Extraordinary Rendition: SAS witness Ben Griffin gagged

[Justin]

Have a look at this article from the Daily Telegraph - could be a new recruit for us?

[xmasdale]

The Center for Constitutional Rights in the US have sent us this:

Dear Supporter,

Today CCR, with other five other leading human rights organizations, released a groundbreaking report on CIA secret detention programs and filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court demanding the disclosure of information concerning disappeared detainees, including ghost detainees and unregistered prisoners. Learn more about ghost detention.

President Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons in September 2006 at the same time as the U.S. transferred 14 detainees from these facilities to Guantánamo, including CCR client Majid Khan.

Today's lawsuit, filed after the government refused to comply with several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, seeks documents that provide information about government authorization of secret detention and extraordinary rendition policies and practices, the involvement of private contractors and non-governmental actors, the location of the prisons and identity of the prisoners, the types of interrogation methods used at the sites, and injuries suffered by detainees.

The report - "Off the Record: U.S. Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the 'War on Terror'" - compiles the most comprehensive list of people known or believed to be held in secret custody by the U.S. in prisons around the world and names four people not previously identified as having been held by the U.S. government in secret detention. "Off the Record" also highlights aspects of the CIA detention program that the U.S. government has actively tried to conceal, such as the locations where prisoners may have been held, the mistreatment they endured, the countries to which they may have been transferred for proxy detention, and the detention and abuse of spouses and children to gain information.

To read the entire report, go here.

The report is issued jointly by CCR, Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, NYU's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve. The suit was filed jointly by CCR, AIUSA and NYU's CHRGJ.

Please take the time to read this report and pass along this important information to your friends and colleagues. Help us shed light on the U.S.'s shameful secret detention program.

Sincerely,





Vincent Warren

Executive Director

[karlos]

In an echo of Guantanamo, the US is using secret ETHIOPEAN prisons to render terror suspects captured in the Horn of Africa.
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?storyID=7485
Zanzibar-born translator Kamilya Tuwein, who lives in the UAE, told The First Post in an exclusive interview how she was captured in northern Kenya on suspicion of being a member of al-Qaeda.

"I was in Kenya in a hotel on January 10 when police broke into the room with guns and arrested me. They took us to Mombasa, then Nairobi. When I arrived they said 'Welcome al-Qaeda'."

According to Kamilya she was then flown at night to the Somali capital Mogadishu where she was kept in an internment camp for ten days at a time when Ethiopian forces were invading the country.

Since December 2006 the US has opened up an African front in its war on terror - centred around Kenya, christopher thompson meets a victim of the latest front in America’s war on terror Ethiopia and Somalia - and caught many innocents in the crossfire. Central to the new strategy is the use of Ethiopian jails in the rendering and interrogation of terror suspects. Hundreds of these have been held incommunicado by the Ethiopian and Kenyan authorities on suspicion of terrorism, according to US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

They accuse the US of complicity in the maltreatment of these detainees in what the UK legal rights charity Reprieve has denounced as 'Africa's Guantanamo', using Ethiopia as an erstwhile ally in its invasion of neighbouring Somalia late last year. US special forces, along with Kenyan and Ethiopian authorities, have also been arresting suspects along the Kenyan/Somali border since December 2006. An unknown number have been sent to Ethiopia.

In March Ethiopia's Foreign Affairs Ministry acknowledged that 41people were held "after being captured by the joint forces of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and Ethiopia". It added that 29 were slated for release, including four Britons, and that there were no 'secret' prisons.

But flight manifests held by HRW show at least 85 people were deported from Kenya to Somalia on three planes chartered by two airlines, African Express Airways and Sudan's Bluebird Aviation, on January 20 and 27, and February 10. Meanwhile, according to former prisoners like Kamilya, Western intelligence agencies are taking advantage of the situation to conduct clandestine interrogations. "I was in Addis Ababa for six weeks. A US man interrogated me. When I asked him who he was, he didn't want to tell," said Kamilya.

Earlier this year the US Government denied the detentions were part of a
covert rendition programme but conceded that interviews with detainees have produced "valuable information". The new approach to Africa reflects a heightened concern among US policy-makers about the possibility of militant Islamist groups penetrating Africa, which is already home to large, albeit traditionally moderate, Muslim communities.

