Europe « roger hollander

The Truth of UK’s Guilt Over Iraq November 28, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Britain, Iraq and Afghanistan, War.
Tags: chilcot, christopher meyer, Colin Powell, desert fox, Iraq invasion, Iraq war, roger hollander, saddam, scott ritter, Tony Blair, un inspectors, weapons inspection, wmd, wmds
add a comment

Published on Saturday, November 28, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

Until Chilcot hears UN weapons inspectors’ testimony, the fiction of Britain honestly seeking a WMD smoking gun prevails

by Scott Ritter

With its troops no longer engaged in military operations inside Iraq, Great Britain has been liberated politically to conduct a postmortem of that conflict, including the sensitive issue of the primary justification used by then Prime Minister Tony Blair for going to war, namely Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.The failure to find any WMD in Iraq following the March 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of that country by US and British troops continues to haunt those who were involved in making the decision for war. The issue of Iraqi WMD, and the role it played in influencing the decision for war, is at the centre of the ongoing Iraq war inquiry being conducted by Sir John Chilcot.

Among the more compelling testimonies provided to date has been that of Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US, who served in that capacity during the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Meyer convincingly portrayed an environment where the decision by the US to invade Iraq, backed by Blair, precluded any process (such as viable UN weapons inspections) that sought to compel Iraq to prove it had no WMD. Rather, Great Britain and the US were left “scrambling” to find evidence of a “smoking gun” to prove Iraq indeed possessed the WMD it was accused of having.

In short, Saddam had been found guilty of possessing WMD, and his sentence had been passed down by Washington and London void of any hard evidence that such weapons, or even related programmes, even existed. The sentence meted out – regime termination – mandated such a massive deployment of troops and material that all but the wilfully blind or intentionally ignorant had to know by the early autumn of 2002 that war with Iraq was inevitable. One simply does not initiate the movement of hundreds of thousands of troops, thousands of armoured vehicles and aircraft, and dozens of ships on a whim or to reinforce an idle threat.

President George Bush was able to disguise his blatant militarism behind the false sincerity of his ally Blair and his own secretary of state, Colin Powell. The president’s task was made far easier given the role of useful idiot played by much of the mainstream media in the US and Britain, where reporters and editors alike dutifully repeated both the hyped-up charges levied against Iraq and the false pretensions that a diplomatic solution was being sought.

The tragic final act of the farce directed by Bush and Blair was the theatre of war justification known as UN weapons inspections. Having played the WMD card so forcefully in an effort to justify war with Iraq, the US (and by extension, Britain) were compelled once again to revisit the issue of disarmament. But the reality was that disarming Iraq was the furthest thing from the mind of either Bush or Blair. The decision to use military force to overthrow Saddam was made by these two leaders independent of any proof that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Having found Iraq guilty, the last thing those who were positioning themselves for war wanted was to re-engage a process that not only had failed to uncover any evidence Iraq’s retention of WMD in the past, but was actually positioned to produce fact-based evidence that would either contradict or significantly weaken the case for war already endorsed by Bush and Blair.

The US and Britain had both abandoned aggressive UN weapons inspections in the spring of 1998. UN weapons inspectors were able and willing to conduct intrusive no-notice inspections of any site inside Iraq, including those associated with the Iraqi president, if it furthered their mandate of disarmament. But the US viewed such inspections as useful only in so far as they either manufactured a crisis that produced justification for military intervention (as was the case with inspections in March and December 1998), or sustained the notion of continued Iraqi non-compliance so as to justify the continuation of economic sanctions. An inspection process that diluted arguments of Iraq’s continued retention of WMD by failing to uncover any hard evidence that would sustain such allegations, or worse, sustain Iraq’s contention that it had no such weaponry, was not in the interest of US policy objectives that sought regime change, and as such required the continuation of stringent economic sanctions linked to Iraq’s disarmament obligation.

The British were never willing (or able) to confront meaningfully the American policy of abusing the legitimate inspection-based mandate of the UN inspectors. Instead, London sought to manage inspection-based confrontation by insisting that before any intrusive inspection could be carried out, it would have to be backed by high-quality intelligence. But even this position collapsed in the face of an American decision, made in April 1998, to stop supporting aggressive inspections altogether.

In the end, the British were left with the role of fabricating legitimacy for an American policy of terminating weapons inspections in Iraq, supplying dated intelligence of questionable veracity about a secret weapons cache being stored in the basement of a Ba’ath party headquarters in Baghdad, which was used to trigger an inspection the US hoped the Iraqis would balk at. When the Iraqis (as hoped) balked, the US ordered the inspectors out of Iraq, leading to the initiation of Operation Desert Fox, a 72-hour bombing campaign designed to ensure that Iraq would not allow the return of UN inspectors, effectively keeping UN sanctions “frozen” in place.

As of December 1998, both the US and Britain knew there was no “smoking gun” in Iraq that could prove that Saddam’s government was retaining or reconstituting a WMD capability. Nothing transpired between that time and when the decision was made in 2002 to invade Iraq that fundamentally altered that basic picture.

But having decided on war using WMD as the justification, both the US and Great Britain began the process of fabricating a case after the fact. Lacking new intelligence data on Iraqi WMD, both nations resorted to either recycling old charges that had been disproved by UN inspectors in the past, or fabricating new charges that would not withstand even the most cursory of investigations.

The reintroduction of UN weapons inspectors into Iraq in November 2002 was counterproductive for those who were using WMD as an excuse for war. This was aptly demonstrated when, in the first weeks following their return to Iraq, the inspectors discredited almost all of the intelligence-based charges both the US and Britain had levelled against Iraq, while failing to uncover any evidence of the massive stockpile of WMD that Iraq had been accused of retaining.

The decision for war had been made independently of any viable intelligence information on Iraqi WMD. As such, the work of the UN weapons inspectors inside Iraq following their return in November 2002 was not a factor in influencing the lead-up to the actual invasion of Iraq. Having decided that Saddam was guilty of possessing WMD, the failure of the UN weapons inspectors to uncover evidence of such retention made their efforts not only irrelevant, but undesirable. The inconvenience of the UN weapons inspectors when it comes to the truth about the lead-up to the war with Iraq continues to this day.

The parade of British diplomats and officials appearing before the Chilcot hearings rightly point out the absolute lack of any “smoking gun” concerning Iraq and WMD. But until Chilcot receives testimony from those best positioned to speak about Iraq’s WMD programmes, namely the UN weapons inspectors themselves, all the hearings will succeed in doing is sustain the false appearance of well-meaning British officials, stampeded into a war with Iraq by an overbearing American ally, looking in vain for a “smoking gun” that would justify their decision to invade. The evidence needed to undermine any WMD-based case for war, derived from the work of the UN weapons inspectors, was always available to those officials in a position to weigh in on this matter, but either never consulted or deliberately ignored.

There is a big difference between searching for a “smoking gun” and searching for the truth. By ignoring and/or undermining the work of the UN weapons inspectors in the lead-up to the war with Iraq, British officials demonstrated that they were not interested in the truth about Iraqi WMD, a fact that testimony provided by the likes of Sir Christopher Meyer alludes to, but falls short of actually stating.

The search for truth can be an inconvenient process, especially when it threatens to expose potentially illegal activities in the prosecution of an unpopular war. Until he calls upon UN weapons inspectors themselves to deliver testimony before his inquiry, Sir John Chilcot perpetuates the perception that Britain simply can’t handle the truth when it comes to uncovering the level of official British culpability in the deliberate fabrication of a case for war against Iraq that everyone knew, or should have known, was false.

Scott Ritter was a UN weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991-1998 and is the author of Iraq Confidential (IB Tauris, 2006).

Ministers Must Explain Destruction of ‘Torture Flight’ Papers, Says Panel of MPs August 9, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Britain, Criminal Justice.
Tags: Amnesty International, binyam mohamed, britain, britain torture, british intelligence, cia, cia torture flights, David Miliband, detainees, diego garcia, extraordinary rendition, human rights, indian ocean island, m15, mark townsend, rendition, rendition circuit, roger hollander, torture, torture flights, uk torture
add a comment

Published on Sunday, August 9, 2009 by The Observer/UK

Foreign affairs select committee calls for disclosure on why Diego Garcia documents have vanished

by Mark Townsend

Ministers must explain why crucial documents relating to CIA “torture flights” that stopped on sovereign British territory were destroyed, a panel of MPs has said.

