torture | ukwatch.net

Security services colluded in unlawful detention

tim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:56:11 +0000

In a key intervention in the 42 days debate last month, the former head of MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller stated: “arguments can be made to justify any time of detention, just as in other countries, although mercifully not here, they can be made to justify any method of interrogation.”

That remark elided key questions about how far the security services are complicit in interrogation practices overseas, questions which were raised anew in a High Court judgement on Thursday.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones ruled that British security services colluded in the unlawful detention and interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, a UK resident detained in Pakistan six years ago.

The judges stated:

By seeking to interview BM in the circumstances described and supplying information and questions for his interviews, the relationship between the United Kingdom government and the United States authorities was far beyond that of bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.

The details of Mohamed’s treatment, as reported to the security services in 2002, are set out in a separate closed judgement. The court ruled that the Foreign Secretary has a duty to provide information that could support Mohamed’s case that he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco before being sent to Guantanamo Bay.

The court stopped short of ordering the Foreign Secretary to hand over the information to Mohamed’s lawyers, in order to allow time for the national security implications of the ruling to be considered. A decision on this point is due at another hearing next week.

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, who has represented Mohamed since 2005, said of the ruling:

This is a momentous decision. The Bush Administration committed crimes against Binyam Mohamed. The British government may have been Bush’s poodle, but the British courts remain bulldogs when it comes to human rights. Compelling the British government to release information that can prove Mr. Mohamed’s innocence is one obvious step towards making up for the years of torture that he has suffered. The next step is for the British government to demand an end to the charade against him in Guantánamo Bay, and return him home to Britain.

The shame of British complicity

Ellie Keen — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:32:18 +0000

The judgment given by the high court yesterday in the case of Binyam Mohamed opens up the real prospect that the international law and rule of law transgressions of the “war on terror” will unravel in British courts. Never before has so much been disclosed of the real extent of the British government’s complicity even though much of the hearing was in closed sessions using special advocates and the only judgment we have access to is the “open” one.

Binyam Mohamed is the only British resident left in Guantánamo Bay. Although all the other residents have been returned the US has refused to bring him back to the UK on the grounds that he is to be put on trial before a military commission which could impose the death penalty.

Clive Stafford Smith, Binyam’s lawyer asked the UK government to disclose information in its possession which could help prove that he had been the subject of extraordinary rendition to Pakistan and then Morocco and had been tortured at the behest of the US on the basis that this might then persuade the US convening authority in charge of the military commissions to withdraw the charges against him. The court found that such information should be disclosed but has given the foreign secretary, David Milliband, further time to consider the security implications.

The information in British possession came about because of the involvement of the British security services in Binyam’s murky story. They were involved in the questioning of Binyam in Pakistan when he was detained unlawfully incommunicado and without access to a lawyer from May to September 2002. Witness B from the security services who gave evidence in secret at the hearing and at one point refused to answer questions because of possible self-incrimination of war crimes not only worked with the US on the questioning but told Binyam that he would not help him unless he cooperated fully with the US.

In the event the help he promised did not materialise and after September 2002, when Binyam reports being rendered to Morocco, the British security services continued to “facilitate interviews by the United States authorities … when also they knew BM was still incommunicado and when they must also have appreciated that he was not in a United States facility and that the facility in which he was being detained and questioned was that of a foreign government.”

Binyam alleges that his torture in Morocco included his penis being cut with a scalpel. Although the judgment makes no finding on this it contains pointed observations about the failure of the US to respond to the torture allegations calling its position “untenable”

The judgment makes a clear finding of complicity:

By seeking to interview BM in the circumstances described and supplying information and questions for his interviews, the relationship of the United Kingdom Government to the United States authorities in relation to BM was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.

It is this which now really puts the cat among the pigeons. During the war on terror both MI5 and MI6 have flown around the world giving assistance to the US by providing information and conducting interviews with detainees known to them. They are known to have questioned people detained by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay and are believed to have assisted in renditions such as that of Jamil el Banna and Bisher Al-Rawi from the Gambia to Afghanistan and then Guantánamo.

The full extent of British “facilitation” has not yet come out but this action could be the tip of an iceberg. Did the British allow Diego Garcia to be used as a secret prison? Does our government or security services know of other secret prisons or arrangements with foreign governments? My firm is among others in bringing claims for damages and crucially a demand for a public inquiry by ex-Guantánamo detainees against the British government and security services for British collusion in the human rights abuses they suffered.

But really we should not now have to wait for the courts to pronounce on these matters. The last time we heard the words “ethical foreign policy” was years ago in the time of the late Robin Cook but they could have reappeared in the recent article by David Miliband.

Instead of waiting for more shaming disclosures of the same kind as in this judgment the government could make a real break with the moral equivalence of the Blair government by setting up a public inquiry and devising a new code for the security services to ensure they never “facilitate” torture and abuse again. If they do not do so it is increasingly clear that the UK courts will stand up to the executive on such fundamental government wrongdoing.

Louise Christian of Christian Khan solicitors acted for some of the detainees released from Guantánamo Bay

Diego Garcia: the UK's shame

JamieSW — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:27:35 +0000

The ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus wrote: "In war, truth is the first casualty." These words are particularly apt in relation to the British Overseas Territory of Diego Garcia, leased to the United States in 1971, where the truth – that a secret "War on Terror" prison existed from 2002 until as recently as 2006 – has been persistently denied by both the British and American governments.

Yesterday, Time magazine reported that a "senior American official" (now retired), who was "a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings" after the 9/11 attacks, stated that "a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island" in 2002, and possibly 2003. This is the highest-level admission to date that a secret prison existed on Diego Garcia, but it is by no means the first time that the prison's existence has been revealed.

In 2003, Time reported that Hambali, an Indonesian "high-value detainee", who was transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006, was being held on Diego Garcia, and in May this year, El Pais [in Spanish] reported that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a joint Syrian-Spanish national who was seized in Pakistan in October 2005, was held on the island in the months after his capture. Unlike Hambali, Nasar's current whereabouts are completely unknown; he is, in effect, one of "America's disappeared."

The reality of Diego Garcia's secret prison has also been confirmed by retired US general Barry McCaffrey in 2004 and 2006, in a report by Swiss Senator Dick Marty for the Council of Europe and in a statement made to the Observer in March this year by Manfred Novak, the UN's special rapporteur on torture. In contrast, the position taken by both the British and American governments occupies a parallel universe, in which the timeless resonance of Aeschylus' words is confirmed.

For five years, since questions were first asked about the secret prison by Lord Wallace of Saltaire in January 2003, the British government refused to acknowledge its existence, and its first denial was indicative of what was to come. "The United States Government," Baroness Amos explained, "would need to ask for our permission to bring any suspects to Diego Garcia. They have not done so and no suspected terrorists are being held on Diego Garcia."

The blanket denials finally came to an end this February, when David Miliband announced that his US counterparts had checked their records and had discovered that two rendition flights, each carrying one prisoner, had passed through Diego Garcia in 2002. He maintained, however, that he had been assured that the planes had only landed for refuelling, and that no prisoner had ever set foot on the island. Mr. Miliband repeated these claims just four weeks ago, after apparently receiving further confirmation from his US counterparts that no other rendition flights had passed through British territory.

The latest revelations about Diego Garcia make it abundantly clear that the British government can no longer accept any kind of "assurances" from its US counterparts regarding the use of the island. Ignoring Aeschylus' sage advice, Ministers have, to put it bluntly, fooled themselves into thinking that ignorance is a substitute for accountability. The truth, of course, is that they are both morally and legally responsible for what takes place on Diego Garcia, and have a duty to address crimes committed on British territory.

As these crimes include kidnapping, "extraordinary rendition" and illegal imprisonment, which are prohibited under domestic UK and international law, and quite possibly torture, which is prohibited under the terms of the UN Convention Against Torture, the British government must immediately initiate a full and open public inquiry into Diego Garcia's true role in the "War on Terror".

