of force to get aid through to the people who so desperately need it.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/05/18/dl…)

The first aid war! The Observer’s Nick Cohen also cited with approval the “call for foreign troops to escort aid workers into the stricken areas”:

“As always, there are 1,001 good reasons for doing nothing. But I don’t think passivity is an option for the UN.” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/11/cyclonenargis.burma)

Cohen’s compassion for the Burmese people, we were to understand, made inaction unthinkable.

And yet these are the same politicians and journalists who have shown almost complete indifference to the suffering of the Iraqi people under US-UK occupation. Cohen, for example, had plenty to say about the merits of war in 2002 and early 2003; he has had almost nothing to say about the catastrophic consequences since.

This is a recurring theme of right-wing commentary. Typically, great compassion is expressed for the population of a nation targeted for US-UK attack. As Western violence then wrecks havoc on that country, the pundit simply moves on to express similar compassion for the next target. Trails of right-wing tears track across the globe closely followed by JDAMs, cluster bombs, and blood.

In the last year, Cohen has had essentially nothing to say about the suffering of civilians in Iraq, beyond tiny mentions in passing. In April, he wrote that “the United Nations estimated that in 2006, 35,000 died in the civil war in Iraq.” But this was in the context of a discussion of avoidable deaths in NHS hospitals. He described the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq as merely a “civil war”. (Cohen, ‘Satirists once had real bite. Not any more,’ The Observer, April 6, 2008)

In a further mention, Cohen mocked the idea that America and Britain were responsible for the violence, describing how “squaddies on the ground [are] fighting totalitarian enemies in close combat”. (Cohen, ‘Our weasel words betray these decent Iraqis,’ The Observer, October 7, 2007)

By contrast, General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British army, said in September, 2007:

“By motivation… our opponents are Iraqi nationalists, and are most concerned with their own needs – the majority are not bad people.” (Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Embrace returning troops, pleads army chief,’ The Guardian, September 22, 2007)

Leaving The Children to Die

On January 19, 2007, 100 eminent British doctors wrote to the British government pleading for emergency medical aid to be sent to an Iraqi children’s hospital – exactly the kind of assistance the government is now insisting Burma should accept. The doctors’ letter, titled, ‘Iraq’s children must not be left to die,’ began:

“We are concerned that children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Iraq, instead of being a country at the top of the league for medicine, as it once was, now has conditions and mortality of a Third World country. Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means are left to die in hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-letter-sick-or-i…)

The letter added:

“Contrary to Article 50, 55, and 56 of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV where the Occupying Power has a duty of ensuring the food and the medical supplies of the population… three years into the conflict, Iraqi children are dying in large numbers due to lack of medical supplies. (Babies are being ventilated with a plastic tube in their noses and dying for want of a 95 pence oxygen mask, or lack of a phial of vitamin K, or sterile needles, or even rubber surgical gloves. Premature babies are forced three to an incubator 36 years old held together with wire and elastoplast).”

In rejecting the request, Hilary Benn, then Britain’s Secretary of State for International Development, replied on January 29, 2007:

“Iraq has a democratically elected government that is responsible for providing healthcare to its citizens. I agree that the quality of this healthcare, the security of hospitals and the availability of medical supplies is entirely inadequate. But I take issue with your assertion that the deaths of children are a ‘direct result of the actions or inactions of the UK government‘. It is the escalating sectarian violence and political divisions that are the main obstacles to the Government of Iraq delivering the services that the Iraqi people deserve.”

Benn added:

“I regret that I am unable to meet you and your colleagues at this time, but I can assure you that the issues you raise are of deep concern to me, and that the UK is making every effort, along with international partners, to support the Iraqis to improve the situation for their citizens.”

The journalists currently going blue in the face over Burmese indifference did not give a damn. The doctors’ plea was reported in two brief articles in the Independent – no other media outlet covered the story.

Turning Cities Into Battlefields

Or consider the media response to the fate of Iraqis currently enduring major US-led assaults. In the last month, UK national broadsheets have published a total of six articles offering substantial reporting on the fighting in Sadr City.

Sadr City and other major Shiite areas in Baghdad have been under siege since late April; millions of people are struggling to survive. On May 1, Patrick Cockburn – an honourable exception to the journalistic norm – reported in the Independent:

“Shia losses have been heavy. An Iraqi government spokesman for the civilian side of Baghdad security operations said 925 people had been killed and 2,605 wounded in Sadr City since the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, began his offensive against the Sadrist movement on 25 April.” (http://www.independent.ie/world-news/middle-east/us-military-death-toll-...)