Britain’s Foreign Minister David Miliband looks on ahead of an European Union Foreign Ministers meeting on Iran in Corfu June 28, 2009. (REUTERS/Yiorgos Karahalis/Files)

A damning appraisal by the influential foreign affairs select committee on Britain’s role in the rendition of terror suspects and alleged complicity of torture condemns the government’s lack of transparency on vital areas of concern.In particular, the MPs, in a report released today, call for an explanation for the missing papers, which might explain the role of Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory, in the US’s “extraordinary rendition” programme. The report says: “We recommend that the government discloses how, why and by whom the records relating to flights through Diego Garcia since the start of 2002 were destroyed.”

Foreign secretary David Miliband admitted 18 months ago that two US planes refuelled on the Indian Ocean island. The committee now wants a detailed account of the record-keeping and disposal policy regarding flights through the territory and “elsewhere through UK airspace”.

It also criticises the government’s inability to offer assurances that ships anchored outside Diego Garcia’s waters were not involved in the rendition programme. “The government must address the use of UK airspace for empty flights that may be part of a rendition circuit,” says the report.

Amnesty International said the MPs’ verdict underlined the need for a full, independent inquiry into the UK’s involvement in “war on terror” and human rights abuses.

The committee also voiced disquiet over claims that British intelligence officers were complicit in the torture of detainees held overseas. According to documents revealed by the high court last month, an MI5 officer visited Morocco three times during the time British resident Binyam Mohamed claims he was secretly interrogated and tortured there.

Of concern to the foreign affairs committee were claims relating to the involvement of the British security services and the practices of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence officers, who are known to routinely condone torture.

Details of the investigations the government has carried out into any of the claims should be made public, according to MPs. Mike Gapes, chairman of the committee, said it was time ministers also disclosed the guidance given at the time to intelligence officers interviewing suspects.

He said details of people captured by UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and placed in US custody should be divulged as part of a drive to improve transparency. The committee report notes: “We conclude that the potential treatment of detainees transferred by UK forces to the Afghan authorities gives cause for concern, given that there is credible evidence that torture and other abuses occur within the Afghani criminal justice system.”

Spain’s Judges Cross Borders in Rights Cases May 24, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Criminal Justice, Spain, Torture.
Tags: War Crimes, roger hollander, Guantanamo, human rights, torture, gaza, pinochet, nuremberg, israeli military, baltasar garzon, universal jurisdiction, bush crimes, bush six, israel massacre, craig whitlock, spanish judges, santiago pedraz, zapatero, spanish prosecutors, javier zaragoza, spanish national court, eichmann, cristina mateo-yanguas
add a comment

Published on Sunday, May 24, 2009 by The Washington Post

High-Ranking US Officials Among Targets of Inquiries

by Craig Whitlock

MADRID — Spanish judges are boldly declaring their authority to prosecute high-ranking government officials in the United States, China and Israel, among other places, delighting human rights activists but enraging officials in the countries they target and triggering a political backlash in a nation uncomfortable acting as the world’s conscience.

Judges at Spain’s National Court, acting on complaints filed by human rights groups, are pursuing 16 international investigations into suspected cases of torture, genocide and crimes against humanity, according to prosecutors. Among them are two probes of Bush administration officials for allegedly approving the use of torture on terrorism suspects, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The judges have opened the cases by invoking a legal principle known as universal jurisdiction, which under Spanish law gives them the right to investigate serious human rights crimes anywhere in the world, even if there is no Spanish connection.

International-law advocates have cheered the developments and called the judges heroes for daring to hold the world’s superpowers accountable. But the proliferation of investigations has also prompted a backlash in Spain, where legislators and even some law enforcement officials have criticized the powerful judges for overreaching, as well as souring diplomatic relations with allies.

“How can a Spanish judge with limited resources determine what really happened in Tiananmen or Tibet, or in massacres in Guatemala or God knows where else?” said Gustavo de Arístegui, a legislator and foreign-policy spokesman for the opposition Popular Party. “We have our own problems and our own bad guys to take care of.”

On Tuesday, the lower house of the Spanish parliament easily passed a resolution calling for a new law that would limit judges to pursuing cases with ties to Spanish citizens or a link to Spanish territory. Cases could be brought only if the targeted country failed to take action on its own.

The vote was prompted, in part, by two National Court judges who decided separately last month to investigate Bush administration officials on allegations that they encouraged a policy of torture. The judges have moved forward despite the opposition of Spanish Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido, who said the cases risked turning the National Court into “a plaything” for politically motivated prosecutions.

Another judge announced Thursday that he would charge three U.S. soldiers with crimes against humanity, holding them accountable for the April 2003 deaths of a Spanish television cameraman and a Ukrainian journalist. The men were killed when a U.S. tank crew shelled their Baghdad hotel. Judge Santiago Pedraz said he would pursue the case even though a National Court panel, as well as a U.S. Army investigation, recommended that no action be taken against the soldiers.

The controversy over universal jurisdiction has left the government of Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in a bind. Many members of his Socialist Party have supported the judges in the past. But the probes are causing diplomatic headaches for Zapatero, who has sought to improve his standing in Washington after years of frosty relations with the Bush White House.

Israel and China have complained strenuously about the investigations of their countries, making clear that Spain will pay a political price if they continue. Spanish judges have opened two probes into Israeli military airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, dating to 2002. They are also conducting two investigations into alleged abuses committed by Chinese officials in Tibet, and a third regarding repression of the Falun Gong movement.

Julio Villarubia, a Socialist member of parliament, said it was unclear exactly how or when the Spanish government would amend its universal-jurisdiction law. But he said limits are necessary.

“We have not adopted the resolution because of pressures by the U.S., China, and Israel, though that pressure is known; the disagreements are there,” he said.

It is unclear whether changes to the law would apply retroactively to pending cases. In interviews, a Justice Ministry official said they would not, but a senior prosecutor in the National Court suggested otherwise.

Regardless, most of the probes underway do have at least a tangential Spanish connection. The Guantanamo cases, for example, are partly based on testimony by a Spanish citizen who spent three years at the U.S. naval prison in Cuba.

A Global PortfolioSpain’s embrace of universal jurisdiction dates back more than a decade. In 1996, a crusading judge on the National Court, Baltasar Garzón, opened a criminal investigation into human rights abuses in Chile and Argentina.

When Chile’s aging dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, traveled to London for medical treatment in 1998, Garzón issued a warrant for his arrest. British officials complied and held him under house arrest. But they later allowed Pinochet to return to Chile, citing his ill health as a reason for not extraditing him to Spain.

Garzón had asserted jurisdiction because some of the victims of the Chilean dictatorship were Spanish citizens. But that legal condition was pronounced unnecessary in 2005, when Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled that judges can pursue grave human rights crimes anywhere, even if there is no Spanish connection.

Since then, rights groups have made a beeline for Madrid, where they have enlisted local lawyers to file complaints with the National Court. Spanish judges are obligated to examine each case and investigate whether it meets certain thresholds.

Under Spain’s legal system, judges such as Garzón serve as investigating magistrates and hold enormous power. They oversee police work, collect evidence and can compel witnesses to testify. If they conclude that charges are warranted, they hand the case to another judge for trial.

The National Court judges originally concentrated on countries with colonial ties to Spain, such as Guatemala, Argentina and El Salvador. But the judges have recently branched out to other places, such as Rwanda, Morocco, China and Israel.

Alan Cantos, president of the Tibet Support Committee, a Spanish advocacy group that requested the probes, said he is worried the Spanish government will succumb to outside political pressure.

“When powerful countries start getting touched, there is a backlash,” he said. “You mix U.S., Israeli and Chinese propaganda and complaints, and all of a sudden, the Spanish government starts shaking at the knees. Quite frankly, I find it pathetic.”

The Spanish universal-jurisdiction investigations have resulted in a single conviction. Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentine naval captain, was found guilty of crimes against humanity in 2005 for pushing 30 drugged and bound prisoners out of government airplanes in the 1970s. He was sentenced to more than 1,000 years in prison by a Spanish court.

Carlos Slepoy, a Spanish-Argentine lawyer who helped pursue Scilingo, said the universal-jurisdiction cases have valuable secondary effects. Officials targeted by Spanish judges need to be careful about where they travel; Spanish arrest warrants are generally enforced throughout Europe but also sometimes in Mexico and other countries.