"The terrorist challenge has increased in Africa in the past year," said Professor Peter Pham, a US advisor on Africa to the Pentagon. "It's gotten a new lease of life." This concern is reflected in the Pentagon's construction of a new unified military command for Africa, dubbed Africom, due to be up and running before September this year, according to Pham. For those such as Kamilya, caught up as a new front in the 'war on terror' opens, there is little hope of explanation or compensation for their ordeals.

Now you see why Etiopea overturned election results. And attacked neighbouring Somalia. They are acting as america's latest proxy

[TonyGosling]

Short three minute clip from what was a brilliant investigation into the CIA's secret global prison network - and the post 9/11 'disappeared'.
Who said the mainstream media can't pull it out of the hat from time to time?


Link

11Jun - C4 Dispatches - "Kidnapped To Order"

C4 Dispatches - Kidnapped To Order
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/dispatches/kidnapped+to+order/55 2067
Dispatches exposes a new phase in America's dirty war on al Qaeda: the rendition and detention of women and children. Last year, President Bush confirmed the existence of a CIA secret detention programme but he refused to give details and said it was over.
Dispatches reveals new evidence confirming fiercely-denied reports that many of the CIA captives were held and interrogated in Europe. Those prisons may now be closed but the programme is by no means over, it's just changed. A new front has opened up in the Horn of Africa and America has outsourced its renditions to its allies.

PART 2
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xGXR1sswAcY

PART 3
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qjlIdabnSfA

[xmasdale]