Binyam Mohamed’s judicial review

JamieSW — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:00:55 +0000

On Monday July 28, just four days after his 30th birthday, British resident and Guantánamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed was finally granted the opportunity to have his case heard, albeit in front of a British judge, rather then his American captors, and even though he was unable to attend the hearing, because he remains imprisoned in Guantánamo. There he waits in isolation to discover whether the US administration, which put him forward for trial by Military Commission at the start of June, will formally arraign him on charges of “conspiracy” and “providing material support for terrorism” over the coming weeks.

Binyam has been imprisoned without trial for six years and four months — first in Pakistan, then in Morocco, where he was tortured for 18 months on behalf of the US authorities, then for nine months, in the “Dark Prison” near Kabul, a secret prison run by the CIA and at a US military prison in Bagram airbase, and finally, since September 2004, at Guantánamo.

The judicial review that took place last week came about after Binyam’s lawyers — at Leigh Day & Co. and Reprieve, the legal action charity that represents 30 Guantánamo prisoners — requested, in April, that the British government hand over any evidence in its possession regarding its knowledge of Binyam’s long ordeal, which might provide invaluable exculpatory evidence to assist Binyam in his anticipated trial.

The lawyers were specifically seeking information relating to Binyam’s rendition from Pakistan to Morocco, which was known about in advance by British agents, who visited him in Pakistani custody and offered him a heavily-sugared cup of tea, telling him, “Where you’re going, you need a lot of sugar.” They were also concerned to establish the extent of British involvement in his subsequent torture in Morocco, where, as he told Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s Director, during a visit at Guantánamo, his lowest point came not as the result of his frequent physical torture (which included having his genitals regularly cut with a razor blade), but when his captors asked him questions about his life in London, which could only have come from the British intelligence services, and he realized that he had been betrayed by the country in which he had sought asylum as a teenager.

The trigger for the judicial review was the cold-hearted response of the British government’s lawyers to the request filed by Binyam’s lawyers. The government’s legal advisers claimed 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 that “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 his British lawyers.

Approving an “expedited” judicial review at the start of June (meaning, it would appear, that he understood the urgency of the case), Mr. Justice Saunders explained, “If it is correct that in the course of an interrogation, in which material supplied by the Defendant [HM Government] was employed, the Claimant [Binyam Mohamed] was tortured, then it is arguable that there is an obligation to disclose material which may assist Claimant in establishing before the American Military Court that he was tortured. Whether the Court should exercise its discretion not to order disclosure can only be determined at a full hearing.”

With that final caveat, it was by no means certain that the judicial review would go Binyam’s way, but on Monday the sparks began to fly almost immediately. Dinah Rose QC, Binyam’s counsel, wasted no time in telling Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones, as the Guardian described it, that “the security and intelligence agencies were ‘mixed up in wrongdoing’ in cooperating with the US in the unlawful treatment” of Mr. Mohamed, and added that, in return for information provided by the British intelligence services to their US counterparts, the US “provided the UK with the fruits of his interrogation.”

Rose explained to the judges that a British agent, identified only as “witness B,” made a “veiled threat” to Binyam, while he was in Pakistani custody, to encourage him to “cooperate with his interrogators when the officer saw him after he was first captured in Pakistan.” The implication, she noted, was “we won’t help you unless you confess.” She added that MI5 then “repeatedly” supplied the US authorities with detailed information about Mr. Mohamed’s life in London for US officials to use in his interrogation, even though, as she pointed out, the British officials “did not press the US to tell them where Mohamed was being held after he was transferred from Pakistan, and in what conditions.”

Rose also declared that the government “must have known the treatment Mohamed was likely to face [in Pakistan], ‘given the history of the Pakistan authorities.’” This provoked a response from the government’s representatives, who, rather feebly, perhaps, in light of recent revelations that the British government has colluded with the Pakistani authorities in anti-terror operations to a shocking extent, “did not dispute that Mohamed was held incommunicado for three months in Pakistan but did not accept the conditions in which he was held there were unlawful.”

After this promising start, Tuesday’s session was even more explosive. Although the hearing was only scheduled for two days, it was extended after the first half of the day was taken up in a closed court cross-examination of “witness B,” which observers interpreted as meaning that the judges were drilling mercilessly for the truth.

The second half of the day involved a similarly extraordinary scenario. This time the judges, having asked the government to vouch for the independence of Susan Crawford, the Military Commissions’ Convening Authority, who is responsible for overseeing the Commission process, brandished a letterhead which revealed that Ms. Crawford actually works for the US Department of Defense, and declared that, in light of this seemingly clear evidence of political interference in what is supposed to be an impartial trial system, they would be devoting time in their deliberations to examining whether or not the Military Commissions can be regarded as a fair process.

To everyone’s surprise, almost the whole of the rest of the week’s sessions were taken up with the continued closed court cross-examination of “witness B.” Considering that observers had indicated at the start of the judicial review that the cross-examination would probably only last for half an hour, the only rational conclusion that could be drawn was that the allegations of “wrongdoing” mentioned by Dinah Rose QC were being fully explored by the judges — possibly in a criminal context — and this undoubtedly explains why, on arriving at the court earlier in the week, “witness B” had brought his own lawyer with him.

Summing up on Friday, Ben Jaffey, another of Binyam’s lawyers, revisited the complaints made by Dinah Rose in light of the week’s developments. As the Guardian explained, Jaffey highlighted disturbing contradictions in MI5’s statements, telling the court that in his witness statement an MI5 officer had said that Britain’s security and intelligence agencies “did not know” where Mr. Mohamed was after he was flown out of Pakistan in 2002, even though MI5 had explicitly told the Intelligence and Security Committee that it believed that he was in US custody. It was as a result of this statement, Jaffey said, that the committee concluded, in its report on Mr. Mohamed’s case last year, that it was “understandable” that MI5 did not seek assurances about his treatment. Jaffey added that the committee was “not given the full picture,” and delivered a final criticism of MI5, pointing out that, although the intelligence service had indicated at the time that he was in US custody, “it now conceded that he was in a ‘location unknown.’”

Although the US authorities are still maintaining a wall of silence over Binyam’s treatment — with the Associated Press reporting that, on Friday, the Pentagon “refused to say … whether Mohamed was ever taken to Morocco” — the British judges are clearly unimpressed with a situation in which, even after six years, denials and evasion remain the norm. As the judicial review came to an end, Lord Justice Thomas said that Binyam’s case raised “many and very troublesome issues.”

The judges are expected to deliver their ruling in two weeks’ time.

Andy is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press).

Secret Prison on Diego Garcia Confirmed

Ellie Keen — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:04:22 +0000

Six “High-Value” Guantánamo Prisoners Held, Plus “Ghost Prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar

The existence of a secret, CIA-run prison on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has long been a leaky secret in the “War on Terror,” and yesterday’s revelations in TIME -- based on disclosures by a “senior American official” (now retired), who was “a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings” after the 9/11 attacks, and who reported that “a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island” -- will come as no surprise to those who have been studying the story closely ( http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1828469,00.html).

The news will, however, be an embarrassment to the US government, which has persistently denied claims that it operated a secret “War on Terror” prison on Diego Garcia, and will be a source of even more consternation to the British government, which is more closely bound than its law-shredding Transatlantic neighbor to international laws and treaties preventing any kind of involvement whatsoever in kidnapping, “extraordinary rendition” and the practice of torture.

This is not the first time that TIME has exposed the existence of a secret prison on Diego Garcia. In 2003, the magazine broke the story that Hambali, one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, was being held there, and in the years since confirmation has also come from other sources. Twice, in 2004 and 2006, Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general, who is now professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, revealed the prison’s existence. In May 2004, he blithely declared on MSNBC’s 'Deborah Norville Tonight,' “We’re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq,” and in December 2006 he spoke out again, saying, in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, “They’re behind bars … we’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo.”