“Any country should be able to bring these cases, as long as they are democracies that belong to the United Nations,” Slepoy said.

‘An Inflation of Cases’Critics say the cases are influenced by politics. They note that the National Court has been quick to accept complaints about human rights abuses in Israel and the United States but has ignored problems in Syria, North Korea and Cuba.

“These guys are not proper judges from a professional point of view,” said Florentino Portero, a contemporary history professor at Madrid’s National Open University. “They are following a trend from the left wing of the Spanish political arena.”

Spanish prosecutors have also expressed concern. They recommended that the National Court not pursue many of the 16 pending cases but were overruled by judges, who have the final say.

Javier Zaragoza, chief prosecutor at the National Court, said universal-jurisdiction cases are legitimate in principle. But he said Spain should not try to intervene in the affairs of democratic countries that are equipped to police themselves.

Even some human rights advocates said the explosion of cases has made them uneasy.

Gregorio Dionis, president of Equipo Nizkor, a Brussels-based group that has urged the National Court to prosecute accused former Nazi death camp guards living in the United States, said it has become too easy to have a complaint acted upon.

“There’s been an inflation of cases filed under universal jurisdiction,” he said. “Not all of them have been well grounded from a legal point of view.”

Other advocates, however, point out that Israel and the United States have embraced the principle of universal jurisdiction when it suits them.

In 1960, Israeli agents kidnapped Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and tried him in Israel; he was convicted and executed.

More recently, the U.S. Department of Justice has supported efforts to have Spain pursue investigations against two alleged Nazi concentration camp guards living in the United States. The Justice Department lacks the jurisdiction to prosecute the men for crimes committed decades ago in Europe but would like to deport them to Spain to stand trial there.

Special correspondent Cristina Mateo-Yanguas contributed to this report.

Britain responds to the “rule of law” nuisance March 27, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Britain, Torture.
Tags: aclu, anne applebaum, antonio taguba, binyam mohamed, british government, bush administration, david cameron, david hicks, geneva conventions, glenn greenwald, Gordon Brown, great britain, Guantanamo, jacqui smith, nick clegg, obama administration, roger hollander, rule of law, secret rendition, thomas pickering, torture, War Crimes, willima sessions
add a comment

www.salon.com, Friday March 27, 2009

Glenn Greenwald

(updated below - Update II)

One of the problems for the U.S. Government in releasing Guantanamo detainees has been that, upon release, they are free to talk to the world about the treatment to which they were subjected. When the Bush administration agreed to release Australian David Hicks after almost 6 years in captivity, they did so only on the condition that he first sign a documenting stating that he was not abused and that he also agree — as The Australian put it — to an “extraordinary 12-month gag order that prevent[ed] Hicks from speaking publicly about the actions to which he has pleaded guilty or the circumstances surrounding his capture, interrogation and detention,” a gag order which “also silence[d] family members and any third party.”

Last month, in response to increasing pressure in Britain over reports of British resident Binyam Mohamed’s deterioration in Guantanamo, the Obama administration released him back to Britain. Ever since, he has been detailing the often brutal torture to which he was subjected over several years, torture in which British intelligence officials appear to have been, at the very least, complicit. As a result, despite the efforts of both the British Government and the Obama administration to keep concealed what was done to Mohamed, the facts about his treatment have emerged and a major political controversy has been ignited.

That’s because torture is illegal in Britain, as it is in the United States. But unlike the United States: Britain hasn’t completely abandoned the idea that even political officials must be accountable when they commit crimes; their political discourse isn’t dominated and infected by the subservient government-defending likes of David Ignatius, Ruth Marcus, David Broder and Stuart Taylor demanding that government officials be free to commit even serious war crimes with total impunity; and they don’t have “opposition leaders” who are so afraid of their own shadows and/or so supportive of torture that they remain mute in the face of such allegations. To the contrary, demands for criminal investigations into these episodes of torture (including demands for war crimes investigations from conservatives) span the political spectrum in Britain:

The Conservative leader, David Cameron, called for a “targeted and clear review . . . to get to the bottom of whether Britain was knowingly or unknowingly complicit in torture”.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, said: “It is not enough for Gordon Brown to say the government does not endorse torture. There remain serious questions concerning how far senior political figures were implicated in these alleged practices.”

Because of those facts, the British Government has now been forced to commence a criminal investigation into whether British government agents colluded in Mohamed’s torture:

The attorney general, Lady Scotland, announced the unprecedented move in light of damning evidence that Britain’s security and intelligence agencies colluded with the CIA in Mohamed’s inhuman treatment and secret rendition.

She said the police inquiry would look into “possible criminal wrongdoing” in what the high court described as Mohamed’s unlawful questioning.

As The Guardian reported, the British Government was, in essence, forced into the criminal investigation once government lawyers “referred evidence of possible criminal conduct by MI5 officers to home secretary Jacqui Smith, and she passed it on to the attorney general.” In a country that lives under what is called the “rule of law,” credible evidence of serious criminality makes such an investigation, as The Guardian put it, “inevitable.” British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has clearly tried desperately to avoid any such investigation, yet as The Washington Post reported this morning, even he was forced to say in response: ”I have always made clear that when serious allegations are made they have got to be investigated.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if our government leaders could make a similar, extremely uncontroversial statement — credible allegations of lawbreaking by our highest political leaders must be investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted? In a country with a minimally healthy political culture, that ought to be about as uncontroversial as it gets. Instead, what we have are political leaders and media stars virtually across the board spouting lawless Orwellian phrases about being “more interested in looking forward than in looking backwards” and not wanting to “criminalize public service.” These apologist manuevers continue despite the fact that, as even conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum recently acknowledged in light of newly disclosed detailed ICRC Reports, “that crimes were committed is no longer in doubt.”

Even in the U.S., each new disclosure of just how pervasive and brutal was our Government’s criminality prompts new calls for investigations from previously government-defending precincts, and — thanks largely to the ACLU and other groups — some of the most potent new disclosures are imminent. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for David Ignatius and friends to dismiss advocates of investigations as ”liberal score-settlers” when people like Bush 41 U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Reagan FBI Director William Sessions, Gen. Antonio Taguba, and Anne Applebaum are now demanding investigations into these crimes of torture.

As more detainees are released and are thus able to speak publicly about what was done to them, and as more documents are leaked and are formally disclosed, the extent of our Government’s depraved criminality will be increasingly difficult to ignore, no matter how eager our current Government might be to do so. Indeed, even investigations in places like Britian — which centrally involve receipt of CIA telegrams detailing Mohamed’s torture — are highly likely to lead to the disclosure of even more graphic and incriminating evidence proving that American leaders committed war crimes. The profoundly incriminating evidence is piling up, and will continue to, on its own.

Still, just look at what is happening in Britain to see how far off course we are from even a pretense to living under the rule of law. The British have hardly been paragons of human rights and transparency. They’ve worked as closely with the Bush administration in most of these abuses as any other country in the world (with the possible exceptions of Egypt and Morocco). And their government has been almost as desperate as ours to keep secret what was done.

Nonetheless, despite allegations of criminality far less extensive than those that have been made against the U.S., their political system is compelling serious investigations into these crimes. That’s because for countries that aren’t completely corrupted to their core, political leaders aren’t free to commit serious crimes and then simply be shielded from investigation and accountability. Credible allegations of high-level criminality — and only the hardest-core Bush followers deny that we have that — compel criminal investigations. As the British controversy demonstrates, that isn’t remotely a controversial proposition for anyone who believes in the most basic precepts of the rule of law.

* * * * *

Just as a reminder of two upcoming events:

(1) On the evening of March 31, I’ll be at Ithaca College to receive the first annual Izzy Award for independent journalism — named after the great I.F. Stone — along with my co-recipient Amy Goodman. Both Amy and I will be speaking at the event on independent media and related issues, and more than 1,000 people are expected. The event is free and open to the public and event details are here.

(2) On April 3, beginning at noon, I’ll be at the Cato Institute in Washington to present my drug policy report, entitled Drug Decrimialization in Portugal, which details that country’s successes with its 2001 decision to decriminalize all drug possession and usage. Event details and RSVP are on Cato’s site (here), where it can also be watched live. I wrote about the background of the report here.

