‘It is a long-standing principle of common law that confessions obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment cannot be used as evidence in any trial’ (Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, 22 August 2008).
The case of Binyam Mohamed has exposed yet again the collusion of British security services in torture, as well as the willingness of the British government to ride rough-shod over its legal and moral obligations in the interests of preserving its ‘special relationship’ with the United States.
Binyam Mohamed, the only British resident still held at the US Guantanamo concentration camp, faces trial on terrorism charges carrying a possible death penalty at a kangaroo court ‘military commission’. All the evidence is based on confessions extracted through torture. Mohamed was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002, where he was held without access to a lawyer until July; he was then the subject of extraordinary rendition to Morocco, where he was brutally tortured for 18 months – including having his penis slashed with a scalpel – at the behest of the US, before being flown back to Afghanistan, where he spent another nine months in the CIA’s ‘Dark Prison’ near Kabul and the US military prison at Bagram airbase. He arrived in Guantanamo in June 2004 where he has been kept almost permanently in isolation.
In April 2008, his lawyers asked the British government to disclose information which would help prove his case. The government refused, but the defence team sought a judicial review. On 22 August, against government arguments that there was a ‘national security risk’ inherent in releasing material and, outrageously, that Mohamed’s rights would be adequately safeguarded by the existing US legal system, the High Court found that that Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, was ‘under a duty’ to release the requested information in confidence to Binyam’s legal team. It ruled that Binyam had ‘established an arguable case’ that he had been ‘subject to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on behalf of the US’ and ‘was subject to torture…by or on behalf of the US’.
The court also noted the sinister involvement of British security forces. Much of the hearing was held behind closed doors. Witness B from the security services, who gave evidence in secret and at one point refused to answer questions because of possible self-incrimination for war crimes, worked with the US on questioning Mohamed in Pakistan and told Mohamed he would receive no help unless he cooperated fully. After his rendition to Morocco, the court found, British security services continued to ‘facilitate interviews…when they knew BM [Binyam Mohamed] was still incommunicado and when they must also have appreciated that he was not in a United States facility’.
The judgment describes US failure to respond to torture allegations as ‘untenable’. But the finding of British complicity is clear:
‘By seeking to interview BM in the circumstances described and supplying questions for his interviews, the relationship of the UK government to the US authorities…was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing’.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made it clear that if the documents were released in full, it would do ‘serious and lasting damage to the US–UK intelligence-sharing relationship and thus the national security of the UK’; Miliband concurred. The US has grudgingly agreed to the release of edited versions and the British government has been given more time to argue against the ruling on grounds of national security. Binyam Mohamed asks, with justifiable scepticism, ‘Those who tortured, rendered and now try me in kangaroo courts are actually going to hand over evidence of their criminal acts?’ Both Britain and the US will continue to duck and dive to conceal their complicity in war crimes and torture.
Cat Wiener
Letters of support should be sent to: Binyam Mohamed, ISN 1458, Camp Delta, US Naval Base, Guantanamo Bay, Washington DC 20355, USA. For more information go to www.reprieve.org.uk
FRFI 205 October / November 2008