On May 3, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported the aftermath of a US attack involving a hospital in Sadr City that was “badly damaged” with a fleet of ambulances destroyed:

“The hospital corridors were littered with glass shards, twisted metal and hanging electrical wiring. Partitions in the wards had collapsed. Huge concrete blocks placed to form a blast wall against explosions had toppled onto parked vehicles.” (http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5it1rhG8GfKYP4YMgIiTDEUl26QwA)

Hospital officials reported that at least 28 people had been injured. The Iraqi Red Crescent Organisation told Time magazine this month that hundreds of people had fled the fighting and oppressive curfews, which have cut access to food, water and electricity. Mohammed Kamel Hassan, a volunteer organiser for Red Crescent reported that up to one million Sadr City residents needed emergency aid. Abu Haider al-Bahadili, a Mahdi Army leader, told the Washington Post:

“Sadr City right now is like a city of ghosts. It has turned from a city into a field of battle.” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/29/AR200804…)

On May 13, Cockburn reported that more than 1,000 people, “mostly civilians”, had been killed during the offensives. In one clash in Sadr City, the US claimed it killed 28 Shia “militants” but hospital officials said they had received 25 bodies, most of which were civilians. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/alsadr-ceasefire-all…)

Bush – “Stay The Course! Kill them!”

Earlier this month, the Independent reported revelations made by Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq in 2003-4. In his recently published memoirs, Wiser in Battle, Sanchez describes how Bush personally ordered Shia leader Moqtadr al Sadr to be captured or killed. During a video conference on April 7, 2004, Bush said:

“The Mehdi Army is a hostile force. We can’t allow one man [Sadr] to change the course of the country. At the end of this campaign Sadr must be gone. At a minimum he will be arrested. It is essential he be wiped out.” (Cockburn, ibid)

Bush emphasised the point:

“Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!”

This is the ethic of extermination through maximum force that has brought utter catastrophe to Iraq. The political novelist Gore Vidal recently summed up the Bush regime:

“They — Cheney, Bush — they wanted the war. They’re oilmen. They want a war to get more oil. They’re also extraordinarily stupid. These people don’t know anything about anything.” (http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/14/legendary_author_gore_vidal_on_the)

General Sanchez’s grim account was apparently of no interest – the Independent was the sole newspaper to cover the story.

Indifference also defines media reporting of the assault on Mosul, one of Iraq’s great cities, also described by eyewitnesses as “a ghost town”. According to one rare press report (Cockburn, again), Mosul “looks ruinous and under siege. Every alley way is blocked by barricades and the only new building is in the form of concrete blast walls.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/ghost-city-mosul-bra…)

We found two articles offering meaningful analysis of the disaster in Mosul over the last month in the entire UK quality press.

It ought to be a thing of wonder that the British corporate press can simultaneously rage against the crimes of the Burmese government while having almost nothing to say about the ongoing US-UK devastation of Iraq. And yet it feels entirely normal. American media analyst Edward Herman explained:

“The human capacity for compartmentalisation of thought and suppression of inconvenient facts always continues to break new ground in service to evolving political demands.” (http://www.zmag.org/zmag/viewArticle/17050)

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A Cluster of Excuses

Ellie Keen — Fri, 23 May 2008 12:24:35 +0000

Since the first day here at the negotiations in Dublin the UK has appeared determined to undermine efforts to achieve an effective and comprehensive international treaty banning cluster munitions. It is becoming increasingly hard to see how the Oslo process is going to come up with a good treaty – at least one with the UK on board – unless the British delegation starts to compromise. Without having Princess Diana championing humanitarianism, as in the days of the mine ban treaty, getting the UK on board has been akin to dental surgery without an anaesthetic.

For sure, in diplomacy it takes time for directions to filter down from policymakers to the diplomats, but time is running out. We have a week left and it looks like the UK delegation has not even read the newspapers. Prime minister Gordon Brown’s widely reported pre-by-election statement this week asking the defence ministry to review its position on clusters indicated a shift, but the UK delegates have remained unmoved. Brown might want to call them up. Then again, his apparent concession may just have been an election gimmick, in which case shame on him.

Cluster munitions leave de facto landmines when their duds scatter, often over a wide area. Today they cause a far greater threat to civilian lives and livelihoods than land mines. With 156 states party to the Mine Ban Treaty, the world has already agreed mines are illegal. Their use has been so stigmatised that even non-parties to the treaty like the US, China and Russia are reluctant to use them.

