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Binyam Mohamed, Guantanamo bay and Britain's betrayal

Alex Doherty — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:53:32 +0000

On September 10, the Independent featured an article about Guantánamo prisoner and British resident Binyam Mohamed, which included exclusive extracts from a statement that Binyam made on August 11 during a visit by Cori Crider, staff attorney for Reprieve, the legal action charity whose lawyers represent 31 prisoners in Guantánamo.

An Ethiopian-born Londoner, Binyam spent his 30th birthday in isolation in Guantánamo just weeks before Ms. Crider’s visit. He has been imprisoned since April 2002, when he was seized in Pakistan during a particularly intense and paranoid phase of the “War on Terror.” Rendered to Morocco by the CIA in July 2002, he was tortured on behalf of the United States for 18 months, and was then flown to Afghanistan, where he spent another nine months in the “Dark Prison,” a CIA torture prison near Kabul, and the US military prison at Bagram airbase. He arrived in Guantánamo in June 2004.

In April this year, Binyam’s lawyers submitted a request for documents in the possession of the British government relating to knowledge of his rendition and torture, based, in particular, on a visit to Binyam that was made by British agents in May 2002, when he was in a Pakistani jail but evidently under US supervision, and on questions that were put to him by his Pakistani torturers about his life in London, which could only have come from the British intelligence services.

When the government’s lawyers refused to release this information, claiming that they had no responsibility to do so, Binyam’s lawyers sued the government, arguing that the need for this information was pressing because Binyam was about to be put forward for trial at Guantánamo in the Military Commissions (described, in 2003, as a “kangaroo court” by Lord Steyn, a British law lord), and the information was needed to mount an effective defence to allegations that were produced under torture.

This, in turn, led to a judicial review in the High Court at the end of July, and a spectacular ruling, delivered on August 22 by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones, in which the judges ruled that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary was “under a duty” to disclose the requested information “in confidence” to Binyam’s legal advisers. The judges stated that this was “not only necessary but essential for his defence” for three particular reasons: firstly, because the Foreign Secretary had not made the documents available to Binyam’s lawyers; secondly, because the US authorities had also refused to do so; and thirdly, because the Foreign Secretary had accepted that Binyam had “established an arguable case” that, until his transfer to Guantánamo, “he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States,” and was also “subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.”

Noting that there were possible implications for national security, however, the judges granted the government a week to submit a Public Interest Immunity (PII) Certificate. This was turned down on September 5, but the government was granted more time to submit another PII Certificate, in light of some begrudging concessions made by the US State Department regarding the provision of evidence should his case come to trial.

The judge’s ruling on this second PII Certificate is expected in the next week or so, but reproduced below is Binyam’s full statement in response to the judicial review, which concluded the week before Ms. Crider’s visit, as well as other comments and observations about the current situation in Guantánamo.

Described by Ms. Crider as “very frail and depressed,” Binyam told her, “I’m sick, and I don’t know it. We got so used to being sick that we scarcely notice. Like a person limping who stops noticing, my health problems are so chronic that I barely notice them anymore.” Speaking of conditions in general, he made the following observation: “I thought the US would at least say, ‘improve the conditions’, so they could take the pressure off from those pushing for the prisoners’ release.”

He proceeded to describe his daily life at Guantánamo, explaining that his “recreation time” (the only time he is allowed outside), which is often portrayed in media reports as taking place in a yard, actually takes place in a “small cage.” He said that he “tries to run in this cage”, but asked how he is supposed to “run in circles in a cage that is a three metre by four metre cell”? He added, “I turn so much that the nerves on the outside of my foot have frayed.”

He also spoke about the refusal of the authorities to provide adequate reading material. “I have asked for educational books from the library”, he said, “but there is nothing to read in the library.“ Explaining that he had already read the old National Geographic and sports magazines that were available, he added that he cannot read the books in Arabic, and desperately wants to read educational books in English — “maths, English, geography.”