UPDATE: Just to underscore one point: Britain also has a financial crisis to deal with. They also have a “future,” not just a past, to address. They also have faced, and still face, terrorist threats. Criminal investigations and prosecution would also be controversial for them and create partisan divisions.

But they’re still proceeding to investigate credible allegations of serious crimes on the part of their government officials. That’s what the “rule of law” means.

UPDATE II: Knowing that exposure of its actions would prove its severe criminality, it was just recently revealed the Bush administration also tried to induce Mohamed to accept a gag order similar to the one Hicks accepted, whereby Mohamed would have been freed from Guantanamo last year if he agreed (a) not to talk publicly about the treatment he received and (b) cease all efforts to prove in court that he was tortured and/or to obtain documents proving that he was mistreated (h/t Jim White). He refused.

So: we put people into cages for years with no charges and tortured them, and then told them that we would release them only if they agreed to keep silent about what we did to them and renounce all claims for judicial accountability and disclosure. If they refused the vow of silence — as Mohamed did — they would stay in their cage.

– Glenn Greenwald

G20 Protesters ‘Will Try to Bring London to Standstill’ March 21, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Britain, Economic Crisis.
Tags: anti-capitalism, climate change, Economic Crisis, england, G20, global financial crisis, jerome taylor, london, mark hughes, political protest, protest, revolt, roger hollander, scotland yard, summit, tibet, tibetan activists, world leaders
add a comment

Published on Saturday, March 21, 2009 by Independent/UK

Police fear anti-capitalist groups will seek violent confrontation on streets

by By Mark Hughes and Jerome Taylor

LONDON — Next month’s G20 summit will present an “unprecedented” challenge as up to 2,000 protesters attempt to bring London to a standstill, the Metropolitan Police admitted yesterday.The 20 world leaders, including Barack Obama, are to visit the capital for the summit on 2 and 3 April. They plan to discuss ways to tackle the global financial crisis.

Italian riot police clashed with anti-capitalist protesters in the centre of Genoa in July 2001 when the city hosted the G8 summit

But their presence is expected to encourage a large number of protests, with scores of activists from an array of different causes determined to generate publicity from demonstrations around the event.

The majority of protest groups have promised to demonstrate peacefully, but there are fears anarchist and hardcore anti-capitalists from Britain and abroad will try to fight police in pitched battles reminiscent of the anarchist riots of the late 1990s which caused millions of pounds of damage.

Senior officers at Scotland Yard say they are aware of several groups which plan to converge on the City of London financial district to cause blockades, and attempt to get inside major banks including the Bank of England.

One organizer is believed to be a senior lecturer at the University of East London. Some groups are said to be considering filling roads with sand and then sending children to play in it, making it impossible for police officers to forcibly remove them.

An anti-capitalist umbrella group calling itself “G20 – Meltdown in the City” has promised to “storm” banks and target many of the luxury hotels where world leaders will stay.

Climate change campaigners will also concentrate their protests within the Square Mile where they intend to hold one of their ubiquitous Climate Change Camps. Previous camps have been held at Heathrow and outside Kingsnorth power station in Kent, but this time thousands of activists will descend on the City in the week up to the three-day summit.

The Independent has learnt small “commando” groups of environmental activists are planning high profile publicity protests, similar to the Parliament rooftop protests last year.

One climate change activist, who has been arrested on numerous protests, said yesterday: “With so much media attention and so many world leaders coming to town next week I can guarantee there will be all sorts of groups looking to perform an array of exciting direct action stunts.

“I just hope the action won’t take the form of throwing things at the police as that gets us nowhere.”

Tibetan activists from around the world will also use the G20 to protest against the continuing crackdown in Tibet, where scores of people have been killed and arrested by Chinese forces since widespread rioting and protests broke out last year. The G20 meeting takes place at the ExCel center in Docklands, and the Metropolitan Police plan to use a marine unit to prevent attempts by protesters to infiltrate the site by boat.

More than 10,000 officers’ shifts will be used in the operation, which will cost the Met at least £7.2m, although £4.7m of this money would have been spent regardless of where the officers were patrolling.

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Scotland Yard Commissioner, said: “G20 is a huge challenge for the Met. Quite clearly the notice for this event is less than one would normally have, but I think we are in extraordinary times and that has led to an extraordinary event.”

Commander Bob Broadhurst is in charge of the security operation – one of the biggest the Met has ever mounted. All police leave has been canceled for the duration of the summit and officers from six forces are working to second guess “innovative” protesters determined to evade traditional security arrangements.

“We have to be flexible and mobile,” he said. “These are innovative people and we must be innovative as well.

“They are very clever people and they understand our tactics and will try to outsmart us. I have encouraged officers to try to think about what these people might try and do and hopefully we will have something to mitigate that. It will be an exciting couple of days to say the least.”

Eyes wide shut: A look at British news censorship March 17, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Britain, Media.
Tags: britain, british government, civil liberties, counter terrorism act, freedom of press, jerry mazza, journalism, Media, media censorship, roger hollander
add a comment

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor

www.onlinejournal.com, March 13, 2009

I hope the late Stanley Kubrick won’t mind my borrowing the title of his film, which was shot in London and the Home Counties. I don’t think he would if he knew that February 12, 2009, marked “the enforcement date for section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008.” As reported in the UK’s Guardian, from that date on “a photojournalist who documents political dissent on the streets — and sometimes the fields — of Britain,” would be subject to prosecution under that act.

Since little mention of this major incursion of civil liberties has crossed the pond, and even less has been picked up by American “media,” I thought I’d pen a word or two about it. As with the deadly, former Bush administration, terror legislation has been rough-handedly applied by the British government. Great Britain is now using section 76, CTA-2008, to not only criminalize protestors but to criminalize those foolish enough to think they’re free enough to report on said dissent, i.e., photographers and filmmakers.

From February 12 on, it is an offense to “elicit information” or even “attempt to elicit information” about any member or former member of the armed forces, intelligence services, or even a police officer in Great Britain. It’s been an offense in Northern Ireland since 2000, even before 9/11 got the “War on Terror” going with its false flag attack, i.e., inside job. Though in all fairness and due respect, Northern Ireland had some history with terror in protecting itself from the Motherland’s armies and henchmen. And Great Britain had its purported 7/7/05 subway terror attack (by who is another question).

In short, you can now be arrested either for taking or publishing a picture of a police officer if the police think it is “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.” If you were so accused by the crown prosecution, it would be up to you to prove you had “a reasonable excuse” to take the picture in the first place: “Ey, I was only trying to get the goat standin’ behind the bloody Bobbie beatin’ that protestor over the head” or something like that out of Monty Python’s soon to be Bollywood film, Queen Mother’s Best Meet the Terrorist Threat.

But this is no joke, unfortunately, since once the government could nick you with CTA-2008-77 you’d be in deep trouble. “Anyone for lunch in the Tower? Today, it is photo-journo heads on a platter, deliciously served with jellied eyeballs.”

That aside, Vernon Coaker, junior Home Office minister responsible for police, security and community safety, wrote in a letter to the National Union of Journalists in December as to when the police could “limit” photography in a public place, “This may be on the grounds of national security or there may be situations in which the taking of photographs may cause or lead to public order situations or inflame an already tense situation or raise security considerations. Additionally, the police may require a person to move on in order to prevent a breach of the peace or to avoid a public order situation or for the person’s own safety and welfare or for the safety and welfare of others.”

Well, yeah, all those flashes going off, and what about the phone-cams, blink, blink, blink, I mean, blinding (like A-Rod at Yankee Stadium shooting for his 500th homer in 2007). Then there’s the video news guys, what with their wide-eyes in your face, mikes, lights veritable chaos. Ah, but we know the real deal: nobody wants to embarrass the government for the recession when the beggars come banging their cups on the gates of Buckingham Palace, or hammer the well-suited G-20 over the Lindsey refinery dispute these last few weeks. Tsk, tsk.

So, section 76 will make a handy bookend with section 44 of the Terrorism Act of 2000 with which to bludgeon photojournalists. In response, hundreds of photojournalists gathered on February 16 outside of New Scotland Yard at 11 a.m., both photographers and filmmakers with cameras in hand to exercise their democratic right to take a photograph in a public place. Here, here, chaps! Well done, lads and ladies!