Clusters, however, are still used in massive numbers. It is hard to imagine the deadly legacy of one million cluster duds hidden in the homes, gardens, and fields of southern Lebanon. I tiptoed through those terrifying booby-trapped killing fields in the course of investigations for Human Rights Watch. It will take years of work to clear the land of the bitter fruit of conflict. They maim and kill, but they also mean you cannot farm the land or walk the fields.

Imagine if the green and pleasant pastures of England were suddenly off limits, the hospitals filled with injured, the morgues with the dead. And even when life started to turn around, the farmers had to sit idly by contemplating their unplanted fields, unable to make a living for fear of stepping on a hidden bomb.

There is a macabre surrealism to listening to the delegations of so-called “like-minded states” talking about the enormous exemptions they want to ram through in this treaty. Some delegations use terms like “dangerous duds” as if every live bomb were not dangerous. But this “like-minded” bloc looking for maximum exemptions is crumbling. Only the UK is really holding on to a no-compromise position.

The UK is fixated with “self-destruct devices”, insisting that they work. But the simple fact is that self-destruct mechanisms do not work. In Basra and Lebanon the vaunted M85 cluster munitions failed so miserably their dud rate was 10 times higher than advertised. It is absurd to claim that these munitions don’t cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

I have to wonder if the members of the British delegation or their political masters would be comfortable with their children playing in the fields of southern Lebanon. I am scared to walk even in the cleared areas – and I am a grown-up with a soldier’s training.

The British delegates here say their cluster rockets are “different” because they fly straight and the pilot sees where they are aimed, and instead of covering a football field they only cover an area the size of a few homes. And with only nine sub-munitions the rockets cannot be so bad as the bombs with over 600. That is all very well and good. But you don’t fire just one, and an Apache carries enough rockets for a volley of 684 cluster munitions in total. And the effect is the same – when they strike they explode over a target raining down over an area, no matter the size, and leave unexploded duds behind.

It is clear the US is pushing the British government hard to insert a massive loophole in the treaty that would allow parties to conduct joint military operations with non-parties even if those non-parties used clusters in joint operations. The UK is thus trying to shape the treaty to say cluster munitions are so bad they must be illegal, but if the US uses them, then Britain must be allowed to help. This is nonsense.

Before it is too late, the UK needs to start showing some humanitarian principles and some political backbone. As a close ally of the US and a major military player on the global stage, it is important that the UK remains on board the Oslo process. But it is also essential that the UK follow up on Brown’s helpful statement this week and drop its efforts to drive an American coach and horse through the treaty. Rather than standing up for narrow US interests, the UK needs to start standing for the interests of the victims – past, present and future – of these horrible weapons.

Torture victim Binyam Mohamed sues British government for evidence

Tim Holmes — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:27:59 +0000

On Tuesday, Binyam Mohamed, a 29-year old British resident in Guantánamo, sued the British government for refusing to produce evidence which, his lawyers contend, would demonstrate that he was tortured for 27 months by or on behalf of US forces in Morocco and Afghanistan, that any “evidence” against him was only obtained through torture, and that the British government and intelligence services knew about his torture and provided personal information about him — unrelated to terrorism — that was used by the Americans’ proxy torturers in Morocco.

They insist, moreover, that his case is an urgent priority, because he is about to be charged before a Military Commission in Guantánamo — the much-criticized system of trials for “terror suspects” that was conceived by the US administration in November 2001 — and they desperately need the exculpatory evidence in the possession of the British government to assist in his defence, and to prove his innocence.

Binyam’s torture

A refugee from Ethiopia, who arrived in the UK in 1994 and was later granted indefinite leave to remain, Binyam Mohamed was working as a cleaner in an Islamic Centre in west London in 2001, and attempting to recover from a drug problem, when he decided to travel to Afghanistan to see what the Taliban regime was like, and, he hoped, to steer clear of drugs because of the Taliban’s reputation as fierce opponents of drug use.

He came to the attention of both the American and British intelligence services in April 2002, when he was seized by the Pakistani authorities as he tried to board a flight to London. Although he had a valid airline ticket, his passport had been stolen, and, rather foolishly, he had borrowed a British friend’s passport instead.

In the heightened tension in Pakistan at the time — just days after Abu Zubaydah, an alleged senior al-Qaeda operative, was captured in Faisalabad — Binyam was immediately regarded with enormous suspicion by the American agents who visited him in the Pakistan prison in which he was held.