Referring to the Australian prisoner David Hicks (released in May 2007), who apparently had a large library of books to read, Binyam asked, “Where did the 200 books that Hicks had go? If he could get it, why don’t I have it? Australia is less powerful than the UK, so why do I not have the same access to reading materials as David Hicks had?”

The following is Binyam’s statement in response to the judicial review:

Binyam Mohamed’s statement from Guantánamo, August 11, 2008

I have learned that the UK has refused to give my lawyers information to help me prove my innocence — and that the UK has taken the position in court that I will get all the information I could possibly need through the rigged military courts, or through the “habeas” process.

How can they possibly be taking this position? Lord Steyn himself called these commissions “kangaroo courts” years ago, and he was exactly right. And I understood the official UK position to be that the commissions were unfair, and illegal, and that Britons should never be forced to go through them.

So how, then, can they say that the very people who tortured me, rendered me, and now want to try me in a kangaroo court will just hand over the evidence of their own criminal acts? For the UK to say this is naïve, at best, and a betrayal, at worst.

And as for habeas –- I have been here for over six years, and I have yet to see a single scrap of proof come out of habeas. Why should I, or the UK, think it will be different now?

The UK has now spoken to me. The UK knows, I believe, what I go through every day. The UK should understand that no person could withstand this kind of treatment for much longer. To leave me in these conditions and, to add insult to injury, to defend the rigged process I am facing here, is a disgrace. I hope the UK government will reconsider its position before it is too late.

Signed this 11th day of August 2008.

Binyam Mohamed

Cori Crider (witness)

In addition, Binyam also talked about the testimony in his judicial review of “Agent B,” one of two British agents who had visited him in May 2002, when he was being held in Pakistan. In their ruling, the judges declared that Binyam’s imprisonment was illegal according to Pakistani law, and cross-examined “Agent B” in several days of closed sessions. What happened in these sessions was not revealed, of course, but it was inferred that the agent was being asked in great detail about his account of Binyam’s interrogation, and the fact that he brought his own lawyer with him indicated that what was under discussion may have involved the possibility of criminal charges.

Binyam particularly objected to a claim by “Agent B” that he had no recollection of the following story, as related to Clive Stafford Smith during a previous visit to Guantánamo:

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

During his meeting with Cori Crider on August 11, Binyam said, “I had two interrogators in Pakistan. ’B’ was interrogating, but it was the other unknown agent who made the threat about the tea. This person — we’ll call him ‘Agent X’ — walked in with ‘B’ at the start of the session. That was when he made the threat, and ‘B’ was there to hear it. A Pakistani had brought the tea. I told them, ‘one lump of sugar,’ and then ‘Agent X’ made the threat. In fact, ‘Agent B’ sat down as ‘X’ made the comment, and said, ‘just ignore him.’”

“Why would he lie?” Binyam continued. “Why not do what the Americans do and just change the meaning? If the Americans can change the meaning of torture, and you’re going to defend them, you might as well copy their tricks. They could at least argue that saying ‘sugar in tea’ wasn’t a threat, but they can’t claim that they didn’t say it at all.”

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).

High Court Rules on Binyam Mohamed

Tim Holmes — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:37:03 +0000

In the lawless world of Guantánamo –- and the United States’ even murkier network of secret prisons run by or on behalf of the CIA –- it has taken six years and four months for British resident Binyam Mohamed to secure anything resembling justice.

Seized in Pakistan in April 2002, Binyam was rendered to Morocco three months later, where he was tortured on behalf of the US for 18 months, in sessions that regularly included having his genitals cut with a razor, and was then held for nine months in Afghanistan, first at the “Dark Prison,” a secret prison run by the CIA, where he was also tortured, and then at Bagram airbase. He has been held at Guantánamo since September 2004.

When justice finally came for Binyam, it was not at Guantánamo, but in London’s High Court, where, last Thursday, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones delivered a stinging rebuke to both the British and the American governments: to the British for the complicity of the UK intelligence services in the US administration’s post-9/11 policies of “extraordinary rendition” and torture, and to the Americans for the lawless conduct of the trials by Military Commission that were established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to deal with “terror suspects” like Binyam (even though the judges professed in their ruling that they “did not consider it necessary to form any view about the overall fairness of the Military Commissions procedure”).