The prison’s existence was also confirmed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who produced a detailed report on “extraordinary rendition” for the Council of Europe in June 2007 and by Manfred Novak, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, in March this year. Having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, Marty told the European Parliament, “We have received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the ‘processing’ of high-value detainees,” and Manfred Novak explained to the Observer that “he had received credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003.” The penultimate piece of the jigsaw puzzle came in May, when El Pais broke the story that “ghost prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, whose current whereabouts are unknown, was imprisoned on the island in 2005, shortly after his capture in Pakistan -- although the English-speaking press failed to notice.

Despite these previous disclosures, yesterday’s article, by Adam Zagorin, is particularly striking because of the high-level nature of the source, and his admission that “the CIA officer surprised attendees by volunteering the information, apparently to demonstrate that the agency was doing its best to obtain valuable intelligence.” In addition, the source noted that “the US may also have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia's territorial waters, a contention the US has long denied.”

Zagorin also spoke to Richard Clarke (at the time the National Security Council’s Special Advisor to President Bush regarding counter-terrorism), who explained, “In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high value targets was discussed.” Although Clarke “did not witness a final resolution of the issue,” he added, “Given everything that we know about the administration's approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the US did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible,” and he also pointed out that using the island for interrogations or detentions without British permission “is a violation of UK law, as well as of the bi-lateral agreement governing the island.”

Zagorin’s source did not name the prisoners, but it seems clear that the period he was referring to (“2002 and possibly 2003”) was when three particular “high-value detainees” -- Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh -- are reported to have been held on the island, and it seems entirely plausible, therefore, that after these three were transferred to another secret CIA facility in Poland, the prison was used not only to hold Hambali, but also to hold the two other “high-value detainees” captured with him -- Mohammed bin Lep (aka Lillie) and Mohd Farik bin Amin (aka Zubair). The addition of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, who, it seems, may have been held into 2006, not only confirms that a secret prison existed, but that it was possibly in use for four years straight.

These damaging revelations seal Diego Garcia’s reputation as a quagmire of injustice. A British sovereign territory -- albeit one that was leased to the United States nearly 40 years ago, when the islanders were shamefully discarded by the British government and exiled to face destitution and death by misery in Mauritius -- Diego Garcia has long been a source of shame to opponents of modern colonial activity ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/384112.html).

Until now, however, the only admission that any activities connected with the “War on Terror” had taken place on the island came in February, when, after years of denials on the part of the British government, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, finally conceded that requests for information from his US counterparts had revealed that, in 2002, two rendition flights had refuelled on the island. “In both cases,” Miliband stated with confidence, “a US plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility in Diego Garcia. The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia” ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392068.html).

The British government had been provoked to action by critics within the UK, in particular the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, led by the Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, and the legal action charity Reprieve ( http://www.reprieve.org.uk/), which represents 30 prisoners in Guantánamo, but the story appeared to grind to a halt when Michael Hayden, the CIA’s director, stepped forward to deny that Diego Garcia had ever been used as a “War on Terror” prison.

“That is false,” Gen. Hayden said when asked if a secret prison had existed on Diego Garcia, adding, as the New York Times put it, that “neither of the two detainees carried aboard the rendition flights that refuelled at Diego Garcia ‘was ever part of the CIA’s high-value terrorist interrogation program.’” He also explained that one of the detainees “was ultimately transferred to Guantánamo,” while the other “was returned to his home country,” which was identified by State Department officials as Morocco. “These were rendition operations,” he added, “nothing more.”

Four weeks ago, however, the story resurfaced once more, as David Miliband reported the results of his latest request for information from his US counterparts. This concerned a list of rendition flights, which, in the opinion of Reprieve and the All-Party Parliamentary Group, may also have passed through British territory, but the Foreign Secretary was confident that there was no further evidence to be mined, stating, “The United States Government confirmed that, with the exception of two cases related to Diego Garcia in 2002, there have been no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001” ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/07/403006.html).

Yet again, the assurances of his US colleagues did nothing to assuage the critics. Reprieve noted that the British government “intentionally failed to ask the right questions of the US, and accepted implausible US assurances at face value,” and added, presciently, “This remains a transatlantic cover-up of epic proportions. While the British government seems content to accept whatever nonsense it is fed by its US allies, the sordid truth about Diego Garcia’s central role in the unjust rendition and detention of prisoners in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ cannot be hidden forever.”

Just three days after David Miliband’s last attempt to draw a line under the story, the British Foreign Affairs Select Committee published its latest report on the British Overseas Territories, and was scathing about Diego Garcia, declaring that “it is deplorable that previous US assurances about rendition flights have turned out to be false. The failure of the United States Administration to tell the truth resulted in the UK Government inadvertently misleading our Select Committee and the House of Commons. We intend to examine further the extent of UK supervision of US activities on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships serviced from Diego Garcia.”

Yesterday’s revelations, of course, leave the US administration looking like bald-faced liars and the British government looking like myopic dupes. Whether Michael Hayden was also duped is not known, but his strenuous denial, just five months ago, that a secret prison existed, which was manned by his own employees, will do nothing for the credibility of the US administration, which likes to pretend that it does not torture and has nothing to conceal, but is persistently discovered not only being economical with the truth, but also behaving exactly as though it has guilty secrets to hide.

Whether this scandal will awaken much indignation in the American public remains to be seen, but it is hugely damaging to the British government, which is legally responsible for the activities that take place on its territory, however much it likes to hide behind “assurances” from its leaseholders that they have done nothing wrong.

It scarcely seems possible, but Diego Garcia’s dark history has suddenly grown even darker.

The prisoners held on Diego Garcia

1. Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn). Saudi, b. 1971. Seized in Faisalabad, Pakistan in a joint operation by Pakistani forces and the FBI on 28 March 2002, he is regarded by the administration as a senior al-Qaeda operative and training camp facilitator, although this has been disputed by former FBI interrogator Dan Coleman, who has described him as a minor logistician with a split personality ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/04/26/the-insignificance-and-insan...).

In February 2008, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, admitted that Abu Zubaydah was one of three prisoners who had been subjected to waterboarding (an ancient torture technique that involves controlled drowning) in CIA custody ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/02/06/waterboarding-two-questions-...). Held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland, he is one of 14 “high-value detainees” transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. At his tribunal in 2007, he denied being a member of al-Qaeda, and made a point of mentioning that he had been tortured. He has not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission.

2. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Kuwaiti/Pakistani, b. 1964 or 1965. The supposed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohammed (commonly known as KSM) was seized in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003. Like Abu Zubaydah, he was subjected to waterboarding, and is also presumed to have been held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland. Transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, he confessed to being “responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z” at his tribunal in 2007, but also made a point of mentioning that he had been tortured. He was put forward for trial by Military Commission in February, and will face the death penalty if convicted.

Rumours that KSM was held on Diego Garcia have surfaced sporadically over the years, one example being an article in the Toronto Star on July 2, 2005, in which Lynda Hurst spoke to John Pike, a US defense analyst. Pike, who told Hurst that he believed that KSM had been held on Diego Garcia, explained, “Diego Garcia is an obvious place for a secret facility. They want somewhere that's difficult to escape from, difficult to attack, not visible to prying eyes and where a lot of other activity is going on. Diego Garcia is ideal.”

3. Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Yemeni, b. 1972. A friend of the Hamburg cell that led the 9/11 attacks, bin al-Shibh was seized in a raid in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002. He was reportedly intended as the 20th hijacker, but was unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States, and subsequently worked closely with KSM in planning the attacks. Transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006, he is also presumed to have been held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland, but his presence on Diego Garcia has long been suspected, because analyses of flight records have revealed that a plane flew from Pakistan to Diego Garcia immediately after his capture. He refused to take part in his tribunal in 2007, but was put forward for trial by Military Commission in February, and will face the death penalty if convicted.

4. Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin). Indonesian, b. 1966. Seized in Ayutthaya, Thailand in a joint operation by Thai forces and the CIA on 11 August 2003, he is regarded as the main link between al-Qaeda and its Indonesian counterpart, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). He is alleged to have been one of the planners of the Bali bombings in October 2002, which killed over 200 people, and was transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. At his tribunal in 2007, he said that he resigned from JI in 2000, and was not involved with al-Qaeda or with any bombings or plots. He has not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission.

5 and 6. Lillie (Mohammed Nazir bin Lep) and Zubair (Mohd Farik bin Amin). Malaysians, seized with Hambali, little is known of these two men, beyond claims by the administration that they worked closely with Hambali, although they were both discussed in another TIME article, in October 2003, which examined Hambali’s interrogation logs. They were transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, but have not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission.

7. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri). Syrian/Spanish, b. 1958. Seized in Quetta, Pakistan in October 2005 and handed over to US forces a month later, he is not accused of being involved in direct attacks on US forces, but is wanted in Spain as a witness in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Regarded as one of the most significant proponents of universal jihad, his writings include a 1600-page book, The Global Islamic Resistance Call, which was published on the internet in 2004. A critic of al-Qaeda, he reportedly fell out with Osama bin Laden in 1998, and has stated that the 9/11 attacks were catastrophic for the jihadi cause. Unlike the six prisoners mentioned above, he was not transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006, and it is not known, therefore, whether he is being held in a secret CIA prison or if he has been rendered to a third country.

Andy Worthington is the author of ‘The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison’ (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press), which includes a detailed chapter on rendition and secret prisons ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/).

US tells lies about torture, say MPs

Ellie Keen — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:42:11 +0000

Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an MPs' report to be published today claims. They also call for an immediate investigation into allegations that the UK government has itself 'outsourced' the torture of its own nationals to Pakistan.

In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used 'waterboarding'. The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.

A change in approach would have implications for extradition of prisoners to the US, especially in terror or security cases, as the UK has signed the UN convention which bars sending individuals to nations where they are at risk of being tortured. During waterboarding, a person is tied to a board with their feet raised and cellophane wrapped around the head. Water is then poured on to the face, causing the victim to start to drown.

Today's committee report said there were 'serious implications' of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. 'The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future,' said the committee. 'We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US.'

It also urges the government to press the US authorities for information on whether any American military flights landing in the UK were part of the 'rendition circuit', even if they did not have detainees on board at the time.

The government has repeatedly accepted US assurances that UK territory has not been used for 'rendition', the extra-judicial transfer of suspects between countries. But in February, Miliband told the Commons he had been informed by the US that two rendition planes refuelled on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The MPs also urged the Foreign Office to investigate a Guardian report that six British nationals claimed to have been detained and tortured by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, where they were also interrogated by British intelligence officers. Foreign Minister Lord Malloch-Brown told the committee: 'We absolutely deny the charge that we have in any way outsourced torture to Inter-Services Intelligence [ISI] as a way of extracting information, either for court use or for use in counter-terrorism.'

The report also called on the Foreign Office to seek consular access to all British citizens, including those of dual nationality, detained in Pakistan and asked for an explanation from ministers why one of those detained was apparently denied consular access but was visited by a British official, who may have been an intelligence officer.

Interview: Moazzam Begg

JamieSW — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:26:41 +0000

Operation end your freedom

The government won the House of Commons vote to extend detention without trial to 42 days. What do you think about this attack on civil liberties?

It's important to remember that the government didn't want 42 days - they wanted 90 days and they've settled for less than half of that. What's really bizarre for me is that I was at the protest close to Downing Street when George Bush visited and I actually caught a glimpse of him.

In 1996 the IRA fired a home-made mortar very close to Downing Street. Despite all of that and the whole of the period of the Troubles in the 1970s, detention without trial - other than internment, which I think was terrible - never went beyond three days as far as the law was concerned. That it's now 42 is unbelievable. The government do have the power - regardless of whatever it wants on pre-trial detention - to detain people without charge or trial, and they've done that in the case of several people held in Belmarsh prison who have been detained for seven to eight years plus.

One lawyer has said it's tantamount to torture because of the conditions under which people are kept, often without light or contact with people.

The United Nations convention against torture defines it as being both physical and psychological. It's not just about fingernails being pulled out or being waterboarded or hooded. The psychological effects of being detained without trial are very real. They destroy not only the individual - they destroy their family; they destroy the individual's ability to reintegrate back into society, to get a job. I know many individuals who have never been charged with anything and yet they can't be cleared to do any of the jobs they were trained to do to begin with. It's a bizarre concept because the government is always harping on about how Muslims need to integrate.

How have you been treated by the government and media since your release from Guantanamo?

The government hasn't treated me in any particular way, other than not allowing me to leave the country without express permission - a condition for my release and the release of others at the same time. Other than that the government hasn't really put any stops on me at all and hasn't caused me any problems. I have even spoken inside the House of Commons many times.

The public has been fine. I spend most of my time speaking up and down the country to thousands of people and I get a tremendous response from the average person. I get very little, if any, hostility from people at all. As far as the media is concerned, it varies. Most of the time they call on me to comment on one thing or another, but what I often have to say is that it's sad that we're walking into a situation nearing that of a police state.

Samina Malik, the "lyrical terrorist", has recently won the appeal against her charges. There was a big furore when she was first convicted and very little coverage now that she has won the appeal.

I've met people, from the heads of the BBC to ITN, and spoken to them about these specific issues - the sensationalist style of reporting on issues surrounding Muslims - and they've often said that they have to get there before the Sky News helicopter.

There doesn't seem to be an onus on good quality reporting. It seems to be more about what fits the pattern. So when a former member of the British National Party was arrested for possessing a huge haul of chemicals which could be used for explosives in Pendle last year, they felt it wasn't newsworthy in the same way that it would have been had he been a Muslim. It is sad, but it's the reality. Sensational reporting will take place when there's an arrest but there will be very little if that person is released or found not guilty. The media decides to take upon itself to become the mouthpiece of government policy.

What has been the impact of all this on young Muslims today? Has it got to the stage where people don't know what's legal and what isn't?

I don't think it's just Muslims actually. I think most people are confused as to what they can and can't do. How does somebody avoid the sort of prosecution cases we've seen against the "lyrical terrorist" or people who've downloaded things from the internet? People don't really know what the parameters of the law are any more. I remember discussing this with some former IRA prisoners of war who were released as part of the Good Friday Agreement, and one of the things they said was that at least in their time they were convicted of things that they did, or were planning to do.

Today people are being convicted literally for thoughts; for looking at things, for having something on a computer or having a copy of the Al Qaida manual downloaded from a US government website. It's ludicrous.

What was your aim when you started writing your book in Guantanamo?

I wanted people to learn from it. In a sense the book was about my experience with the US and of the US. I'd never been there before it came to me. But it was for US soldiers and also British soldiers who are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also for the British public, both Muslim and non-Muslim.

For the Muslims it was to give strength and hope, and for the non-Muslims to give a glimpse of a world parallel to them but that perhaps they don't know very well. We're not so different; we all want the same things. We want security; we want happiness. We love; we get angry; we get upset.

That was my intention, to make people understand. Not necessarily to empathise or sympathise - not everyone is going to be my friend just because they think I've been tortured or abused. I want to look beyond that and look at the society we're in. It's not just about tolerance - we can tolerate anything - it's about acceptance. If they can accept difference, then that's the Britain that I thought we were heading towards and wanted.

Are you surprised at the support you have when you give talks?