Although he later reported to his lawyer — Clive Stafford Smith of the legal action charity Reprieve, which represents 35 prisoners in Guantánamo — that the British checked out his story, and confirmed that he was a “nobody,” the Americans were not convinced, and decided to send him to Morocco, where he could be interrogated by professional torturers who were not bothered about international treaties preventing the use of torture, and who were equally unconcerned about whether evidence of their activities would ever surface.

Speaking of his time in Morocco, where he was held for 18 months, Binyam told Stafford Smith that he was subjected to horrendous torture, which, included, but was not limited to having his penis cut with a razor on a regular basis. In spite of this, the regular beatings and other torture that he did not even want to talk about, Binyam said that his lowest moment of all came when his torturers produced evidence of his life in London, which could only have come from the British intelligence services, and he realized that he had been abandoned and betrayed by his adopted homeland.

After Morocco, Binyam was transferred to Afghanistan, where he endured further torture in the “Dark Prison,” a secret “black site” near Kabul, run by the CIA, which was a grim recreation of a medieval dungeon, but with the addition of non-stop music and noise, blasted into the pitch-dark cells at an ear-piercing volume.

Moved from here to the main US prison at Bagram airbase, where at least two prisoners were murdered by US forces, Binyam was finally put on a plane to Guantánamo in September 2004, two and a half years after his ordeal began.

In Guantánamo, he was put forward for a Military Commission in November 2005, and made one memorable appearance before the military court, when he held up a hand-written placard declaring that the Commissions were in fact “Con-Missions,” but in June 2006 the judge in his case was spared further embarrassment when the entire system was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Revived later that year by a barely sentient Congress, the trials have since struggled to establish their legitimacy, and have yet to proceed beyond arraignment and pre-trial proceedings, with the exception of the case of the Australian David Hicks, who accepted a plea bargain last March in order to return home to serve a desultory nine-month sentence.

In recent months, however, the administration, which boldly states that it intends to try between 60 and 80 of the remaining 273 prisoners, has stepped up the rate at which new prisoners are being charged. In an attempt to save Binyam from a second dose of the Commissions, his lawyers at Reprieve, together with solicitors from Leigh Day & Co., decided that the most constructive and innovative way to secure Binyam’s release was to put pressure on the British government.

The letter to the UK government

Armed with evidence from flight logs, which confirmed that CIA planes had flown from Pakistan to Morocco in July 2002, and from Morocco to Afghanistan in January 2004, as Binyam said they had, and with numerous accounts of British complicity in his interrogations, and knowledge of his rendition to torture, the lawyers submitted a list of requests to David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, at the end of March.

The extensive list of items requested included any evidence relating to UK knowledge of Binyam’s forthcoming rendition while he was held in Pakistan from April to July 2002, including “the identity of the US agents involved, so that they can be traced and interviewed or subpoenaed,” and any evidence relating to Binyam’s claim that representatives of the British intelligence services told him in Pakistan that they knew that he was a “nobody,” which, the lawyers stated, led them to “assume that the UK intelligence services and police have carried out investigations in to Mr. Mohamed’s activities whilst in the UK.” “We believe,” they added, “that such evidence will show that he does not represent a terrorist threat,” and that as such “it forms a necessary part of his defence.”

The lawyers also asked “to interview and take statements from the UK agents who (it is conceded) spoke to Mr. Mohamed whilst he was detained in Pakistan,” and who, Binyam stated, “informed him that he was going to be rendered to an Arab country for torture.” In December 2005, Jack Straw, who was the Foreign Secretary at the time, did indeed admit, in testimony to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, that UK Security Service officers visited Binyam while he was in Pakistani custody, and Binyam’s recollections of that encounter were noted by Clive Stafford Smith during a meeting at Guantánamo:

“They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in it. I initially only took one. ‘No, you need a lot more. Where you’re going, you need a lot of sugar.’ I didn’t know exactly what he meant by this, but I figured he meant some poor country in Arabia. One of them did tell me I was going to get tortured by the Arabs.”

As Binyam’s lawyers pointed out, “Such evidence will be central to the defence of Mr. Mohamed because any evidence obtained as a result of torture is inadmissible.”

The lawyers also requested “information about Mr. Mohamed’s life in the United Kingdom that could only have come from UK intelligence agencies or other government sources,” which, as Binyam pointed out, caused him particular distress in Morocco, when it was used by his torturers. According to Stafford Smith, this information included “personal details about his life in the UK, such as details of his education, the name of his kick-boxing trainer and his friendships in London, which he had never mentioned during interrogations, and that could only have originated from collusion in the process by the UK security or secret intelligence services.”