The road to the High Court opened up in May this year, when Binyam’s lawyers at the legal action charity Reprieve, who represent over 30 Guantánamo prisoners, teamed up with solicitors at Leigh Day & Co. to sue the British government, seeking the release of information relating to British knowledge of Binyam’s rendition and torture, in preparation for his impending trial at Guantánamo.

In the event, this was prescient, as charges were leveled against Binyam on May 28, in connection with the spectral “dirty bomb” plot that was dropped years ago against US citizen Jose Padilla. It was, therefore, imperative that potentially exculpatory evidence –- which the British possessed, and which they had also handed over to the Americans –- was made available to his lawyers so that they could begin preparing a defence, and, preferably, discover evidence of torture, which would back up Binyam’s claims that the charges against him were based solely on confessions obtained through torture, and would, therefore, make the US administration call off his forthcoming trial.

It was an indication of how far removed the Military Commissions are from legal norms that, although Binyam’s lawyers contended that he had been tortured, and had discovered the records of “extraordinary rendition” flights that matched his accounts, the US administration had not only provided no information to enable them to defend him, but had also categorically refused to account for his whereabouts before his arrival at Bagram.

Whatever information they and the British possessed would, it was stated, be made available to Binyam’s military defense lawyer, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, at the discovery stage, should his trial go ahead, but as the trial of Salim Hamdan demonstrated in late July, some evidence was withheld from the defence until the last possible moment, and other evidence –- relating, for example, to coercive interrogations of Hamdan conducted by the CIA in Afghanistan –- was ruled off-limits by the military judge presiding over the trial, and was, essentially, regarded as though it didn’t exist at all.

In Binyam’s case, his lawyers sued the British government after an earlier attempt to secure potentially exculpatory evidence from the British government was turned down, when the Treasury Solicitors, acting on behalf of the government, attempted to brush aside British complicity in Binyam’s rendition, torture and false confessions by claiming that “the UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted,” and adding 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.

Last Thursday, following a judicial review in the High Court that was triggered when Binyam’s lawyers sued the government, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones demolished the government’s defence of its actions in a 75-page judgment (also available as a five-page summary).

The judges made clear that, after Binyam was captured and US agents came to regard him as “a serious potential threat to the security of the United Kingdom,” the British intelligence services had “every reason to seek to obtain as much intelligence from him as was possible in accordance with the rule of law and to cooperate as fully as possible with the United States authorities to that end.” They concluded, however, that the actions of the intelligence services from May 2002, when a British agent visited Binyam in US-supervised Pakistani custody, until February 2003, when the British last received information from the US regarding his interrogations, had placed the British government in a position where it “was involved, however innocently, in the alleged wrongdoing,” which it had helped facilitate.

Regarding Binyam’s time in Pakistan, where the British agent who visited him on May 17, 2002 made it clear that the British government “would not help [him] unless he cooperated fully with the US authorities,” the judges ruled that Binyam’s detention was “unlawful” under Pakistani law, because he “was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer.” Furthermore, the judges noted that the British intelligence services “provided further information to the United States and further questions to be asked of BM [Binyam]” for nine months after this visit, even though he “was still incommunicado and they must also have appreciated that he was not in a United States facility and that the facility in which he was being detained was that of a foreign government (other than Afghanistan).”

The judges noted that all of the above was particularly significant because the information obtained from Binyam was “sought to be used as a confession in a trial where the charges … are very serious and may carry the death penalty,” and that it is “a long-standing principle of the common law that confessions obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used as evidence in any trial.” They therefore ruled that “by seeking to interview BM in the circumstances found and supplying information and questions for his interviews, the relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the United States authorities went far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.”