Peter Tatchell has sent us his latest Guardian - Comment is Free article

> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:02:24 +0100
> From: tatchell.campaigns@googlemail.com
> Subject: Rendition, the movie – Watch and protest sauk
>
> Rendition, the movie – Watch and protest
>
The film Rendition dramatises the US President's secret policy of
kidnapping and torture
>
> By Peter Tatchell
>
> The Guardian - London, UK - Comment Is Free – 23 October 2007
>
> http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_tatchell/2007/10/rendition_t he_movie.html
>
>
> The film Rendition, which has opened at cinemas nationwide, is a
> thriller about an innocent Egyptian-American family who fall victim to
> the US government's criminal policy of "extraordinary rendition" - the
> kidnapping of people suspected of terrorism, their detention without
> trial and their torture
> in secret overseas prisons, so-called "black sites." It is the story
> of a great democracy bought low by evil men.
>
> Rendition is a fictional drama, not a documentary. But it reflects
> known facts about rendition – a policy, sanctioned by the US
> President, which involves the systematic, wilful violation of the US
> constitution and the Bill of Rights and the rule of law; as well as
> being illegal under the international laws against kidnapping and
> torture.
>
> Watch this film. It brings home the lawlessness and inhumanity of the
> so-called 'war on terror.' It reveals why so much of the world hates
> the hypocrisy of US, which preaches liberty but often practices
> tyranny. It exposes the way the US government is trampling on human
> rights. It shows why President George W Bush should be put on trial at
> the International Criminal Court
> on charges of kidnapping and torture.
>
> As Commander-in-Chief, the President bears personal responsibility in
> law for what the US military and intelligence services are doing in
> his name. Under the UN Convention Against Torture and the Rome Treaty,
> which established the International Criminal Court, anyone or commits,
> authorises, solicits, aids and abets or colludes with acts of torture
> – or other inhuman, cruel or degrading mistreatments - is committing a
> crime. Heads of State are explicitly not exempt from prosecution,
> according to the provisions of the International Criminal Court.
>
> Rendition may be a fictionalised cinematic account of US abuses, but
> it illuminates a fundamental truth: that the US government is involved
> in kidnapping and torture
>
> Filmed in Los Angeles, Washington DC, Marrakech and Cape Town, the
> movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, Alan Arkin, Peter
> Sarsgaard and Meryl Streep.
>
> Spanning two continents, Rendition is the story of Anwar El-Ibrahimi
> (played by Omar Metwally), an Egyptian-American chemical engineer
> whose family emigrated to the US when he was a boy, and who is now
> suspected of involvement in a terrorist conspiracy.
>
> Kidnapped by the US Central Intelligence Agency after stepping off a
> flight from Cape Town to Washington DC, he is flown to an unnamed
> North African country where he is subjected to brutal torture by the
> local secret police, in a bid to make him reveal the names of his
> co-conspirators.
>
> The local secret police are acting at the behest of the CIA and the US
> government, so that Washington can maintain the fiction that it does
> not practice or condone the use of torture.
>
> Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a CIA analyst based in the North
> African state, is assigned to supervise the interrogations. He
> eventually rebels against his superiors after witnessing first-hand
> the torture of Anwar El-Ibrahimi.
>
> Meanwhile, Anwar's pregnant wife Isabella El-Ibrahimi (Reese
> Witherspoon) does everything in her power to find her missing husband.
> She enlists the help of a politically-connected college friend, Alan
> Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), who is an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan
> Arkin). Smith uncovers the truth: that Anwar has been secretly
> spirited away, on the orders of the CIA's head of counter- terrorism,
> Corrinne Whitman (Meryl Streep), to a North African country for
> interrogation.
>
> Interwoven with this story is a sub-plot involving Abasi Fawal (Igal
> Naor), the head of the secret prison where Anwar is being interrogated
> and tortured by local police on behalf of the CIA. Abasi has a
> rebellious daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach), who's boyfriend, Khalid
> (Moa Khouas), is, unbeknown to her, an Islamic fundamentalist involved
> in a terrorist bomb plot.
>
> As a thriller, Rendition is good entertainment. But it is much more
> significant than a good night out at the cinema. It dramatises what
> has happened in real life to hundreds of families – many of them
> families of entirely innocent men who strayed into the wrong place at
> the wrong time, or who were victims of identification mix-ups.
>
> See this film. I hope it will make you angry enough to protest to your
> MP, and to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, at the way the British
> government is complicit with the criminality of US rendition policy.
>
> Our government – a Labour government, acting in our name – has allowed
> CIA rendition flights to refuel and over-fly the UK, including landing
> at RAF bases:
>
> http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?lang=e&id=ENGUSA20051215002
>
> http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,1725223,00.html
>
> Official secrecy prevents us from knowing the full truth, but our
> ministers and intelligence chiefs appear to have allowed US military
> communication centres in the UK to be used to coordinate the transfer
> of kidnap victims to places of violent interrogation. Since 2004,
> there have been testimonies, including from a retired US general, that
> the CIA has established secret jails and interrogation centres on the
> British overseas territory of Diego Garcia:
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,,2194650,00.html
>
> Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have allowed the US to do more or less
> what it wants on Diego Garcia. They have colluded with illegal
> rendition, detention without trial and the physical and mental abuse
> of prisoners on British sovereign territory. Labour's decision to keep
> parliament and the public in the dark suggests that it has something
> to hide. This cover-up reinforces the suspicion that acts of supreme
> wickedness are taking place in these "black sites" on Diego Garcia and
> elsewhere.
>
> Collusion with rendition is further evidence of Labour's fawning
> subservience to one of the most reactionary US Presidents in modern
> history. It's time Britain reclaimed its independence from Washington
> and pursued its own foreign policy, based on respect for human rights
> and the rule of law.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Tatchell is the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East
> http://www.greenoxford.com/peter and http://www.petertatchell.net
>
>
> PETER TATCHELL HUMAN RIGHTS FUND
>
> Donations are requested to help fund Peter Tatchell's campaigns
> promoting human rights, democracy and global justice.
> Peter is unpaid and receives no grants.
> To continue his human rights work, he depends on donations from
> friends and supporters.
>
> Please make cheques payable to: "Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund".
>
> Send to: Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund, PO Box 35253, London E1 4YF
>
> To download a donation form or a standing order mandate, go to Donations at:
> http://www.tatchellrightsfund.org
>
> To email PTHRF:
> info@tatchellrightsfund.org
>
> Thank you. Richard Kirker, Treasurer PTHRF
>
> For information about Peter Tatchell's campaigns:
> http://www.petertatchell.net

[Mark Gobell]

Robert Fisk in The Independent

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3124292.ece

[Wokeman]

SAS soldier blows apart Miliband denial of Torture

According to news in The Guardian, Friday, February 29th, Richard Norton-Taylor reports that former SAS soldier Ben Grffin who couragously reported examples of torture of prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, "could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law.
He told a press conference hosted by Stop the War colition this week that individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Guantanamo Bay. He had not witnessed torture himself but added: "I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured."
The Ministry of Defence said it did not comment on special forces activities.