In addition, the lawyers requested any evidence about rendition flights that stopped on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean (which is leased to the United States). After five years of denials, the British government finally admitted in February that two flights had indeed stopped at Diego Garcia, and Binyam’s lawyers requested information about these flights, pointing out that one of the flights had “subsequently stopped in Morocco at the time that Mr. Mohamed was there,” and that it was, therefore, “almost certainly (a) taking another prisoner to Morocco for torture; or (b) taking US personnel there who were involved in Mr. Mohamed’s interrogation process.”

The lawyers also requested any evidence relating to Binyam’s time in the “Dark Prison” in Kabul, where, they noted, “it seems highly probable that the UK government has details of the conditions that prevailed there,” because various British residents — including Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil El-Banna, who returned to the UK from Guantánamo last year — were also held there, and any evidence relating to Binyam’s time in Bagram, where other British prisoners were also held.

The lawyers’ final request was for access to Binyam’s medical records from Guantánamo. They noted that these were “relevant to the question of torture, and Mr. Mohamed’s current physical and mental condition,” and added that, although the Guantánamo authorities have given the UK government access to Binyam’s records, they have refused to provide them to Stafford Smith. “The UK should provide a copy now,” they wrote, “or provide whatever information or documents they have recording the contents of the medical records.”

The lawsuit

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Reprieve and Leigh Day & Co. was triggered when lawyers for the government responded to the letter described above by refusing to hand over any of the evidence requested by Binyam’s lawyers, claiming that “the UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted,” and adding, “it is HM Government’s position that … evidence held by the UK government that US and Moroccan authorities engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained” by Binyam’s lawyers.

The government lawyers proceeded to claim that Binyam’s lawyers did not “provide any evidence” to support their assertion that “such alleged information or assistance ‘was subsequently used in the torture of [Mr. Mohamed],’” to which Reprieve and Leigh Day responded by pointing out that Binyam’s allegation that UK sources provided information to his torturers in Morocco was “found credible” by the Intelligence and Security Committee (IRC), a committee established in the UK Intelligence Services Act 1994, and empowered to examine the expenditure, administration and policies of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Binyam’s lawyers pointed out that the government had ignored the conclusion of the IRC’s Rendition Report in 2007, when the committee had explicitly stated, “There is a reasonable probability that intelligence passed to the Americans was used in [Binyam Mohamed]’s subsequent [Moroccan] interrogation.”

They also cited the particular passage from Binyam’s statement to Clive Stafford Smith, in which he spoke about the interrogation in Morocco that contained information that could only have come from the British intelligence services:

“Today I was questioned about my links with Britain. The interrogator told me, ‘We have been working with the British, and we have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?’ I realized that the British were sending questions to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that the Brits were siding with the Americans. I sought asylum in Britain rather than America because it’s known as the one country that has laws that it follows. To say that I was disappointed at this moment would be an understatement.”

It remains to be seen, of course, if this novel approach taken by Binyam’s lawyers will bear fruit, but it seems plausible, as it is hardly in the interests of the British government to run the risk of further embarrassing disclosures. The lawsuit may, therefore, put pressure on the politicians to step up their efforts to secure Binyam’s return to Britain — to face charges in the UK, if any can be found that will stick to the “nobody” from west London — rather than to allow him to be tried in a much-criticized system in Guantánamo that threatens to embarrass both the British and the American governments.

Andy is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison.

Somalia - Hidden Catastrophe, Hidden Agenda

Ellie Keen — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:21:40 +0000

On May 1, the BBC website reported an attack on Somalia with the words:

“Air raid kills Somali militants.”

One might think the BBC’s headline would identify the agency responsible for the bombing, but the first few sentences also shed no light:

“The leader of the military wing of an Islamist insurgent organisation in Somalia has been killed in an overnight air strike.

“Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Shabab’s military commander, died when his home in the central town of Dusamareb was bombed.

“Ten other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7376760.stm)

Only in the fourth sentence, was responsibility ascribed:

“A US military spokesman told the BBC that it had attacked what he called a known al-Qaeda target in Somalia.”

English teachers often illustrate use of the passive form with the sentence: ‘A man has been arrested.’ The passive is preferable, students are told, because the active form, ‘The police have arrested a man,’ contains a redundancy – the agent is already indicated by the action. There’s no need to actually mention ‘the police’.

Likewise, the BBC takes for granted that the US is the world’s policeman; no need to mention it by name. The action of bombing an impoverished Third World country already indicates the agent. This also helps explain why no mention was made of the illegality of this act of aggression.