The gravity of this was brought home during the judicial review, when the agent who had interviewed Binyam in Pakistan was cross-examined for several days in closed sessions that were clearly so perilous for the agent, in terms of potential criminal liability for war crimes under the International Criminal Court Act of 2001, that he brought his own legal adviser with him, and, it was revealed in the judgment, initially refused to answer the judges’ questions, fearing self-incrimination. This, of course, is in marked contrast to the position held by the US administration, which has refused to sign up to the International Criminal Court, and which, in addition, maintains that it “does not torture” and continues to do all in its power to deny that it has been responsible for gross human rights abuses.

In the second part of their ruling, the judges took as their starting point an admission by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, which took place “after the commencement of this application but before the hearing,” that he had “identified documents which he considers could be considered exculpatory or might otherwise be relevant in the context of the proceedings before the Military Commission.” After stating that David Miliband had informed Binyam’s lawyers and had “provided these documents to the United States Government,” the judges added, “It is a matter of regret that the documents have not been made available in the proceedings under the Military Commissions Act in confidence to BM’s lawyers, who have security clearance from the United States authorities to at least secret level.”

This was not the judges’ only thinly-veiled criticism of the behaviour of the US authorities, but it was for three specific reasons that they proceeded to rule that the Foreign Secretary was “under a duty” to disclose “in confidence” to Binyam’s legal advisers the requested information, which was “not only necessary but essential for his defence”: firstly, because the Foreign Secretary had not made the documents available to Binyam’s lawyers; secondly, because the US authorities had also refused to do so; and thirdly, because the Foreign Secretary had accepted that Binyam had “established an arguable case” that, until his transfer to Guantánamo, “he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States,” and was also “subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.”

Having demolished the cases put forward by both the British and American governments, the judges nevertheless held out a lifeline for the Foreign Secretary, pointing out that they would “make no order for the provision of the information” until he “had an opportunity to consider the interests of national security in the light of these judgments,” and set a date for a second hearing on Wednesday August 27.

On the day, what was initially regarded as a straightforward hearing for the Foreign Secretary to announce his response to the judges’ ruling turned into another long session as the government responded to the security concerns mentioned by the judges by filing a Public Interest Immunity (PII) Certificate seeking to suppress disclosure of the documents on the grounds of national security, and the US State Department attempted to strike a deal through correspondence with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

John Bellinger, the US State Department’s Legal Adviser, claimed that public disclosure of the documents was “likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence information-sharing arrangements between our two governments.” His only concession to the judges’ ruling was to note that the Office of the Chief Prosecutor in the Office of Military Commissions had agreed to provide the British intelligence documents (44 in total) to the Commissions’ Convening Authority, Susan Crawford, if she requested them, “subject only to the condition that the names of American and British government officials and the locations of intelligence facilities will be redacted from the documents prior to their being provided.” He added that, if Binyam’s trial were to go ahead, the redacted documents would be made available to his military lawyer at the “normal discovery phase” of the process.

In a separate email to the FCO, Stephen Mathias, one of John Bellinger’s deputies, offered a further concession “by way of update,” in which he stated that the Legal Adviser had now decided to present the documents to Susan Crawford, without waiting for her to ask for them. Describing this as “a significant development,” Stephen Mathias proceeded to claim, with a degree of force that appeared rather intimidating, “Ordering the disclosure of US intelligence information now would have only the marginal effects of serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence sharing relationship, and thus the national security of the United Kingdom, and of aggressive and unprecedented intervention in the apparently functioning adjudicatory processes of a longtime ally of the United Kingdom, in contravention of well established principles of international comity.”

As Ben Jaffey (for Binyam) argued in court, neither the State Department’s “carefully calibrated concessions” nor the British government’s claim of Public Interest Immunity were tenable. He pointed out, as the judges did in their ruling, that the case did not involve public disclosure of the documents, but only the confidential disclosure to Binyam’s lawyers, Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley and Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s Director, who both have US security clearance. He added that the supposed concessions demonstrated merely that the US government was determined to find any method possible to prevent disclosure, and added that nothing offered by the State Department addressed the “central question” relating to Binyam’s rendition and torture. “Where,” he asked, “was Mr. Mohamed between 2002 and 2004?”