The support is tremendous. It's so difficult to quantify. It's massive, and it's continuous. Last night I was speaking in Cambridge and a lady came up to me at the end and said, "I've never been at political meetings, I've never been involved in these sorts of things, but just listening to you has made me want to be involved more than I ever was and I am going to make it a point upon myself to learn about things before I ever make judgements."

Some people may have some fixed views, but once they face them they'll find that they've been mistaken. I'm trying to break stereotypes, to explain to people that we are not, and I am not, representative of what they may have assumed.

The US still claims that it does not use inhumane treatment at Guantanamo. How does this sit with your own experiences?

We have a detention site in Cuba where there is no freedom, and outside the walls and the cages you have written on the plaques "Honour bound to defend freedom". They called it "Operation: Enduring Freedom", but freedom isn't something that you endure. Freedom is a right for every creature on this planet, from the point that it's born to the point that it leaves its life.

The things that you have to endure are torture; cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment; being beaten, punched and spat at; humiliation; pain without charge or trial; being falsely imprisoned; being held away from your family. They should call these things "Operation: End Your Freedom". It would be nearer the truth.

Guantanamo has become untenable. Even Colin Powell, one of the architects of the "war on terror", has waded in. He wasn't one of those further on the right, but he was certainly there. He called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay. It has become chic to call for its closure - everybody's doing it.

But Guantanamo is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath is much more sinister and causes much more damage - the secret detention sites where the majority of the people held in the "war on terror" are. After going through some of those secret detention sites, I was looking forward to going to Guantanamo.

What impact have organisations like Liberty and Reprieve made in highlighting the conditions of prisoners and people who've suffered rendition?

I think they have made an impact - there's no doubt about that. Clive Stafford Smith, of Reprieve, was the first person I met in Guantanamo. There is also my own organisation, Cage Prisoners, which consists of prisoners. The organisations are very good but they speak on our behalf and they need to hear what we - the prisoners, the people who went through and continue to go through the process - have to say about what happened.

One thing that has surprised people is your level of sympathy with the Guantanamo prison guards.

The important thing to remember is that they are individuals, and I dealt with them and judge them according to my experiences with them. There are some good, some bad and some in between. People are complex characters.

Many of the soldiers treated me and other detainees in a decent way. It's important not to let any personal experience of torture or witnessing murder cloud my judgement of the others who were appalled that it was taking place, are appalled now, and have apologised for their wrong - even though they didn't take part in the torture. I think it's important to recognise that many of these people have now become outspoken against the "war on terror" and their own government, which requires a level of courage and bravery which should be commended.

But as far as the system they were part of then, yes, it is one that destroys lives and continues to do so. If the argument is that this has happened as a result of the 11 September 2001 attacks, well, it happened seven years ago. The deaths in the US stopped on 11 September. Deaths have not stopped in Afghanistan and Iraq from the day they were invaded. You cannot justify the deaths of untold numbers - millions perhaps. But who knows? who cares? who counts? - because of the tragic deaths on 11 September.

I spoke to one of the Guantanamo guards, and suggested organising a speaking tour. He said he was happy to do it. I'm concerned for his safety more than anything else - particularly on his return to the US having spoken on a platform with a former Guantanamo detainee. After all, his president did designate us as "the worst of the worst, most dangerous men on the planet". But if he's able to do so then I will be too.

You wrote about how you heard about the Stop the War demonstrations in Britain when you were in Guantanamo. What effect did that have on you personally and on British society today?

The Stop the War movement has become a buffer between people who may want to carry out acts of violence on innocent Westerners, and the government itself that does carry out acts of violence against people in the Middle East.

I had a conversation with the only self-described member of Al Qaida I've met, in Guantanamo. He said that people in the West are not innocent because they vote in their leaders and therefore must share part of the blame. I explained that most people vote on domestic issues like the health service and roads. I said that you'll probably find a great number of them don't support the war, but when you strike you don't discriminate. Then he started thinking about it a little bit.

The Stop the War movement is a buffer which helps prevent terrorism in a way that the government would never conceive; when they see people demonstrating against the war it helps to pacify some of the radical elements who would otherwise have said, "They're all the same - go and bomb the whole lot of them."

After your experiences many might have opted for a quiet life, to recover and rebuild your family life and everything else. What inspires you to keep fighting?

On the day I returned from Guantanamo I was welcomed back to the country in a cell especially prepared for me in Paddington Green police station. Shortly after that I met the solicitor Gareth Peirce - the first really friendly face I'd met in all these years. She couldn't be there for me for the next day as she had to go the House of Lords for a historic decision was going to be passed about the detention of terror suspects who had been held for three years.

That's the same amount of time I had been held in Guantanamo, but in this country. I realised what sort of situation I returned to. I couldn't just sit around. People I knew were being held in Guantanamo and secret detention sites, and I was a witness in history to what had taken place. To remain silent would be doing a great disservice to myself and people being held, especially in the wake of the 7 July bombings, the racist Islamophobia that has resulted, and foreign policy. It's been important for me to speak out.

It has given me a great sense of strength and moral support to see that there are a great number of people in this country who haven't given in to the ludicrous attitude of the government and some forms of the media, and have stood bravely challenging both of them. As long as that remains in this country, I'm very pleased to be part of it.

Investigation into Pakistan torture allegation

Ellie Keen — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 22:01:17 +0000

An official complaint alleging that British intelligence officers colluded in the torture of a British medical student who was detained in Pakistan after the July 2005 suicide attacks in London has been lodged with the tribunal that conducts investigations into MI5 and MI6.

Labour backbencher John McDonnell has complained to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) that the student, his constituent, was picked up by a Pakistani intelligence agency and tortured for two months in a building opposite the British deputy high commission in Karachi.

The student told McDonnell on his release that he was questioned by British intelligence officers, who he believes were from the Security Service, MI5, after he had been tortured. McDonnell believes that British officials "outsourced" his mistreatment to the Pakistani agency, and wants the IPT to examine the matter.

Earlier this year four British nationals claimed they were mistreated after being detained by Pakistani intelligence agents, and that they were then questioned by British intelligence officers in between or after torture sessions.

One has since been convicted of terrorism offences after being returned to the UK, a second is awaiting trial, and a third absconded while subjected to a control order.

Yesterday the Guardian reported that three other Britons - including McDonnell's constituent - have also alleged they were mistreated after being detained in Pakistan, and were eventually released without charge.

MI5 asked the Home Office to issue a statement which said: "The Security and Intelligence Agencies do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhumane or degrading treatment. For reasons both ethical and legal, their policy is not to carry out any action which they know would result in torture or inhuman or degrading treatment."

It is unclear how many Britons have been held in Pakistan for questioning during counterterrorism investigations in recent years.

Earlier this year the Foreign Office responded to a parliamentary question from Andrew Tyrie, Tory MP and chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, by saying there were six such cases since 2000. But the Guardian is aware that there have been at least 11, and there are unconfirmed reports that there may have been more.

Some of the detainees received no assistance from British consular officials. The Foreign Office maintains that it had no duty to represent them while they were in Pakistan as they have dual nationality. The men's lawyers said this claim is undermined by the strenuous efforts that British diplomats make on behalf of the 200-plus dual nationals forced into marriage in Pakistan each year.

When Tyrie asked about MI5's ability to visit and question detainees to whom consular officials claim to have been denied access, Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister, replied: "Priority was given to the welfare of the detainees."

A number of the detainees themselves deny this, saying that the British intelligence officers who interviewed them appeared to ignore their complaints that they were being tortured.

Scandal of Diego Garcia Rendition Flights

Ellie Keen — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 22:48:23 +0000

This has been a bad week for the British government, in relation to two of the running sores of its foreign policy, both centred on the Overseas Territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands — known collectively as the Chagos Islands — were shamefully cleared of their existing population in the late 1960s, to make way for a US airbase on Diego Garcia itself. This was a manifestation of the “special relationship” between the UK and the US, which involved the old empire facilitating its successor’s global reach, in exchange for a significant discount on the UK’s Trident nuclear missile programme.