Yet, the larger implications of this Terror Act add-on are like viruses; laws like this have a way of crossing the pond on the sodden winds of change. If they can do this to British photojournalists, some bright light in Washington will want to import it here. We are still dealing with the issues of torture and rendition, where to imprison the former inhabitants of Guantanamo, and whether Bush and Chaney and their henchmen should be brought to trial over their war crimes, both in inciting the war in Afghanistan, then Iraq, after the War on Terror incited by 9/11.

And so, it would be major, like high concept, baby, if American photojournalists, writers, newsmen, and other famous faces could weigh in on this issue to help our cousin in Great Britain.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer living in New York City. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net. read his new book, “State Of Shock: Poems from 9/11 on” at www.jerrymazza.com, Amazon or Barnesandnoble.com.

Britain’s bizarre reaction to war crimes allegations: investigations needed March 8, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Britain, Criminal Justice, Torture.
Tags: binyam mohamed, british government, british intelligence, british national security, cia, dahlia lithwick, dana milbank, David Miliband, department of defense, dod, dominic grieve, foreign office, geneva conventions, geneva standards, glenn greenwald, Guantanamo, house of commons, International law, jacqui smith, journalism, journalistic ethics, m15, media complicity, media ethics, micael mcconnell, michael hayden, president obama, roger hollander, state secrets privilege, tom friedman, torture, us media, War Crimes
add a comment

Glenn Greenwald

www.salon.com Sunday March 8, 2009 09:33 EDT

(updated below – Update II)

Binyam Mohamed is the British resident who, two weeks ago, was released from Guantanamo and returned to Britain after seven years of detention, often in brutal conditions. Since his return, compelling evidence has been steadily emerging that British agents were knowingly complicit in Mohamed’s torture while in U.S. custody — including the discovery of telegrams sent by British intelligence officers to the CIA asking the CIA to extract information from him. How does a country with a minimally healthy political class and a pretense to the rule of law react to such allegations of criminality? From the BBC:

MPs have demanded a judicial inquiry into a Guantanamo Bay prisoner’s claims that MI5 was complicit in his torture. . . .

[Mohamed's] allegations are being investigated by the government, but the Foreign Office said it did not condone torture.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the “extremely serious” claims should also be referred to the police. . . .

Daniel Sandford, BBC Home Affairs correspondent, said Mr Mohamed’s claims would be relatively simple to substantiate.

“As time progresses it will probably become quite apparent whether indeed these are true telegrams and I think it’s unlikely they’d be put into the public domain if they couldn’t eventually be checked back.”

The Conservatives have called for a police inquiry into his allegations of British collusion.

Mr Grieve called for a judicial inquiry into the allegations.

“And if the evidence is sufficient to bring a prosecution then the police ought to investigate it,” he added.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said there was a “rock solid” case for an independent judicial inquiry. . . .

Shami Chakrabati, director of campaign group Liberty said: “These are more than allegations – these are pieces of a puzzle that are being put together.

“It makes an immediate criminal investigation absolutely inescapable.”

The Guardian adds:

New revelations by Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, claiming that British intelligence played a central role in his torture and interrogation, must be answered by the government, the former shadow home secretary David Davis said last night. . . .

[Mohamed's] allegations appear to contradict assertions by foreign secretary David Miliband and home secretary Jacqui Smith that the British government would never “authorise or condone” torture.

Davis said Mohamed’s testimony demanded a response from these ministers. “His revelations show that the government’s claims about its involvement in the interrogation of Mohamed are completely untenable,” Davis said. “Either Miliband or Smith should come to the House of Commons and reveal exactly what the government knew.”

Last night other public figures said there should be wider efforts to look into the allegations that the British government had colluded in Mohamed’s torture.

Notice what is missing from these accounts. There is nobody arguing that the dreary past should simply be forgotten in order to focus on the important and challenging future. There’s no snide suggestion that demands to investigate serious allegations of criminality are driven by petty vengeance or partisan score-settling. Nobody suggests that it’s perfectly permissible for government officials to commit serious crimes — including war crimes — as long as they had nice motives or were told that it was OK to do these things by their underlings, or that the financial crisis (which Britain has, too) precludes any investigations, or that whether to torture is a mere ”policy dispute.” Also missing is any claim that these crimes are State Secrets that must be kept concealed in order to protect British national security.

Instead, the tacit premise of the discussion is that credible allegations of criminality — even if committed by high government officials, perhaps especially then — compel serious criminal investigations. Imagine that. How shrill and radical.

If one stays immersed in American domestic political debates, it’s easy to lose sight of just how corrupted and rotted our political and media class is, because the most twisted ideas become enshrined as elite orthodoxies. Britain is hardly the paragon of transparency and adherence to international conventions; to the contrary, they’ve been with the U.S. every step of the way over the last eight years, enabling and partaking in many of the worst abuses. Yet this one single case of documented complicity in torture — mere complicity with, not actual commission of, the torture — is generating extreme political controversy and widespread demands across the political spectrum for judicial and criminal investigations. The British political class may not have wanted to see it, but when compelling evidence of criminality is rubbed in their faces, they at least pay lip service to the idea that crimes by government officials must be investigated and subjected to accountability.

By stark and depressing contrast, America’s political class and even most of its “journalists” — in the face of far, far greater, more heinous and more direct war criminality by their highest political leaders — are explicitly demanding that nothing be done and that it all be kept concealed. They’re surveying undeniable evidence of grotesque war crimes committed over many years by our government — including enabling legal theories that even Fred Hiatt described as “scary,” “lawless” and “disgraceful” — and are literally saying: ”just forget about that; it doesn’t matter.” Our country is plagued by “journalists” like The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, giggling with smug derision over the very few efforts to investigate these massive crimes — and then even lying on NPR by claiming that support for investigations is confined to “a small but very vocal minority within the Party – these are the same folks who were pushing for the impeachment of the President and the Vice President right up [dismissive chuckling] basically to the time of the Inauguration” (to see how flagrantly false is Milbank’s statement about support within the Party for investigations, see here and here and here; the NPR host, needless to say, said nothing to correct him).

The accountability-free, self-loving mentality that demands that nothing be done about America’s war crimes over the last eight years is hardly confined to America’s detention, surveillance and interrogation policies. This is exactly the same bloated, insular corruption that allows multi-billion-dollar insider frauds like this one not only to go unexamined but also to result in those responsible being further empowered with high government positions. It’s what lets someone like Tom Friedman think he can lecture us all with a straight face on the evils of overconsumption, the ravaging effects of our “growth model,” and the environment-destroying impact of consumerism as he lives in this house, financed by his heiress-wife’s shopping-center-developing company, his books urging unfettered globalization, and his columns urging various wars.

In sum, we have the only country, and the only results, that it’s possible to have given who has been wielding influence. And nothing expresses more vividly what they are than their explicit insistence that systematic war crimes committed by their own Government be immunized and forgotten, underscored by their bizarre feelings of “centrism”-smugness and Seriousness-superiority for expressing that definitively lawless and amoral view.

* * * * *

One other point about Mohamed: Last month, the Obama DOD claimed that it conducted an investigation and concluded that Guantanamo now fully comports with all Geneva standards. In a New York Times interview yesterday, President Obama claimed (for the first time, to my knowledge) that most of the problems with Bush’s detention policies were confined to what he called ”the steps that were taken immediately after 9/11,” and that most of those problems were fixed by CIA Director Michael Hayden and DNI Michael McConnell “by the time [Obama] took office” because Hayden and McConnell “were mindful of American values and ideals.”

Compare all of that to Binyam Mohamed’s post-release statements — supported by other corroborating evidence — that “conditions at the US detention camp in Cuba have worsened since President Barack Obama was elected. . . . “‘Since the election it’s got harsher,’ Mohamed told the newspaper.” Isn’t this something that the U.S. Government should be called upon to address?

UPDATE: Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick reviews, and dismantles, each of the justifications being offered by the Obama administration for keeping Bush crimes concealed and shielding them from investigations and prosecutions (h/t Bystander). It’s quite concise and well worth reading in its entirety (as is Digby’s discussion of that article).

UPDATE II: In comments, Cocktailhag writes:

It is something of an upside down world wherein journalists, as a class, comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted, and see nothing odd about this.

At times I’ve wondered whether Watergate would have even been discovered by the mindless media we have today, but even worse, whether they all would have just explained it away.