[TonyGosling]

Very important story which the Guardian, to their credit, led with today


Link

[Ravenmoon]

[Newspeak International]

Link

[fish5133]

Brave man. Pray for his well being.

[wepmob2000]

If Ben Griffin is who he says he is, then this is a seriously brave thing he's done. What are the odds of him being permanently 'gagged' by an unexplained 'accident' in the next few months?

[uselesseater]

It's ok.

In todays world of Reality Creation Milliband can simply say 'well i don't agree with that' and all is well.

[marky 54]

i thought the saying that justified bad things or illegal things was "i believe its the right thing to do" "we believe its the right thing to do"

it seems to be the saying that justifys everything and anything no matter how immoral or illegal.

blair said it throughout the lead up to the iraq war. and ive heard others use it when confronted about the EU etc.

regardless you are right. they are simply tatics or sayings to dodge questions or doing what is right.

[IanFantom]

Amnesty International has just issued a report titled:
STATE OF DENIAL
EUROPE’S ROLE IN RENDITION
AND SECRET DETENTION

It's a pretty damning report, and the pdf is at
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR01/003/2008/en/2ceda343-41d a-11dd-81f0-01ab12260738/eur010032008eng.pdf

There's a write-up on it in EU Observer at http://euobserver.com/9/26389/?rk=1

[outsider]

Ben Griffin is running to be Jury Team candidate in European election. As a whistleblower, and with a strong interest in our cause, I hope you'll support him.

http://www.juryteam.org

Launched in mid March 2009, the Jury Team was founded for those people who believe in democracy, but who have observed how the current party political system has turned the United Kingdom's Parliament and Government into the creatures of a small and increasingly distant group of oligarchical politicians.

Hello

I am currently running to become the Jury Team candidate for London in the upcoming European election.

You can view my profile at http://www.juryteam.org/candidate-profile.php?id=10063

In order to become the Jury Team candidate I need to come first in a text vote.

If you would like me to become the Jury Team candidate for London then please, text BENGRI01 to 86837.

Kind Regards

Ben Griffin

text BENGRI01 to 86837

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Is this Jury Team a serious political movement?
From the video, seems like they're making fun of themselves.
And with a globalist 'dot org'.
http://www.juryteam.org/

[outsider]

[Contrarian]

UK gov is occupied now as is US EU etc.

Milliband, Mandelson - these people are pure evil.

[QuitTheirClogs]

Secretary Gates signs order barring release of torture photos

By Stephen C. Webster
Saturday, November 14th, 2009 -- 12:00 pm
http://rawstory.com/2009/11/secretary-gates-signs-order-barring-releas e-torture-photos/

Pursuant to new powers delegated to him by Congress, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has executed an order blocking the release of photos depicting the torture of detainees. In doing so, it becomes highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will further consider making the photos public, as a lower court had ordered.

In a new supplemental brief [PDF link] filed with the high court, the administration's attorneys argue that the new law Congress passed to allow Gates this authority effectively exempts the photos from the Freedom of Information Act, therefore invalidating an earlier lawsuit.

"It now seems likely that today's action will put an end to the issue, making it unnecessary for the court to hear the case," MSNBC reported.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sought the photos' release, had urged Secretary Gates to release the photos. In an open letter [PDF link], the ACLU said the images must be seen because they show the "pervasiveness" of abuse across Iraq and Afghanistan and that it was "aberrational."

"The government has previously asserted that disclosing these photographs poses risks in part because it is a 'particularly critical time' in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan," ACLU attorneys Jameel Jaffer and Alexander A. Abdo noted at the letter's conclusion. "We accordingly ask that you review any decision to withhold any photographs every ninety days to account for changing circumstances."

"In order to withhold the photos, Gates simply had to certify, as he did in the court filing, that 'public disclosure of these photographs would endanger citizens of the United States, members of the United States Armed Forces, or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States,'" Mother Jones reporter Nick Baumann noted. "In other words, their release had to endanger someone, somewhere. And in the unlikely event that Gates had to stretch the truth to make that certification, it wouldn't matter, since there's no provision in the law that allows any court to review Gates' determination or rule on whether it was truthful."