On the rare occasions when the media mention the conflict in Somalia at all, the focus tends to fall on US attempts to hunt down al Qaeda, or on the West’s alleged humanitarian motives. Other priorities were indicated in 1992 when the US political weekly The Nation referred to Somalia as "one of the most strategically sensitive spots in the world today: astride the Horn of Africa, where oil, Islamic fundamentalism and Israeli, Iranian and Arab ambitions and arms are apt to crash and collide." (December 21, 1992)

In December 2006, the US backed the invasion of Somalia by its close Ethiopian ally to overthrow the Islamist government, the Islamic Courts Union (ICU). Christian Ethiopia is a historic enemy of Somalia, which is made up entirely of Sunni Muslims.

On December 4 of that year, General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces from the Middle East through Afghanistan, travelled to Addis Ababa to meet the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi. Three weeks later, Ethiopian forces crossed into Somalia and Washington launched a series of supportive air strikes. The Guardian quoted a former intelligence officer familiar with the region:

"The meeting was just the final handshake.” (Xan Rice and Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘The American connection: How US forged an alliance with Ethiopia over invasion,’ The Guardian, January 13, 2007)

Political analyst James Petras commented:

“Somalia… was invaded by mercenaries by Ethiopia, trained, financed, armed and directed by US military advisers.” (Petras, ‘The Imperial System: Hierarchy, Networks and Clients – The Case of Somalia,’ Dissident Voice, February 18, 2007; http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb07/Petras18.htm)

USA Today reported in January 2007 that the US had “quietly poured weapons and military advisers into Ethiopia,” which had received nearly $20 million in US military aid since late 2002. The report added:

“The [Somalia] intervention is controversial in Ethiopia, where the Meles government has become increasingly repressive, said Chris Albin-Lackey, an African researcher at Human Rights Watch.

“The Meles government has limited the power of the opposition in parliament and arrested thousands. A government inquiry concluded that security forces fatally shot, beat or strangled 193 people who protested election fraud in 2005.” (http://www.usatoday.com/news/ world/2007-01-07-ethiopia_x.htm)

Petras noted that, having driven the last of the warlords from Mogadishu and most of the countryside, the ICU had established a government which was welcomed by the great majority of Somalis and covered over 90% of the population:

“The ICU was a relatively honest administration, which ended warlord corruption and extortion. Personal safety and property were protected, ending arbitrary seizures and kidnappings by warlords and their armed thugs. The ICU is a broad multi-tendency movement that includes moderates and radical Islamists, civilian politicians and armed fighters, liberals and populists, electoralists and authoritarians. Most important, the Courts succeeded in unifying the country and creating some semblance of nationhood, overcoming clan fragmentation.” (Petras, op. cit)

Martin Fletcher wrote in the Times of the ICU:

“I am no apologist for the courts. Their leadership included extremists with dangerous intentions and connections. But for six months they achieved the near-impossible feat of restoring order to a country that appeared ungovernable…

"The courts were less repressive than our Saudi Arabian friends. They publicly executed two murderers (a fraction of the 24 executions in Texas last year), and discouraged Western dancing, music and films, but at least people could walk the streets without being robbed or killed. That trumps most other considerations. Ask any Iraqi.

“The Islamists have now been replaced – with Washington’s connivance – by a weak, fragile Government that was created long before the courts won power, that includes the very warlords they defeated and relies for survival on Somalia’s worst enemy.” (Fletcher, ‘The Islamists were the one hope for Somalia,’ The Times, January 8, 2007)

It was clear to many commentators that the Ethiopian invasion would prove disastrous. Three months later, the Daily Telegraph reported:

“A new humanitarian crisis is rapidly taking shape in the Horn of Africa where eight days of heavy fighting in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has forced about 350,000 people to flee.

“Artillery fire has devastated large areas of the city, forcing about one third of its population to leave. Yesterday Mogadishu’s main hospital was shelled.

“The plains around Mogadishu are filled with refugees enduring desperate conditions with little food or shelter. The fighting began when Somalia’s internationally recognised government, supported by Ethiopian troops, launched an offensive against insurgents.” (Mike Pflanz, ‘Fighting brings fresh misery to Somalia,’ Telegraph, April 26, 2007)

The Telegraph cited a British aid worker: "They are bombing anything that moves.”

Catherine Weibel, from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees was also quoted:

"Everyone we are talking to says this is the worst situation they have seen in 16 years since the last government fell.”