It’s difficult to select what one thinks is the single most illustrative symbol of how our country now functions, but if I were forced to do so, I would choose the fact that it is America’s journalists — who claim to be devoted to serving as a check on Government and exposing its secrets — who are, instead, leading the way in demanding that the Government’s actions of the last eight years be concealed; in trying to quash efforts to investigate and expose those actions; and in demanding immunity for government lawbreakers. What kind of country does one expect to have where (with some noble exceptions) it is journalists, of all people, who take the lead in concealing, protecting and justifying government wrongdoing, and whose overriding purpose is to serve, rather than check, political power? ”Upside down world,” indeed.

– Glenn Greenwald

Guilty: Britain admits collusion, new torture claims emerge March 1, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Britain, Torture.
Tags: adam ingram, Afghanistan, andrew tyrie, begam air base, binyam mohamed, britain, cia detention, cia interrogation, David Miliband, defence secretary, diego garcia, extraordinary rendition, foreign office, foreign secretary, Guantanamo, ian pearson, jack straw, john hutton, kandahar, m15, m16, morocco, northern alliance, pakistan, rendition, reprieve, robet verkaik, roger hollander, Shaker Aamer, systematic torture, terror suspects, Tony Blair, torture flights, uk detainee, uk government, war on terror
add a comment

Sunday, 1 March 2009, www.independent.co.uk

HARAZ GHANBARI/AP

The US government held Binyam Mohamed, below, at Camp Delta from 2004 until his release last week

enlarge

Evidence from last British resident in Guantanamo reveals the full story of how terror suspects were illegally maltreated. Robert Verkaik reports

Britain faces fresh accusations that it colluded in the rendering and alleged torture of a second UK resident now being held at Guantanamo Bay. The new claims bring further pressure on ministers to come clean about the scale of the Government’s complicity in the rendition and torture of dozens of terror suspects captured by the Americans after 9/11.

His case comes after that of Binyam Mohamed, 30, released from the US naval base in Cuba last week, and whose claims of UK involvement in his torture are being investigated by the Attorney General. Now allegations made by Shaker Aamer, the final British resident held at Guantanamo Bay, raise concerns that both MI5 and MI6 were widely involved in the US rendition and torture programme operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11.

Mr Aamer, 42, says he was rendered from the Pakistan border to Afghanistan where he claims he was tortured. He was passed by Pakistani groups to the Northern Alliance who sold him to the Americans. The CIA arranged for his detention in Afghanistan and final transfer to Guantanamo Bay.

He adds that two MI6 or MI5 officers, a man and a woman, interrogated him after he had been subjected to beatings and sleep deprivation by the Americans while being held at a prison in Kandahar in January 2002. He has told his UK lawyers that the British woman officer called herself “Sally”.

A few weeks later he says an MI5 officer was present while he was being tortured by CIA agents in an interrogation cell at Bagram air base in Afghanistan in January or February 2002. This time he claims a man called “John”, who introduced himself as being from British intelligence, was in the room when his head was repeatedly “bounced” against a wall and he was told that he was going to die.

Mr Aamer’s statement will be used in a High Court challenge against the British government to force ministers to release information about his detention and interrogation in 2002.

The new charges of British complicity in rendition and torture are the latest to be made against the British government which has always denied using torture or helping others use it. But a series of embarrassing revelations has shown the public may not have been told the whole truth. After blanket denials that the British overseas territory of Diego Garcia was used by the Americans for “torture flights”, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, was forced to admit last year that the UK Government had been misled by the US administration. Mr Miliband said the British outpost on the Indian Ocean island had twice been used by the US as a refuelling stop for the secret transfer of two terrorism suspects in 2002 to Morocco and Guantanamo Bay.

Then, on Thursday, it was the turn of the Defence Secretary, John Hutton, to make an embarrassing admission to Parliament. He told MPs that Britain had helped in the rendition of two Iraqis captured by British forces and sent to Afghanistan for interrogation by US agents as recently as 2004.

Pressure is now growing on the Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, to say what he was told about the US rendition programme when he was Foreign Secretary between 2001 and 2006.

Zachary Katznelson of the human rights charity Reprieve, representing Mr Aamer, said: “We must know whether MI5 or MI6 has information about Mr Aamer’s detention and torture so that we can show that any evidence against him obtained under such conditions cannot be relied on by the US in any prosecution.”

Mr Katznelson alleges Mr Aamer had been tortured by American agents for several days before he was interrogated by British intelligence officers. He said: “Mr Aamer has told us that on one occasion he was beaten and his head was bounced against the wall. They were screaming at him ‘you are going to die’. He says that during this abuse a member of the British security services was present in the room who witnessed what was happening.”

From Bagram, Mr Aamer was flown to Guantanamo Bay, where he is on hunger strike in protest at his alleged mistreatment and continued separation from his family. He also claims to have been beaten and tortured during his detention in Cuba.

Reprieve said the full story of Britain’s involvement in US rendition and torture had not been told and that ministers’ recent admissions were only the tip of the iceberg.

“This Government has misled us again and again,” said Reprieve executive director Clare Algar. “Surely we must immediately have the public inquiry into the Government’s conduct of the ‘War on Terror’ demanded by so many,” she said.

Andrew Tyrie MP, the chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, says the latest revelations require a full inquiry into Britain’s role.

Mr Katznelson said Mr Aamer’s evidence showed British collusion in rendition and torture was “systemic”.

Binyam Mohamed also claims that British agents questioned him before he was sent to Morocco where he says he was brutally tortured before being taken to Cuba. He also said one of the British officers who interrogated him introduced himself as “John”.

Mr Mohamed was arrested by Pakistani immigration officials at Karachi airport in April 2002 when intending to return to the UK. He alleges that he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, including being beaten, scalded and having his penis slashed with a scalpel.

The MI5 agent who interviewed Mr Mohamed in Pakistan in early 2002 told the High Court last year that the US and UK both wanted information from him because they regarded him as a terror threat. The question was how it should best be obtained.

A telegram sent by MI5 requesting US permission to see Mr Mohamed made the case that the security service’s “knowledge of the UK scene may provide contextual background useful during any continuing interview process … This will place the detainee under more direct pressure.”

In his note of the meeting with the British resident, the MI5 officer recalled: “I told Mohamed he had an opportunity to help us and help himself. The US authorities will be deciding what to do with him and this will depend to a very large degree on his degree of co-operation.” Could witness B be the same MI5 agent who Shaker Aamer said had called himself “John”? Or was it coincidence that both British residents came up with same name for their interrogator?

The truth may not be known until Britain releases secret evidence about the Mohamed case. In a ruling last month, the High Court recommended that these documents be made public, but the judges stopped short of making it an order. Lawyers for Mr Miliband had warned that intelligence relations with the US would be seriously harmed were the documents to see the light of day. Lawyers believe these documents may also help to show whether “John”, or someone else from MI5 or MI6, also interviewed Mr Aamer.

Mr Aamer, his wife and their three children left London in 2001 to go to Afghanistan to work with a children’s charity. But Mr Aamer, a Saudi Arabian national who came to the UK in 1996, was captured on the Pakistan border in December 2001. Mr Aamer was transferred to Kandahar and Bagram air base and then flown on to Guantanamo Bay. For four years he has been held in solitary confinement because the Guantanamo camp guards believe he wields too much influence over other detainees. He has never seen his youngest son, who was born after his capture.

Mr Aamer’s lawyers have filed a 16-page claim arguing for his removal from isolation in Guantanamo Bay prison. The British government has recently begun pressing the US administration for Mr Aamer’s release.

It is understood that a party of Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials who visited Mr Mohamed in Cuba shortly before he was cleared for release, also had limited contact with Mr Aamer, who has lost half his body weight after a series of hunger strikes. An FCO spokesman said the Americans had told the British Government that they still had security concerns about Mr Aamer and would not release him.

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that they took Mr Aamer’s allegations very seriously and had launched an “urgent review” of the case. He said that Britain did not carry out or collude in torture.

How the Government changed its story from denial to regret

No one told us

20 November, 2005

“These are privately chartered aircraft and they don’t need to tell us who is on board.”

Department of Transport

We don’t keep track of such things

22 November, 2005

“Where passengers do not leave the airfield, the MoD … does not record details of passengers.”

