In January four British men, who had been seized following the events of 11 September 2001, were finally released from the US military torture camp in Guantanamo Bay.
Moazzam Begg, Feroz Abbasi, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar had been incarcerated there without charge or trial for over three years. They were denied any legal process or visits from friends and family. Throughout the period they underwent persistent beatings, death threats and psychological torture. Moazzam Begg was locked in solitary confinement for 19 months. His solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said ‘He looks like he has been to hell and back’. Feroz Abbasi was kept in isolation in a cramped cell without windows for 18 months. Even his guards were withdrawn in order to deny him any human contact. He suffered hallucinations and mental breakdowns. Martin Mubanga was kept in shackles for such long periods that he wet himself and was then forced to clean up his own urine. All the men reported that they were given injections that triggered psychoses. If they did not comply they feared further beatings. Their tormentors were not only the US military. On up to nine occasions they were interrogated by British MI5.
Despite their horrific ordeal the men were immediately arrested on their return to Britain and questioned under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act before being released the next day. This cruel fiasco had nothing to do with gaining information. The police were not going to find out anything that the torture at the Guantanamo Camp hadn’t already revealed. The police action had no purpose other than to maintain suspicion of guilt against the four men and thus try to justify their torture and imprisonment. This is in line with the wider strategy of US and British imperialism to generate an exaggerated fear of terrorist threat in order to carry out their military plunder abroad and to curtail civil liberties at home.
There are still 553 people imprisoned at Guantanamo, including at least six British residents whom the Labour government has refused to represent. Conditions and treatment there are so desperate that there have been 34 suicide attempts by prisoners since January 2002 and almost 500 incidents of self-harm in the last two years alone.
In Britain there are still 12 people being held without charge or trial in British prisons supposedly on suspicion of involvement with terrorism. This is despite a ruling by the Law Lords last year that such detention without trial contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights (see article on centre pages). The Labour government now plans to circumvent the Law Lords’ ruling by replacing detention without trial with control orders. These are planned to involve strict surveillance, curfew, electronic tagging, banning access to the internet and mobile phones and placing people under house arrest. The measures are likely to be applied not only to the ‘suspect’ but to his friends and family as well. The new Home Secretary Charles Clarke is also still considering the proposals of his predecessor, David Blunkett, that some trials may be held in secret, without juries and with defence lawyers having to be security vetted. All these proposed measures would apply to anyone suspected of ‘acts preparatory to terrorism’; a definition so loose as to include just about anyone who questions the power of the state. Which is precisely, of course, what they intend.
Jim Craven
FRFI 183 February / March 2005