Ever since, the exiled Chagossians have been attempting to regain access to their ancestral lands, but with limited success. Although successive British governments have toned down the racist rhetoric used at the time of the islanders’ forced removal — when official documents referred to them as “Tarzans or Men Fridays” — Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands have remained at the forefront of a colonial mindset that has never quite been extirpated from the Foreign Office’s mentality.

Although the islanders won a stunning victory in the High Court in 2000, which ruled that their expulsion had been illegal, the government fought back in 2003, when Prime Minster Tony Blair invoked an ancient and archaic “royal prerogative” to strike down their claims once more. Although the court of appeal reversed this decision in May 2006, ruling that the islanders’ right to return was “one of the most fundamental liberties known to human beings,” it was clear that, in the struggle between a group of cruelly disposed islanders on the one hand, and the US military-industrial complex on the other, the Chagossians’ fight was far from over.

Last week, just after a party of Chagossians visited London to hear lawyers for the Foreign Office appealing in the House of Lords against the 2006 verdict and claiming, as the Guardian put it, that “[a]llowing the Chagossian islanders to go back to their Indian Ocean homes would be a ‘precarious and costly’ operation,” and that “the United States had said that it would also present an ‘unacceptable risk’ to its base on Diego Garcia,” David Miliband, the foreign secretary, delivered a short statement relating to the other scandal of Diego Garcia: its use for “extraordinary rendition” flights in the “War on Terror.”

After years of denials by the British government that rendition flights had passed through Diego Garcia, David Miliband admitted in February that he had just been informed by his US counterparts that, upon searching their records, they had discovered that two flights had stopped on Diego Garcia in 2002. “In both cases a US plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility in Diego Garcia,” Miliband said. “The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia. US investigations show no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other Overseas Territory or through the UK itself since then.”

At the time, I noted that this appeared to be a sly form of damage limitation, as there was compelling evidence that, far from being used on just two occasions as a transit point, the island had actually housed a secret prison. Three examples will suffice for now, although it’s a safe bet that more revelations are forthcoming.

In October 2003, Time magazine ran an exclusive feature by Simon Elegant focusing on the imprisonment of Hambali, a “high-value detainee,” who spent years in various secret CIA prisons — including Diego Garcia — until he was transferred to Guantánamo in September 2006. Other evidence came from Council of Europe investigator (and Swiss senator) Dick Marty, who reported in June 2006 that, having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, he had “received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the ‘processing’ of high-value detainees.’”

The final piece of evidence came from inside the US administration itself, when Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general, and currently a professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, let slip on two occasions that Diego Garcia had housed a secret prison. In May 2004, he blithely declared, “We’re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq,” and in December 2006 he slipped the leash again, saying, “They’re behind bars … we’ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantánamo.”

David Miliband’s statement last Thursday did nothing to suggest that the British government had any intention of pushing the matter further with its US allies, even though, as the sovereign power in charge of the islands, the ministers are unable to evade responsibility for what has taken place on Diego Garcia.

Rather feebly, the foreign secretary stated that, after sending a list of possible rendition flights that may have passed through British territory to the US authorities, “The United States Government confirmed that, with the exception of two cases related to Diego Garcia in 2002, there have been no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001.”

Reprieve, the legal action charity that has spent several years investigating “extraordinary rendition” and secret prisons, responded by pointing out that the British government “intentionally failed to ask the right questions of the US, and accepted implausible US assurances at face value,” noting that the Foreign Office had declined to ask the US government for the names of the prisoners transported via Diego Garcia in 2002, that it had failed to ask if any other rendition flights had passed through Diego Garcia, even if, as the US asserted, no other planes landed there, and had also failed to ask whether any other flights passed through UK territory en route to engaging in “extraordinary rendition,” which would make the UK complicit in the crime.

The British government faced a fresh barrage of criticism just three days later, when the Foreign Affairs Select Committee published its latest report (PDF) on the Overseas Territories. With reference to Diego Garcia, the Committee declared that “it is deplorable that previous US assurances about rendition flights have turned out to be false. The failure of the United States Administration to tell the truth resulted in the UK Government inadvertently misleading our Select Committee and the House of Commons. We intend to examine further the extent of UK supervision of US activities on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships serviced from Diego Garcia.”

For good measure, the Committee also had harsh words about the government’s treatment of the Chagossians, noting, “We conclude that there is a strong moral case for the UK permitting and supporting a return … for the Chagossians. The FCO (Foreign Office) has argued that such a return would be unsustainable, but we find these arguments less than convincing.”

Under pressure on two fronts over Diego Garcia, it remains to be seen whether the government can once more worm its way out of trouble. Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, is keen not to let this happen. Speaking after the report was published, he chastised the foreign secretary for dismissing his concerns about “extraordinary rendition” when he first raised the issue last October. “The Foreign Secretary persistently gave me the brush-off. He said we could rely on US assurances,” Tyrie said, adding, “My allegations were correct. The Foreign Secretary’s brush-off was not just misplaced, it was a disgrace.”

Reprieve was even more blunt, stating, “This remains a transatlantic cover-up of epic proportions. While the British government seems content to accept whatever nonsense it is fed by its US allies, the sordid truth about Diego Garcia’s central role in the unjust rendition and detention of prisoners in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ cannot be hidden forever.”

Andy is the author of The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press).

Waking up to British abuses in Iraq

Ellie Keen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday's landmark settlement between the MoD and the family of Baha Mousa and the nine other survivors of torture and abuse at the hands of British troops indicates that the British government may be starting to wake up to the awful truth of abuse by British personnel in Iraq.

The compensation of £2.83m, to be shared between the families, will go some way towards repairing the damage caused by the horrific ordeal Mousa, a hotel receptionist, and the nine other survivors, most of them also hotel employees, were subjected to in Basra in September 2003.

Mousa was found dead in a disused latrine, bleeding and swollen, the victim of a beating that inflicted 93 separate injuries. The others received lasting injuries, heavily traumatised by those 48 hours spent hooded and cuffed, their bodies contorted into officially sanctioned "stress positions" and beaten seemingly at will.

The apology the families received during the compensation mediation with the MoD was given on behalf of the British army, for the actions of British soldiers. It provides some comfort to the relatives, disillusioned as they are with the court martial in 2006/2007, at which they felt their voices stifled, and which failed in even its extremely limited aim of prosecuting only a handful of the soldiers involved in the abuse.

Only one soldier was convicted of only one charge, the charge he had admitted before the proceedings even began. Chain-of-command issues remained largely unaddressed.

For the orphaned children of Mousa, and the other nine families affected by what happened, yesterday's result is another step towards reparation. This is a process that began long before the 2007 landmark House of Lords judgment in Al-Skeini, which confirmed that our rights as British citizens enshrined in the Human Rights Act also apply to individuals held by British troops in British detention centres in Iraq.

But we cannot allow these families, or indeed ourselves as British citizens, to be short-changed. The UN general assembly has confirmed, in its Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation, that compensation is one element of the right to reparation. It also involves rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.

These families have a right to have their voices heard, to learn the truth of what happened during those 48 hours, and to know how the army came to authorise the use of "advanced techniques" such as hooding, "stress positions" and deprivation of food and water, employed to such devastating effect in their cases.

Those same techniques, banned by the British government in 1972, reared their heads again after September 11 2001 - first at Guantánamo, then in Iraq. The physiological and psychological abuse that lies behind the use of these techniques needs to be examined alongside the physical abuse that is so evident in the Mousa case.