Adam Ingram, then Defence minister

No one asked us

30 November, 2005

The Government is “not aware of the use of their territory or airspace for the purposes of extraordinary rendition, nor have we received any requests, [or] granted any permission for the use of UK territory or airspace for such purposes”.

Foreign Office

It never happened

5 December, 2005

“We have no evidence to corroborate media allegations about use of UK territory in rendition operations.”

Foreign Office

We have no record

13 December, 2005

“Careful research has been unable to identify any occasion … when we have received a request for permission by the United States for a rendition through the United Kingdom territory or airspace …. Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories … there is simply no truth in claims that the UK has been involved in rendition.”

Jack Straw, then Foreign Secretary

There’s no evidence

22 December, 2005

“I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything illegal has been happening here at all.

“I am not going to start ordering inquiries into this, that or the next thing when I have got no evidence to show whether this is right or not.”

Tony Blair, then Prime Minister

We’ve done nothing illegal

20 January, 2006

“Anything we do in relation to rendition is in compliance with our international obligations. We fulfil our legal obligations.”

Tony Blair’s spokesman

They’d have to ask us first

16 February, 2006

“We have made clear to [the US] we expect them to seek permission to render detainees via British airspace.”

Ian Pearson, then Foreign Office minister

We’ve never given permission

7 October, 2006

“Mr Hoon … made clear that the British Government has not approved and will not approve a policy of supporting the transfer of individuals through the UK to places where there are substantial grounds to suspect that they face the risk of torture.”

Foreign Office

OK, they did it twice. But that’s all

25 February, 2008

“The two flights from the US already identified are the only ones we are aware of.”

Foreign Office

Yes, we were involved. And we shouldn’t have been

27 February, 2009

“In retrospect, it is clear to me that the transfer to Afghanistan of these two individuals should have been questioned at the time.”

John Hutton, Defence Secretary

A depressing saga of secrets, lies and medieval horrors February 23, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Europe, Human Rights, Torture, War.
Tags: Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, alibhai-brown, bin Laden, binyam mohamed, britain, cia, egypt, extraordinary rendition, foreign secretary, geneva conventions, global torture industy, Guantanamo, human rights, Human Rights Watch, International law, isi, islamicist terrorists, lloyd jones, Lord Justice Thomas, Michael Ignatieff, milband, milibands, Muslims, Obama, pakistan, rendition, roger hollander, saddam hussein, torture, torture outsourced, uk government, un convention
add a comment

Yasman Alibhai-Brown, February 23, 2009, www.independent.co.uk

The US and UK pay others to do what Saddam used to do to his jailed adversaries

This is Britain’s position on torture: we ratified the UN Convention against it in 1988 and we then passed an Act of Parliament giving authority to the investigation and prosecution of torturers no matter where they cowered. But impressive as all this sounds, how precisely has it helped Binyam Mohamed?

Today, God willing, he will arrive back from Guantanamo Bay, the sunny Caribbean resort funded hitherto by the generous USA for the Mad Men of Islam who, we have been told for years, are the biggest danger to world peace. Mohamed’s doctors have found serious bruising, organ damage, acute injuries and emotional and psychological collapse.

His lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith said: “What Binyam has been through should have been left behind in the Middle Ages.” His client is also suffering from malnutrition and stomach problems – which must be the result of a long hunger-strike, a silent protest which might have killed and released him. And our government is suffering from the discomfort of having to justify the immorality of the actions and that keep the global torture industry robust. Mohamed will not be received at the airport by a contrite Foreign Secretary, who has long obfuscated and denied any responsibility for all the bad stuff – unseen and unheard – that goes on around the world, ostensibly to combat Islamicist terrorism.

Recently Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said the UK Government had been forced by the US to suppress information on this case, a claim breezily rejected by the Foreign Secretary, an accomplished operator.

Yet the case against the government grows. I find that deeply depressing. For the two talented Milibands are, in other ways, good men whose father Ralph, a Polish-Jewish exile, was a left-wing academic with a consuming sense of justice. An opponent of the US Vietnam war, he condemned the “catalogue of horrors” perpetrated by the US “in the name of an enormous lie”.

Those lies and horrors are now part of the essential toolkit for an ambitious minister. Power corrodes, flushing away honour and wisdom and, it seems, personal memory too. Obama promised to shut down Guantanamo Bay and he delivered. For that he deserves immense respect. However, this is not the end of the US- and UK-endorsed use of extreme pain to break people in custody. Ever since the fateful attacks on 11 September 2001 and in truth, long before that in covert operations, these two states have outsourced torture to some of the most lawless regions in the world or to regimes which commonly use physical and psychological coercion in exchange for influence or cash. There is no sign yet that Obama means to outlaw renditions, secret abductions by the CIA, or the unrecorded movement of prisoners. The fear is that these clandestine activities will continue. Shutting down the – always provocative – Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre is possibly a way to placate protesters and carry on regardless. I hope Obama has more moral sense than that.

The US and UK pay others to do what Saddam used to do to his adversaries in custody. This facility is procured by, and makes perfect sense to, those who believe the end justifies anything. Just this week President Obama met Michael Ignatieff, the leader of the Canadian opposition who wrote The Lesser Evil, a book which defended torture when used to protect the interests of the US. Then we wonder why the world accuses the West of perfidy.

This week Human Rights Watch publishes a report alleging that the British state is implicated in the torture of captured Muslims in Pakistan. UK intelligence and Foreign Office officials have questioned the prisoners whilst they were being processed says Pakistan’s feared Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). Ali Dayan Hasan, who directed this study, claims there was “systemic” cooperation. Some had nails pulled out and others went through much worse. In 2004, three British Muslim men, Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed were released without charge from Guantanamo. They had done the multi-destination tour that is popular with those waging war on terror by reproducing terror. Captured in Afghanistan they were tortured and allegedly interrogated by our SAS. And there is now a growing suspicion that our government has devised policies for this murky business. The countries that oblige us by taking and sorting out the troublesome ones include Pakistan and Afghanistan of course, and also other very good friends – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Israel – others too I am sure. And these special relationships go back a very long way.

In his disturbing and clearly evidenced book, The War on Truth, Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed traces the unholy games played with Islamicist terrorists by the US, and through acquiescence by the UK, flirting with them when it suited and then turning against them. Al-Qa’ida has been used as an instrument of western statecraft and for now is the enemy. Well, not quite. Pakistan’s ISI is quite chummy with the Bin Laden groupies and, well, we have to keep Pakistan on side as they know so many of our secrets. So it goes on.

Binyam Mohamed’s arrival will hopefully open this can of snakes and our government will be interrogated, though without screws and electrodes. If Miliband apologises we should sing the lines from Rihanna’s hit: “Don’t tell me you’re sorry ’cause you’re not; when I know you’re sorry you got caught”.

But what of those countries that tender for torture? Who calls them to account? The expert interrogators abroad practice on their own citizens. Egypt does this par excellence. Factories somewhere make the instruments too. Again there is little information of where these job opportunities are. And so torture spreads, endorsed by messianic democrats and activated by barbarians whose services are essential to keep us civilised. It works for both sides. The US and the UK can claim ignorance of what goes on in those dark cells pierced by screams; and obliging nations can do their business efficiently in countries without any transparency. There is a long history of such mutuality in evil. Apartheid had willing black operators; the transatlantic slave trade depended on black suppliers. These colluders always get away with it.

The UN Convention against Torture states: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

That absolute injunction still stands whatever happens to us in the West, including further terror attacks. And if we don’t hold its principle precious all is lost and there can be nothing left for any of us to live and die for.

y.alibhai-brown@independent.co.uk

Italy’s creeping fascism February 21, 2009

Posted by rogerhollander in Europe.
Tags: clerical fascism, democracy, eluana englaro, euthanasia, geoff andrews, giorgio napolitano, italian communist party, italy, italy fascism, italy neo-fascism, mussolini, pieo paolo pasolini, Pope benedict, roger hollander, Roman Catholic Church, Silvio Berlusconi, Vatican
add a comment

Geoff Andrews

The political use of a medical tragedy is the latest episode in Italy’s alarming regression, says Geoff Andrews.

19 – 02 – 2009, www.opendemocracy.net

The death of a young woman after seventeen years in a coma, following a decision by doctors on legal advice not to continue feeding her, is a public as well as a private event. In a mature democratic society, it would merit dignified ethical debate of a kind that might be expected to balance differing views and cut across party-political boundaries.