The War On Terror… And The Real Concern

The preferred media framework for making sense of US actions closely parallels cold war mythology. We are to believe the US is passionately, even blindly, battling ideological enemies in an effort to protect itself and the West. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland could be relied upon to paint this picture of events:

“A fortnight ago the Ethiopians entered Somalia to topple the Islamist forces who had just taken Mogadishu. Americans dislike that Islamist movement, fearing it has the makings of an African Taliban, so they backed the Ethiopians to take it out. According to Patrick Smith, the editor of Africa Confidential, the war on terror is fast becoming a cold war for the 21st century, with the US finding proxy allies to fight proxy enemies in faraway places.” (Freedland, ‘Like a deluded compulsive gambler, Bush is fuelling a new cold war,’ The Guardian, January 10, 2007)

If this sounds curiously simplistic, even childish, it is. In fact, the cold war, like the “war on terror”, was far less ideological, far more prosaic, than journalists like Freedland claim. Historian Howard Zinn has, for example, commented on the Vietnam war, which the BBC would have us believe “was America’s attempt to stop Communists from toppling one country after another in South East Asia” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/ documentaries/2008/04/080327_mylai_partone.shtml):

“When I read the hundreds of pages of the Pentagon Papers entrusted to me by [military analyst] Daniel Ellsberg, what jumped out at me were the secret memos from the National Security Council. Explaining the U.S. interest in Southeast Asia, they spoke bluntly of the country’s motives as a quest for ‘tin, rubber, oil.’” (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17049)

Ethiopia’s invasion coincided with the Pentagon’s goal of creating a new ‘Africa Command’ to deal with what the Christian Science Monitor described as: “Strife, oil, and Al Qaeda.” Richard Whittle wrote:

“The creation of the new command will be more than an exercise in shuffling bureaucratic boxes, experts say. The US government’s motives include countering Al Qaeda’s known presence in Africa, safeguarding future oil supplies, and competing with China, which has been courting African governments in its own quest for petroleum, they suggest.” (Richard Whittle, ‘Pentagon to train a sharper eye on Africa,’ January 5, 2007; http://www.csmonitor.com /2007/0105/p02s01-usmi.html)

As Andy Rowell and James Marriott have noted, the key fact is that “some 30 per cent of America’s oil will come from Africa in the next ten years". (Rowell and Marriott, A Game as Old as Empire – The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption, edited by Steven Hiatt, Berrett-Koehler, 2007, p.118)

The US has plans for nearly two-thirds of Somalia’s oil fields to be allocated to the US oil companies Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips. The US hopes Somalia will line up as an ally alongside Ethiopia and Djibouti, where the US has a military base. This alliance would give America powerful leverage close to the major energy-producing regions.

Chatham House, a British think tank of the independent Royal Institute of International Affairs, commented on US and Ethiopian intervention last year:

"In an uncomfortably familiar pattern, genuine multilateral concern to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia has been hijacked by unilateral actions of other international actors – especially Ethiopia and the United States – following their own foreign policy agendas.” (http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15545)

Catastrophic Crisis

This ‘hijacking’ has had truly appalling consequences. More than one million people have been made internal refugees, and the UN food security unit warned last week that 3.5 million people, half of Somalia’s population, are facing famine. Fighting has turned Mogadishu into a ghost town. About 700,000 people have fled – out of a population of up to 1.5 million. The International Committee of the Red Cross describes Somalia’s crisis as “catastrophic.” (http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5 /5/thousands_of_somalis_protest_deadly_us)

Soaring food prices have driven thousands of protestors onto the streets of the capital, Mogadishu. On May 5, Professor Abdi Samatar, a professor of geography and global studies at the University of Minnesota, told the US website Democracy Now:

“Well, what you see in Mogadishu over the last year and a half or so, since the Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population have built without the government for the last fifteen, sixteen years.” (http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/ 5/thousands_of_somalis_protest_deadly_us)

A kilo of rice, which previously sold at around seventy US cents, now costs as much as $2.50. The average day’s income for anyone fortunate enough to have a job is less than a dollar a day. The gap between incomes and the cost of food primarily imported from overseas means that millions of people cannot afford to eat.