The issues are broad ones, and we all have an interest in learning the answers and making sure accountability is achieved and institutional lessons learned - lessons that are all the more pressing as stories continue to emanate from Iraq of detainee abuse and unlawful detentions.

The British government is obliged, both morally and legally (under the Human Rights Act and the UN convention against torture) to investigate these abuses fully, an investigation that must be allowed to take place at an unfettered and broadly commissioned public inquiry.

After the government's announcement in May of the public inquiry into the case of Baha Mousa and the nine survivors, we keenly await the further announcement of the inquiry chairman so that these lessons can at last be learned.

How Britain wages war

JamieSW — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:15:47 +0000

Five photographs together break a silence. The first is of a former Gurkha regimental sergeant major, Tul Bahadur Pun, aged 87. He sits in a wheelchair outside 10 Downing Street. He holds a board full of medals, including the Victoria Cross, the highest award for bravery, which he won serving in the British army.

He has been refused entry to Britain and treatment for a serious heart ailment by the National Health Service: outrages rescinded only after a public campaign. On 25 June, he came to Down ing Street to hand his Victoria Cross back to the Prime Minister, but Gordon Brown refused to see him.

The second photograph is of a 12-year-old boy, one of three children. They are Kuchis, nomads of Afghanistan. They have been hit by Nato bombs, American or British, and nurses are trying to peel away their roasted skin with tweezers. On the night of 10 June, Nato planes struck again, killing at least 30 civilians in a single village: children, women, schoolteachers, students. On 4 July, another 22 civilians died like this. All, including the roasted children, are described as "militants" or "suspected Taliban". The Defence Secretary, Des Browne, says the invasion of Afghan istan is "the noble cause of the 21st century".

The third photograph is of a computer-generated aircraft carrier not yet built, one of two of the biggest ships ever ordered for the Royal Navy. The £4bn contract is shared by BAE Systems, whose sale of 72 fighter jets to the corrupt tyranny in Saudi Arabia has made Britain the biggest arms merchant on earth, selling mostly to oppressive regimes in poor countries. At a time of economic crisis, Browne describes the carriers as "an affordable expenditure".

The fourth photograph is of a young British soldier, Gavin Williams, who was "beasted" to death by three non-commissioned officers. This "informal summary punishment", which sent his body temperature to more than 41 degrees, was intended to "humiliate, push to the limit and hurt". The torture was described in court as a fact of army life.

The final photograph is of an Iraqi man, Baha Mousa, who was tortured to death by British soldiers. Taken during his post-mortem, it shows some of the 93 horrific injuries he suffered at the hands of men of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment who beat and abused him for 36 hours, including double-hooding him with hessian sacks in stifling heat. He was a hotel receptionist. Although his murder took place almost five years ago, it was only in May this year that the Ministry of Defence responded to the courts and agreed to an independent inquiry. A judge has described this as a "wall of silence".

A court martial convicted just one soldier of Mousa's "inhumane treatment", and he has since been quietly released. Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers, representing the families of Iraqis who have died in British custody, says the evidence is clear - abuse and torture by the British army is systemic.

Shiner and his colleagues have witness statements and corroborations of prima facie crimes of an especially atrocious kind usually associated with the Americans. "The more cases I am dealing with, the worse it gets," he says. These include an "incident" near the town of Majar al-Kabir in 2004, when British soldiers executed as many as 20 Iraqi prisoners after mutilating them. The latest is that of a 14-year-old boy who was forced to simulate anal and oral sex over a prolonged period.

"At the heart of the US and UK project," says Shiner, "is a desire to avoid accountability for what they want to do. Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary renditions are part of the same struggle to avoid accountability through jurisdiction." British soldiers, he says, use the same torture techniques as the Americans and deny that the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act and the UN Convention on Torture apply to them. And British torture is "commonplace": so much so, that "the routine nature of this ill-treatment helps to explain why, despite the abuse of the soldiers and cries of the detainees being clearly audible, nobody, particularly in authority, took any notice".

Unbelievably, says Shiner, the Ministry of Defence under Tony Blair decided that the 1972 Heath government's ban on certain torture techniques applied only in the UK and Northern Ireland. Consequently, "many Iraqis were killed and tortured in UK detention facilities". Shiner is working on 46 horrific cases.

A wall of silence has always surrounded the British military, its arcane rituals, rites and practices and, above all, its contempt for the law and natural justice in its various imperial pursuits. For 80 years, the Ministry of Defence and compliant ministers refused to countenance posthumous pardons for terrified boys shot at dawn during the slaughter of the First World War. British soldiers used as guinea pigs during the testing of nuclear weapons in the Indian Ocean were abandoned, as were many others who suffered the toxic effects of the 1991 Gulf War. The treatment of Gurkha Tul Bahadur Pun is typical. Having been sent back to Nepal, many of these "soldiers of the Queen" have no pension, are deeply impoverished and are refused residence or medical help in the country for which they fought and for which 43,000 of them have died or been injured. The Gurkhas have won no fewer than 26 Victoria Crosses, yet Browne's "affordable expenditure" excludes them.

An even more imposing wall of silence ensures that the British public remains largely unaware of the industrial killing of civilians in Britain's modern colonial wars. In his landmark work Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses, the historian Mark Curtis uses three main categories: direct responsibility, indirect responsibility and active inaction.

"The overall figure [since 1945] is between 8.6 and 13.5 million," Curtis writes. "Of these, Britain bears direct responsibility for between four million and six million deaths. This figure is, if anything, likely to be an underestimate. Not all British interventions have been included, because of lack of data." Since his study was published, the Iraq death toll has reached, by reliable measure, a million men, women and children.

The spiralling rise of militarism within Britain is rarely acknowledged, even by those alerting the public to legislation attacking basic civil liberties, such as the recently drafted Data Com muni cations Bill, which will give the government powers to keep records of all electronic communication. Like the plans for identity cards, this is in keeping what the Americans call "the national security state", which seeks the control of domestic dissent while pursuing military aggression abroad. The £4bn aircraft carriers are to have a "global role". For global read colonial. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office follow Washington's line almost to the letter, as in Browne's preposterous description of Afghanistan as a noble cause. In reality, the US-inspired Nato invasion has had two effects: the killing and dispossession of large numbers of Afghans, and the return of the opium trade, which the Taliban had banned. According to Hamid Karzai, the west's puppet leader, Britain's role in Helmand Province has led directly to the return of the Taliban.

The militarising of how the British state perceives and treats other societies is vividly demonstrated in Africa, where ten out of 14 of the most impoverished and conflict-ridden countries are seduced into buying British arms and military equipment with "soft loans". Like the British royal family, the British Prime Minister simply follows the money. Having ritually condemned a despot in Zimbabwe for "human rights abuses" - in truth, for no longer serving as the west's business agent - and having obeyed the latest US dictum on Iran and Iraq, Brown set off recently for Saudi Arabia, exporter of Wahhabi fundamentalism and wheeler of fabulous arms deals.

To complement this, the Brown government is spending £11bn of taxpayers' money on a huge, pri vatised military academy in Wales, which will train foreign soldiers and mercenaries recruited to the bogus "war on terror". With arms companies such as Raytheon profiting, this will become Britain's "School of the Americas", a centre for counter-insurgency (terrorist) training and the design of future colonial adventures.

It has had almost no publicity.

Of course, the image of militarist Britain clashes with a benign national regard formed, wrote Tolstoy, "from infancy, by every possible means - class books, church services, sermons, speeches, books, papers, songs, poetry, monuments [leading to] people stupefied in the one direction". Much has changed since he wrote that. Or has it? The shabby, destructive colonial war in Afghanistan is now reported almost entirely through the British army, with squaddies always doing their Kipling best, and with the Afghan resistance routinely dismissed as "outsiders" and "invaders". Pictures of nomadic boys with Nato-roasted skin almost never appear in the press or on television, nor the after-effects of British thermobaric weapons, or "vacuum bombs", designed to suck the air out of human lungs. Instead, whole pages mourn a British military intelligence agent in Afghanis tan, because she happens to have been a 26-year-old woman, the first to die in active service since the 2001 invasion.