Italy, however, is different. The country is at present dominated by intolerant public discourses and veering towards authoritarian solutions; in this febrile atmosphere, such an event threatens to become a serious constitutional crisis. As the prime minister blames the president of the republic for the young woman’s death, and as leading politicians and Vatican representatives indulge in feverish rhetoric and stoke paranoia, what Pier Paolo Pasolini once called “clerical fascism” feels like apt social critique (see “The life and death of Pier Paolo Pasolini“, 1 November 2005).

Eluana Englaro was just 21 when she fell into a coma in January 1992 after a car accident. Her father and her friends always testified that her wish would have been to end her life rather than prolong it in a vegetative state. In November 2008, the court of cassation ruled that her feeding-tubes could be removed. On 3 February 2009 she was transferred to a clinic in Udine, northeast Italy, where she died on 9 February. Her father, Beppino, who is also currently nursing his seriously ill wife, was relieved that this particular journey had come to an end; he asked to be left alone in his grief.

In contemporary Italy, this proved a vain hope. The prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is as populist and opportunist as ever; he has used the occasion to refuel his political ambitions, revealing in the process his contempt for the rule of law and constitutional processes. The Vatican has exploited the case to reinforce its conservative agenda, castigating the voices of liberal and secular opinion.

Berlusconi had attempted to pass an emergency decree instructing doctors to continue feeding Englaro. The president of the republic, Giorgio Napolitano, rejected this; he asked that the law be respected and that changes to the legal and constitutional process could not be amended in such an arbitrary way and needed full consideration and the consent of both chambers of parliament.

Berlusconi and his allies responded by turning their fire on Napolitano for the president’s “serious mistake”, as well as on the judges for their temerity in upholding and protecting constitutional procedures. The prime minister attempted to rush through a new law that could be used to keep Eluana Englaro alive, something rendered null by the young woman’s death. There followed uproar in the Italian parliament, with right-wing politicians shouting “murderers” at the opposition; Berlusconi fed the pack by accusing the president of responsibility for her death.

The pope’s battalion

Pope Benedict XVI also entered the fray. Since his election in 2005, the pope has advanced a very traditional Catholic doctrine, condemning many features of modern living; free unions and trial marriages were the result of “anarchic freedoms” and “moral relativism”, while homosexuality was “an intrinsic moral evil”. His time in office has been marked with a series of controversial acts that have alienated a host of constituencies – the lecture at Regensburg in September 2006; the planned speech at Rome’s La Sapienza University in January 2008, which was cancelled after protests over comments made in 1990 about the trial of Galileo in 1633; criticism of Barack Obama for his views on abortion; and most recently the astonishing rehabilitation of four ultra-conservative bishops, including a holocaust-denier (see Maurice Walsh, “The Vatican’s debacle“, 16 February 2009).

In the Englaro case, the Vatican has revealed its full force as an unrestrained power with little respect for constitutional procedures or individual liberty. The pope’s spokesmen whipped up such frenzy in the wake of Englaro’s death that her funeral shrine was turned into a site of moral outrage directed towards those who had followed Italian law and her father’s wishes. “May the Lord embrace and forgive those who brought her to this point”, as Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican’s equivalent of health minister, put it.

Berlusconi had not previously shown much interest in defending Catholic morality, and indeed his multiple private interests have not always met with Vatican approval. However many believe his interventions reflect his ambition to assume the presidency at a later date. His hostility to Napolitano is not a surprise: he always opposed the latter’s election as head of state. But his rapprochement with the Vatican is a truly unholy alliance (see “Death in Udine“, Economist, 12 February 2009).

A dark return

Indeed, the alliance between the Vatican and Silvio Berlusconi reveals an older, threatening undercurrent in Italian politics. This is characterised by the arrogance of power and an unyielding belief that there are higher values capable of rendering liberal constitutional norms and democratic procedures irrelevant (see Sarah Pozzoli, “Who rules Italy?” 23 June 2005).

In recent times there seems to be a growing convergence between Berlusconi’s attacks on legality and constitutionalism and the Vatican’s hostility to secular society. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s stark description of the way in which the Vatican provided the legitimacy for the Christian Democrats’ (DC) long and manipulative hold on power and repression of dissident voices has acquired fresh relevance, even if the DC is no more.

Both Berlusconi and the Vatican have significant interests to defend. For the Vatican it is a declining authority over its subjects – opinion polls show that even many lay Catholics regard the Englaro affair as a private family matter. The Vatican has in the past been prepared to make dubious compromises in order to preserve its interests and power; the 1929 concordat with fascism is an example.

For Berlusconi, it is a further opportunity to berate and subdue his critics. Martin Jacques has compared him to Benito Mussolini – both have displayed a similar contempt for democracy, used parliament to protect their own interests, manipulated laws and attacks on anyone who got in their way (see “New Labour must recognise that Berlusconi is the devil“, Guardian, 16 March 2006). In the recent controversy, the links with the Vatican has provided legitimacy for the shift towards authoritarianism and intolerance, further apparent in the increasing restrictions on immigration and the demand that doctors and other public-sector professionals report anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant.

Against the tide

Italy’s creeping fascism has been aided by the opposition’s disarray. The new Democratic Party should be well placed to defend the integrity of the constitution, the supremacy of the rule of law and transparent democracy. Yet even the conviction on 17 February 2009 of the British tax lawyer David Mills for giving false evidence in return for a payment from Berlusconi seems to leave the prime minister himself untarnished, and the opposition unable to persuade the electorate of the dangers he poses – even if the fact that Berlusconi changed the law to avoid prosecution while he remains in office makes his opponents’ job harder.

The Democratic Party leader, Walter Veltroni, may have made constant favourable references to Barack Obama and aspired to create a modern European social-democratic movement. But the rhetoric cannot disguise the reality of a top-down party led by sectional interests, which is disabled by the contradiction between its Christian-democratic conservatism and its ambitions to escape from the old left. This “phantom opposition” has wasted the hopes it once raised, an outcome that has culminated in Veltroni’s announcement of his resignation on the evening of 17 February 2009 after an embarrassing election defeat in Sardinia.

At least the “old left”, in the form of the Italian Communist Party, sustained a strong defence of Italy’s anti-fascist tradition embodied in the post-war constitution. It is a mark of Italy’s decline that in the current dispute it has been the “post-fascist” speaker of the Italian lower house, Gianfranco Fini, and the leader of the secessionist Northern League, Umberto Bossi, who have intervened to defend the “integrity” of the constitution.

Those democratic parliamentarians able to offer a coherent and stringent defence of the Italian constitution have been reduced to a declining minority of dissenters. They include Italy’s former president, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro; Giorgio Napolitano himself, an aged dignitary who in his later years has assumed the role of a beleaguered representative of the anti-fascist constitution, and Antonio Di Pietro, the reforming judge whose earlier attempts to clean up Italian politics in the early 1990s have been largely forgotten by the Italian public and is generally regarded with disdain by Italy’s political class. But these in any case are marginalised voices in what is becoming a decayed and intolerant state.

older posts »

roger hollander

The Truth of UK’s Guilt Over Iraq November 28, 2009

Until Chilcot hears UN weapons inspectors’ testimony, the fiction of Britain honestly seeking a WMD smoking gun prevails

Ministers Must Explain Destruction of ‘Torture Flight’ Papers, Says Panel of MPs August 9, 2009

Foreign affairs select committee calls for disclosure on why Diego Garcia documents have vanished

Spain’s Judges Cross Borders in Rights Cases May 24, 2009

High-Ranking US Officials Among Targets of Inquiries

Britain responds to the “rule of law” nuisance March 27, 2009

Glenn Greenwald

G20 Protesters ‘Will Try to Bring London to Standstill’ March 21, 2009

Police fear anti-capitalist groups will seek violent confrontation on streets

Eyes wide shut: A look at British news censorship March 17, 2009

Britain’s bizarre reaction to war crimes allegations: investigations needed March 8, 2009

(updated below – Update II)

Guilty: Britain admits collusion, new torture claims emerge March 1, 2009

A depressing saga of secrets, lies and medieval horrors February 23, 2009

Italy’s creeping fascism February 21, 2009

Subscribe To My Blog!

Categories

Recent Posts

Pages

Archives

Recent Comments

Blogroll

Meta tag

Feeds