Last week, Amnesty International reported that it had obtained scores of accounts of killings by Ethiopian troops that Somalis have described as "slaughtering [Somalis] like goats." In one case, "a young child’s throat was slit by Ethiopian soldiers in front of the child’s mother.” (http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR52/006/2008/en/1162a792-186e-11dd-92b4-6b0c2ef9d02f/afr520062008eng.pdf)

Amnesty reported that during sweeps through neighbourhoods, Ethiopian forces placed snipers on roofs, and civilians were unable to move about for fear of being shot:

“While some sniper fire appeared to be directed at suspected members of anti-TFG [Transitional Federal Government] armed groups, reports indicate that civilians were also frequently caught in indiscriminate fire. In many cases families were forced to carry their wounded to medical care in wheelbarrows and on donkeys because ambulance drivers would not operate their vehicles due to general insecurity, including sniper fire. As a result, it has become very difficult for civilians to access medical care.”

The British government has consistently downplayed both the gravity of the crisis and the murderous behaviour of Ethiopian forces. In the Foreign Office’s latest annual human rights assessment of Somalia there was no mention of Ethiopia, let alone the conduct of its troops. No surprise – Ethiopia is one of the largest recipients of UK aid in Africa and, as discussed, is an important regional ally.

The Media Follow The Government Lead

Predictably, the government’s strategic silence is reflected in press reporting. In the last year, the words ‘Somalia’ and ‘famine’ have appeared in a grand total of seven British broadsheet newspaper articles discussing the topic. Of the few references to the latest US attack in the British press over the last week, only the Independent and the Sunday Times made briefs references to Somalia’s humanitarian crisis. The Independent noted that life for Somalia’s nine million residents has become “unbearable”. The Guardian merely quoted Reuters:

“Western security services have long seen Somalia as a haven for militants. Warlords overthrew dictator Siad Barre in 1991, casting the country into chaos.” (Reuters, ‘US airstrike kills head of al-Qaida in Somalia,’ Guardian International, May 2, 2008)

The Amnesty report was mentioned in three broadsheet newspapers. Of these, the Guardian failed to mention the US role at all. Ian Black commented:

“Ethiopia sent in troops in December 2006 and ejected them. Since then, Mogadishu has been caught up in a guerrilla war between the government and its Ethiopian allies and the Islamist insurgents. Up to 1 million Somalians are internally displaced.” (Ian Black, ‘Somali refugees speak of horrific war crimes,’ The Guardian, May 7, 2008)

By contrast, a short Independent piece led with the US role:

“Amnesty International has called for the role of the United States in Somalia to be investigated, following publication of a report accusing its allies of committing war crimes.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news /world/politics/call-for-inquiry-into-us -role-in-somalia-822166.html)

Amnesty’s Dave Copeman was cited:

"There are major countries that have significant influence. The US, EU and European countries need to exert that influence to stop these attacks."

This is the sole reference to Copeman’s comments in the entire national UK press.

Professor Samatar commented on the latest US attack:

“[I]t’s quite befuddling to Somalis and many other peace-loving people around the world as to why the United States has chosen to bomb people who are desperate for assistance and food, and who have been dislocated and traumatised by an Ethiopian invasion, a country that has its own people under tyranny in itself.”

The Truth Of ‘Our Leaders‘

With our shared responsibility for the catastrophe in Somalia buried out of sight, the Telegraph reported this week:

“Gordon Brown urged the Burmese authorities to give ‘unfettered access’ to humanitarian agencies. ‘We now estimate that two million people face famine or disease as a result of the lack of co-operation of the Burmese authorities. This is completely unacceptable,’ he said.” (Alan Brown, ‘Burmese officials “are seizing emergency aid and selling it for profit”,’ Daily Telegraph, May 13, 2008)

The great lie is that we are represented by people like Gordon Brown, described as ‘our leaders’. Because they represent us and we are not monsters, we are to believe that ‘our leaders’ are seeking to resolve problems afflicting humanity in general, while working more specifically to protect us from terrorism and other threats. In other words, we are to believe that ‘our leaders’, like us, are rational, compassionate and well-intentioned.

The truth is very different. In fact we are free to chose from parties and leaders who all represent the same interests of concentrated state-corporate power – the tiny fraction of the population that owns much of the country and runs its business.

Crucially, ’our leaders’ front a political system that has an overwhelming advantage in high-tech military power. They are all too willing to use this power to convulse countries with bloodshed when doing so supports their lucrative version of economic ’order’. Iraq is the obvious example – Somalia is another.

’Our leaders’ rule in the name of democracy, but they act in the interests of a narrow, extremely violent kleptocracy.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Ask the following journalists why they are not doing more to expose Western responsibility for the catastrophe in Somalia.

Write to Ian Black
Email: ian.black@guardian.co.uk

Write to Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent
Email: s.kelner@independent.co.uk

Write to Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk

Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org