Ben Jaffey was equally dismissive of the British government’s PII claims, noting, in particular, that David Miliband had effectively conceded that the British government was going to hand over the intelligence documents to Binyam’s lawyers until the State Department intervened, and calmly dismissing the government’s national security claims. His composure was in marked contrast to that of the government’s representative, Tim Eicke, who struggled to maintain a coherent argument, despite the best efforts of the many representatives of the government and the intelligence services at the back of the court, who kept slipping him notes suggesting new twists on the spurious national security case.

On Friday, the judges delivered their second judgment on Binyam’s case. Noting that the correspondence from the US State Department effected a “significant change” in the US position, they nevertheless refused to accept the British government’s position regarding its Public Interest Immunity Certificate. They were, it seemed, convinced in particular by submissions from the Special Advocates, Thomas de la Mare and Martin Goudie, who represented Binyam in the various sessions of the court that were closed to the public when confidential material was being discussed. In the opinion of the Special Advocates, the PII Certificate, and other proposals presented in a closed session on Wednesday, “failed to address, in the light of allegations made by BM, the abhorrence and condemnation accorded to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Adding that this issue was something whose significance had been “accepted on behalf of the Foreign Secretary,” the judges proceeded to note that the Foreign Secretary “nevertheless contended that the issues arising out of BM’s allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment were implicitly dealt with in his Certificate,” and in the documentation used in the closed session. “Having carefully considered this matter,” the judges wrote, “we do not consider that the issue arising out of the allegations made by BM is implicitly dealt with in these documents.”

Refusing to push the matter further, the judges commended the Foreign Secretary and the FCO’s Legal Adviser, Daniel Bethlehem QC, for having “gone to very considerable lengths to provide BM with assistance,” noting that it was “evident” that they had “been engaged in lengthy discussions which have led to the important changes” summarized in the second judgment. “This,” they added, “has been time-consuming and burdensome, and has rendered very real assistance to the interests of justice in this case.”

As a result, the judges concluded their second judgment by giving the Foreign Secretary another week to come up with a response to their initial ruling and the developments since. They suggested that this could be in the form of another security certificate, although I hope, of course, that, having been thrown another lifeline, the government might find it preferable — bearing in mind the Special Advocates’ description of “the abhorrence and condemnation accorded to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” — either to give Binyam’s lawyers what they require, or, preferably, to convince the US administration that, in order to keep the door to the torture chambers firmly shut, the only available course of action is to drop the charges against Binyam and return him to the UK.

A UK Window on CIA Abuses

eddie — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:48:56 +0000

Britain’s High Court will hold a hearing to assess whether the UK government should be ordered to hand over secret documents to lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee. The detainee in question, Binyam Mohamed, faces possible charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism before a military commission at Guantanamo.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian national and former UK resident, was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002. Transferred to US custody, he was reportedly rendered by the CIA to Morocco, detained there secretly for over a year, and then moved for several months to a secret CIA detention site in Afghanistan. He then spent a few months in military detention at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, and was ultimately brought to Guantanamo Bay in September 2004.

Mohamed claims that he was brutally tortured during his time in secret detention, and that the evidence that will likely be used to prosecute him is a result of that torture. He also claims that the UK government has information that supports his claims of abuse.

Last week, in an important judgment, the UK High Court ruled in Mohamed’s favor. It found that the British government was under a legal obligation to disclose to Mohamed’s counsel the information it possesses relating to Mohamed’s whereabouts, treatment, and interrogation between April 2002 and May 2004. The court emphasized that this information is “not merely necessary but essential” to Mohamed’s defense against military commission charges.

While the court stopped short of ordering the foreign secretary to hand over the information—allowing additional time for the national security implications of disclosure to be considered—it will reach the mandatory disclosure question at its hearing this week.

