On 16 November the Coalition government staged a massive, if costly, cover-up for the previous Labour administration’s and British secret services’ complicity in torture and illegal rendition. Announcing that the government would be paying out millions of pounds to 16 former Guantanamo detainees in full settlement of their civil cases, Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke said that it would ‘draw a line’ under claims of British connivance in torture and abuse and was ‘not an admission of culpability’. Rather, he insisted, it was to avoid a protracted and expensive civil process that would take up to five years, cost between £30m to £50m and ‘compromise national security’.
In reality, the ‘mediated settlement’, which is subject to a legally-binding confidentiality agreement, will prevent the disclosure to the high court of any further secret – and deeply embarrassing – documents showing beyond a shadow of doubt that former Labour ministers, in particular Tony Blair and Jack Straw, were closely involved in the decision-making process that led to suspects being abducted and illegally rendered to CIA-run torture centres such as Bagram airbase in Afghanistan and Guantanamo concentration camp, and allowed the interrogation of such suspects by, or on behalf of, MI5 and MI6. In effect, the British government has handed war criminals a ‘get out of jail free card’.
Literally, in the case of ‘Witness B’, the only MI5 officer ever to face investigation for complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed. Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer has decided there is insufficient evidence to prosecute this intelligence agent, who visited Mohamed in jail in Pakistan, saw clear evidence of torture and advised Mohamed that, if he did not cooperate, he would be sent somewhere worse. Mohamed was then sent to Morocco to be tortured, including having his genitals slashed with a scalpel. MI5 chief John Evans welcomed the ruling, calling Witness B a ‘dedicated public servant’ and regretting he had had to ‘endure this long and difficult process’.
The payout sparked an outcry from the media, politicians and social commentators. But when they chorus ‘Never again!’, they do not, of course, mean the beatings, water-boarding, sexual abuse, sensory deprivation, religious discrimination and mutilation meted out to detainees with the full knowledge and collusion of British security officers and ministers. They mean: never again must this become public knowledge. And Kenneth Clarke has rushed to oblige: a green paper, to become law next summer, has been drafted to ensure the courts are never again able to make public secret documents detailing the criminal activities of the intelligence services.
However, there are further civil proceedings in the pipeline on behalf of detainees illegally detained, tortured and then questioned by British intelligence officers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria and Egypt. Meanwhile, the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa will reach its conclusion next year and a second inquiry will open into the death of other Iraqi men during one night’s interrogation by British troops. The high court is considering whether to open a third inquiry into the activities of a secret military prison near Basra after receiving evidence of abuse by military interrogators. The rotten barrel of Labour policy on torture during the ‘War on Terror’ is leaking at every juncture, and every new disclosure proves that Tony Blair and Jack Straw are war criminals and should be brought to justice.
Charge Tony Blair and Jack Straw for war crimes!
Oppose the cover-up on torture
Free British resident Shaker Aamer, still detained in Guantanamo
Cat Alison