Baha Mousa, tortured to death by British soldiers, was also 26 years old. But he was different. His father, Daoud, says that the way the Ministry of Defence has behaved over his son's death convinces him that the British government regards the lives of others as "cheap". And he is right.

From Triumph to Torture

Ellie Keen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:43:17 +0000

Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or "official drivel", as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of £5,000 with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. His citation reads: "Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless." The eldest of eight, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, "he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel".

Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza's borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel's infamous security organisation. Mohammed was told to turn off his mobile and remove the battery. He asked if he could call his embassy escort and was told forcefully he could not. A man stood over his luggage, picking through his documents. "Where's the money?" he demanded. Mohammed produced some US dollars. "Where is the English pound you have?"

"I realised," said Mohammed, "he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn prize. I told him I didn't have it with me. 'You are lying', he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: 'Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.' He said, 'This is nothing compared with what you will see now.' He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, 'Why are you bringing perfumes?' I replied, 'They are gifts for the people I love'. He said, 'Oh, do you have love in your culture?'

"As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."

An ambulance was called and told to take Mohammed to a hospital, but only after he had signed a statement indemnifying the Israelis from his suffering in their custody. The Palestinian medic refused, courageously, and said he would contact the Dutch embassy escort. Alarmed, the Israelis let the ambulance go. The Israeli response has been the familiar line that Mohammed was "suspected" of smuggling and "lost his balance" during a "fair" interrogation, Reuters reported yesterday.

Israeli human rights groups have documented the routine torture of Palestinians by Shin Bet agents with "beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation". Amnesty has long reported the widespread use of torture by Israel, whose victims emerge as mere shadows of their former selves. Some never return. Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, who receive barely a fraction of the kind of coverage given to the BBC's Alan Johnston.

The Dutch government says it is shocked by Mohammed Omer's treatment. The former ambassador Jan Wijenberg said: "This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life ... I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future."

While Mohammed was receiving his prize in London, the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Proser, was publicly complaining that many Britons no longer appreciated the uniqueness of Israel's democracy. Perhaps they do now.

johnpilger.com

Till Death or Deportation

Ellie Keen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In a London hospital Mahmoud Abu Rideh lies in a critical condition from a hunger strike against the Control Order conditions which he has lived under for more than three years. Following an attempt on his life more than a month ago, he has been refusing food, and much of the time even ice cubes or water for 31 days. Wheelchair-bound, he is now coughing and excreting blood. Disillusioned with the injustice he has encountered in Britain, all Mr Abu Rideh requests is allowance to leave the UK and be deported to Syria, or for his Control Order to be lifted.

Background

A veteran of Israeli gaols, Mahmoud Abu Rideh is a stateless Palestinian. He came to the United Kingdom as a refugee from Jordan and was granted indefinite leave to remain in November 1998. His family, including his six children, are British citizens.

The illusory promises of security expected from the self-proclaimed champion of human rights were shattered when police forced their way into Mr Abu Rideh’s home in December 2001. Offering nothing but allegations that he was a threat to national security, police immediately transported him to HMP Belmarsh. Due to the impact of his detention on his mental health, he was later transferred to HMP Broadmoor. Mr Abu Rideh was finally released in March 2005, following the House of Lords ruling against his detention, but his return to home was the beginning of a new kind of imprisonment- control orders, under which he was subjected to telephone reporting three times every 24 hours, day and night, daily reporting in person to a police station, electronic tagging [at the outset], a 12-hour daily curfew, meetings outside the house and visits to anyone in the house prohibited except of persons cleared by the Home Office. He has witnessed his children endure the resulting isolation, scrutiny and pressure.

Lord Carlile, the government's Independent Reviewer of anti-terrorist legislation has stated that Control Orders, which are reviewed on an annual basis, should not be used for longer than two years. Despite this, Mr Abu Rideh has been held under a Control Order for three years, and yet before the three years of Control Order existence he had already been interned for 3 and a half years indefinitely without trial. An emergency appeal against the Home Office's recent refusal to modify his conditions was held in the High Court a week ago but the result is still awaited.

Mr Abu Rideh has never been questioned by the authorities, charged with any offence, nor have his solicitors been shown any evidence of why he is considered a security risk.

Psychiatrists' reports over now seven years have shown Mr Abu Rideh to have become deeply paranoid, isolated and depressed. The Control Order regimes have driven several men beyond despair, to choose a return to a country where they are likely to be tortured, or to choose, like Mr Abu Rideh, to die. Appeals from his family, friends, religious authorities can no longer reach him. If his Control Order can be lifted as suddenly, and without explanation, as the one of Detainee ‘E’ was last week, his life would be saved.

TAKE ACTION FOR MAHMOUD ABU RIDEH NOW!

1. Write to the Home Office.
2. Write to Minister of Justice Jack Straw who promised to assist Mr Abu Rideh.
3. Sign our petition for Mr Abu Rideh at http://www.petitiononline.com/aburideh/petition.html
4. Send a message of support to Mahmoud and his family by emailing us at contact@cageprisoners.com or writing to: Cageprisoners, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3XX

See the Cage Prisoners site for sample letters

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.

Bring Binyam Back to Britain

Ellie Keen — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:10:47 +0000

Where: Trafalgar Square, in front of the National Gallery
When: 3 pm, Sunday 15 June
Who: Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, former Guantánamo prisoners, Barney the Dinosaur and other special guests

On Sunday 15 June, US President George W. Bush is visiting London as part of his valedictory world tour, and will be having tea with the Queen and dinner with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Reprieve, the legal action charity that represents over 30 Guantánamo prisoners, is using this opportunity to highlight the suffering of Binyam Mohamed, the London resident who remains in Guantánamo Bay. The US military has announced that it wants to put him through its discredited Military Commission process, and a final decision will be made in the next two weeks. The commission system is so corrupt that Col. Morris Davis recently quit as the chief military prosecutor, because of the system’s many flaws, one being that evidence derived from torture was going to be used against the prisoners.

Nothing could be more true of Binyam, who was taken to Morocco where his genitals were razor-bladed for 18 months. After that he was rendered to more abuse in the CIA-run “Dark Prison” in Kabul, where he was tortured psychologically, hung up and subjected to incredibly loud music for 20 days at a time. He has been imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay since September 2004.

The timing of President Bush’s visit to London is fortuitous but only if his supporters can make sure that he gets the message. The “Bring Back Binyam” initiative starts at 3 pm outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and Reprieve is working towards a finale outside the Southbank Centre, where Massive Attack are hosting a series of Reprieve events as part of Meltdown 2008, at 4.30pm.

Throughout this initiative, Reprieve will dramatize the torture-by-music that Binyam and other prisoners have suffered. Barney the Purple Dinosaur will be making a personal appearance, as the theme tune to this popular children’s show has been one of the US torturers’ favourite pieces of torture music. Reprieve is also hoping to involve other creative “cartoon characters”: Katy the Kangaroo Court, and even Roger the Razor Blade. Cosmetics firm Lush, who have been supporting the work of Reprieve, have kindly agreed to bring along their massive “Fair Trial My Arse” orange underpants, to highlight the nature of the unjust process that Binyam is facing. Brighton’s Save Omar campaigners — having effortlessly shifted their focus to Binyam’s plight — will be turning up with their typical creative energy, and Reprieve will also be supported by Cageprisoners and the London Guantanamo Campaign.

Reprieve notes that supporters of Binyam don’t have to sing the Barney theme song (although they’re welcome to), and also suggests that supporters can dress up in any outfit that they think dramatises Binyam’s torture over the past six years.

For further information, please contact Reprieve on 020 7353 4640.