From Britain to Pakistan to the Prison of Darkness

Binyam Mohamed came to Britain in 1994, when he was a student, after having spend a short period in the United States. He converted to Islam while in the UK, and in mid-2001 he left the UK for Pakistan and Afghanistan. He claims that he traveled to the region because he wanted to kick a drug habit.

The military commission charges that have been sworn against Mohamed allege that he attended an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, and later received training in building remote-controlled explosive detention devices in Pakistan. While living at an Al Qaeda safe house in Lahore, Pakistan, the charges say, Mohamed allegedly agreed to be sent to the United States to conduct terror operations.

Mohamed was arrested at the Karachi airport on April 10, 2002, as he attempted to leave Pakistan to fly to London. Although he was initially detained in Karachi, he claims that he was interrogated there by US agents. The UK High Court has also confirmed that a British agent visited Mohamed in Pakistani custody on May 17, 2002.

Mohamed claims that he was rendered by the CIA to Morocco in July 2002. There, he claims, he was beaten, repeatedly cut on his genitals, and threatened with rape, electrocution and death. Interrogators reportedly asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, based on information that his lawyers believe came from British sources.

In late January 2004, Mohamed says, he was sent to Afghanistan, where he was held in a secret CIA prison—called the “Prison of Darkness”—until May 2004. At that point, he was transferred to military detention, first at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo, where he remains.

According to the UK High Court, the military commissions case against Mohamed is based on confessions Mohamed made while in military custody—after May 2004—not on anything he said while being interrogated by the CIA. Mohamed claims, however, that it was the abuse in CIA custody that induced him to confess while in military custody, and so proof of those CIA abuses are crucial to his defense.

Refusal to Disclose

As part of a continuing effort to cover up the CIA’s misdeeds, US officials have refused to provide Mohamed or his lawyers any information whatsoever about his treatment or whereabouts from the time of arrest in April 2002 until he was transferred to Bagram in May 2004. To date, the UK government has similarly refused to provide Mohamed’s lawyers any such information, although it has acknowledged that some documents in its possession might be exculpatory.

In last week’s ruling, the High Court noted that the UK foreign secretary had acknowledged that Mr. Mohamed had established an arguable case that he had been subject to illegal rendition and torture. The court also found that the British security forces had facilitated Mohamed’s interrogations by supplying information and questions to US officials, even while they knew that Mohamed was being held incommunicado in a non-military detention facility overseas.

The court found, in short, that the relationship of the UK government to the US authorities with regard to Mohamed “was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.” Because the UK was in some way a participant, not simply an observer, the court held that the UK is legally obligated to provide Mohamed with information relating to his abuse.

Not only did the court deem this information to be “essential” to Mohamed’s ability to adequately defend himself, it emphasized the need for the government to provide the necessary information as soon as is practically possible. The reason for the hurried timing lies in the military commissions’ timetable. At present, military commission charges against Mohamed have been prepared, but the commission’s convening authority has not yet signed off on them. In order to potentially affect the charging decision, Mohamed has a important interest in getting exculpatory information to the convening authority before that decision is made.

The Prospect of Mandatory Disclosure

The UK court decried the fact that the US authorities have failed to provide this potentially exculpatory information to Mohamed’s counsel, particularly since both his counsel are security-cleared. But it recognized, as well, that the United States’ failure is no excuse for Britain’s inaction.

Unless the UK foreign secretary voluntarily provides the relevant documents to Mohamed’s counsel, the High Court will consider ordering disclosure. Such an order, which the court seems presently inclined to grant, would open an important crack in the wall of secrecy that surrounds the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation abuses.

Joanne Mariner is a human rights attorney

Security Services on trial

tim — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:05:30 +0000

A London court has ruled that the British government must disclose information that could support the claim that torture was used to extract confessions from Binyam Mohamed, a former British resident who has been held in Guantánamo Bay since September 2004.

The ruling by the Judicial Review—a special court that considers the lawfulness of a decision or action made by a public body—is a rebuff to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who had initially argued that he was under no obligation to provide Mohamed’s lawyers with the information.

Binyam Mohamed has now been incarcerated for nearly six and half years. He was first detained in Pakistan, and then subjected to “extraordinary rendition”—Washington’s euphemism for its programme of organised kidnapping and torture—to Morocco. Here he was held for 18 months while his captors used torture—including slicing his genitals with a razor—to wring a “confession” out of him.

He currently faces trial by a US Military Tribunal, charged with conspiring to commit terrorism and providing material support for terrorism in an alleged “dirty-bomb” plot. He could face the death penalty if found guilty. The judges ruled that the information is “not only necessary but essential for his defence”.

Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, Director of Reprieve, who has represented Mohamed since 2005, told the press, “This is a momentous decision. 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.”

In their ruling, the judges state, “It is a long standing principle of the common law that confessions obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used as evidence in any trial.”

The Judicial Review was held at the end of July over five days in both open and closed sessions, also hearing testimony in camera from British Security Service and Secret Service officers who had been involved in the questioning of Mohamed while he was detained in Pakistan and elsewhere. The court’s 75-page open judgement was finally published last week, while a secret “closed” judgement has also been made.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones found there were compelling grounds that the “exculpatory” information should be released in confidence to Mohamed’s legal representatives. No order for the provision of such information has been made until a further hearing considers the issues of “national security” raised by the Foreign Secretary as grounds for its non-disclosure.

At the Judicial Review, Dinah Rose QC, representing Mohamed, told the court that by cooperating with the US in its unlawful treatment of her client, the security and intelligence agencies were “mixed up in wrongdoing”. It was also alleged that the US “provided the UK with the fruits of his interrogation”.

Rose said that a British agent—identified only as “Witness B”—had made a “veiled threat” to Mohamed while he was being held in Pakistan, to encourage his “cooperation”, with the implication that “we won’t help you unless you confess”. She also asserted that MI5 had “repeatedly” provided the US authorities with detailed information about Mohamed’s life in the UK, information that was then used by his captors during interrogation.

In his summing up, Ben Jaffey, another of Mohamed’s legal team, highlighted the contradictions in MI5’s accounts; one MI5 officer had said that British security and intelligence agencies “did not know” Binyam Mohamed’s whereabouts after he was flown out of Pakistan in 2002, whereas an MI5 representative had explicitly told the House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee that it believed he was in US custody.

Seeking to justify its refusal to hand over information that could uphold Mohamed’s claim that he was tortured, the government told the court that the UK was “hugely dependent in a number of areas on US intelligence”.

Moreover, it was a “fundamental principle” that information passed between the countries not be disclosed to a third party without the consent of the country which had provided it. “Any disclosure, however limited, would seriously undermine this principle to the point that future cooperation between the UK and its most valuable intelligence partner, the US, would be severely jeopardised”, posing a “very serious risk to UK national security”.

Judicial Review findings

Binyam Mohamed’s case makes a mockery of the Labour government’s pretensions to oppose the use of torture and uphold human rights.

While claiming to uphold the Geneva Conventions and international treaties outlawing the use of torture, British military personnel, as well as officers from the various intelligence agencies have been implicated in the mistreatment of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the case of Binyam Mohamed, they have been caught red-handed.

The judgement records that “it was accepted on behalf of the Foreign Secretary… that BM [Binyam Mohamed] had established an arguable case (i) that over the period April 2002 to May 2004 he was first held by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer or a court or tribunal in Pakistan, and then detained there or elsewhere by the United States until his arrival in Guantánamo Bay in September 2004 (ii) that he was subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by or on behalf of the United States during such detention and (iii) that he was subject to torture during such detention by or on behalf of the United States.”

Moreover, the legal hearing and court ruling establish conclusively that not only did the British government know about the mistreatment of Mohamed, British agents also facilitated this “wrongdoing”. The judges found that “The relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the United States authorities was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing”.

Even more damning, the court found “that on the basis that what was done was arguably wrongdoing, the SyS [Security Service] facilitated it in the manner and to the extent described.”

The court concluded that the “conduct of the Security Service facilitated interviews by or on behalf of the United States when BM was being detained by the United States incommunicado and without access to a lawyer in Pakistan in the period April 2002 until at least May 2002… The Court also concluded that the Security Service continued to facilitate the interviewing of BM by providing information and questions after 17 May 2002, in the knowledge of what was reported to them as to the circumstances of his detention and treatment in Pakistan.”

The Security Services then continued to provide further information and questions to their American counterparts, even when they knew that Mohamed had been moved from Afghanistan to a third country, where he faced serious mistreatment.

Mohamed’s lawyers have been pressing the government to release information and documents they held that might sustain his claim that the “evidence” against him had been extracted under torture. After an initial request for information was lodged by his legal representatives in April, government lawyers responded by saying the “UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted”.

Binyam Mohamed’s case was finally accepted for Judicial Review at the beginning of June. Recognising the urgency of his plight, Mr Justice Saunders agreed to an “expedited” hearing, saying, “If it is correct that in the course of an interrogation, in which material supplied by the Defendant [the British 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.”

It was not until this application for a Judicial Review was accepted that the Foreign Secretary then grudgingly acknowledged government documents “could be considered exculpatory or might otherwise be relevant in the context of proceedings before the Military Commissions”.

Geneva Conventions

In its deliberations, the court considered whether the British government or its agents had contravened the Genva Conventions.

“The United Kingdom Armed Forces are trained in the laws of armed conflict set out in the Geneva Conventions. The Joint Services Intelligence Organisations’ training documentation states that the following techniques are expressly and explicitly forbidden: (a) physical punishment of any sort; (b) the use of stress positions; (c) intentional sleep deprivations; (d) withdrawal of food, water or medical treatment and three other specified techniques.”

Citing a 2007 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994 to examine the policy, administration and expenditure of the Security Service (SyS), Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the court found that the SyS and SIS “must have appreciated that it [rendition] was contrary to the rule of law.”

The ruling also documents the fact that the government knew of the ongoing and persistent mistreatment of detainees being held by the American authorities, or those acting on their behalf.

From December 2001, British intelligence operatives were able to interview detainees in Afghanistan, if permission was given by the US authorities holding them. The first SyS officers arrived at Bagram airbase on January 9, 2002 to begin this interrogation.

A report from one such officer dated January 10, 2002 contained certain “observations” about the conditions under which the detainees were being held. As a consequence, on January 11, 2002, instructions were sent to all SIS and SyS officers in Afghanistan that all prisoners, “however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection.”

Despite claims that this merely represented an “isolated case”, the judgement records that there were reports of a “further isolated case” in March 2002, and in April 2002 an SIS officer was present at an interrogation of a detainee by the US military, who complained of being kept “in isolation”.

In June 2002, according to an ISC report cited by the court, the SyS had discussed with Foreign and Commonwealth officials a US report that referred to the “hooding, withholding of blankets and sleep deprivation of a detainee in Afghanistan”.

Again, in July 2002, a SyS officer reported to his senior management that whilst in Afghanistan, “a United States official had referred to ‘getting a detainee ready’, which appeared to involve sleep deprivation, hooding and the use of stress positions.”

The court ruling cited an official document that was sent to all Security Service and Secret Service officers in Afghanistan in January 2002: “With regard to the status of the prisoners, under the various Geneva Conventions and protocols, all prisoners, however they are described, are entitled to the same levels of protection. You have commented on their treatment. It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards. Given that they are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this. That said, HMG’s [Her Majesty’s Government] stated commitment to human rights makes it important that the Americans understand that we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it.”

Such is the Labour government’s venal double-talk: not only has the British government tacitly accepted the use of torture by the US authorities from the beginning of the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (and benefited from the “intelligence” it produces), British agents have actively facilitated it. All that counts is that HMG must not be “seen” to condone it!

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

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/).

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.

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.