In a release condemning the president's signature of the law allowing Gates to block the photos, Jaffer continued: "Secretary Gates should be guided by the importance of transparency to the democratic process, the extraordinary importance of these photos to the ongoing debate about the treatment of prisoners and the likelihood that the suppression of these photos would ultimately be far more damaging to national security than their disclosure. The last administration's decision to endorse torture undermined the United States' moral authority and compromised its security. A failure to fully confront the abuses of the last administration will only compound these harms."

The Supreme Court is expected to react by Monday.

[TonyGosling]

UN takes aim at British terror role
Wednesday 27 January 2010
'by Paddy McGuffin

The United Nations have condemned Britain for its role in the kidnapping, illegal detention and torture of terrorist suspects.

In an investigation spanning 19 countries, four independent UN bodies interviewed victims of secret detention and canvassed governments in order to understand and redress the victims' plight.

A UN report, published by the body's human rights council on Wednesday, found that Britain knew about US rendition practices as far back as 2002 yet continued to hand prisoners over for torture and was complicit in such abuse on three continents.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/86 108

The committee further found that Britain had knowingly received information obtained by interrogations at "ghost" detention sites and it questioned the way British security services are policed and investigated.

UN specialists interviewed former prisoners and torture victims including former Guantanamo and Bagram prisoners Moazzam Begg, Binyam Mohamed and Omar Deghayes who allege British secret service complicity in their torture and abuse.

Commenting on the UN findings, legal action charity Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith said: "Sadly, our government has teamed up with unscrupulous, mafia-like regimes that are in the habit of disappearing people, using information extracted by violence, keeping secrets and protecting their thugs and cronies.

"It is shameful that it takes a UN report to reveal these shoddy practices to the British people."

The very least the government should do is publish its official guidance on intelligence gathering, he said.

But the allegations were strongly refuted by the Foreign Office. A spokesman said it rejected the report as "unsubstantiated and irresponsible.

"The most galling aspect of the report is that, despite being asked in successive meetings with officials to substantiate their claims and provide us with information which would allow us to investigate the allegations, no significant information was provided," he said.

He added that it contained "no new information and repeats unproven allegations as if they were fact."

Amnesty International UK campaigns director Tim Hancock said: "This report is just the latest to shed light on the murky business of the UK's complicity with the secret rendition programme.

"What we now need is a change of policy from our government and an end to its repeated attempts to bury information on rendition.

"Instead of thwarting efforts to discover whether UK officials were part of a programme, any responsible government must now allow a full, independent investigation into this crucial issue."

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2010/01/445054.mp3

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

British government suppressing key documents on allegations of UK collusion in torture and rendition

Files reveal Tony Blair and Jack Straw discussed treatment of British detainees in Guantanamo with US officials
James Hanning 18 hours ago
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-government-suppr essing-key-documents-on-allegations-of-uk-collusion-in-torture-and-ren dition-a6914666.html

A prisoner is taken for questioning at Guantanamo Getty
Key documents that could shed light on allegations of UK collusion in torture and rendition are being suppressed by the British government. The newly uncovered files include confidential exchanges between former PM Tony Blair and former president George Bush about treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. Possibly most significant are five other documents, communications between the former UK foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, expressing interest and concern about the welfare and legal status of UK detainees at Guantanamo.

While the documents may relate to casual expressions of care for the welfare of UK citizens, former detainees have alleged that British officials have either been present at, or submitted questions for, “extreme” interrogation by US officials. The US government has been required to make public a large number of files which relate to British involvement in the treatment of prisoners in the years following the 9/11 bombings.

Litigation continues across multiple US departments over the possible release of mainly intelligence-derived documentation. But 12 documents found in the US State Department’s search, not derived from intelligence, were also withheld. These relate to interventions by British politicians and officials over the treatment of detainees and interrogation techniques. In court papers, the State Department reported: “After reviewing the documents, the UK Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office requested that all 12 documents be withheld in full from public disclosure.”

The revelation will surprise campaigners, who are accustomed to hearing that the release of confidential documents by Whitehall would go against established protocol whereby a country (eg the US) is entitled to have intelligence documents it has shared with another country kept secret. On this occasion, the US has explicitly stated that the UK is preventing publication.

The documents, which appear not to have been seen by either the Chilcot inquiry into the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the 2007 Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) inquiry into rendition, have come to light as a result of a lawsuit by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition. In 2008, the group’s chairman, Andrew Tyrie MP, started legal proceedings against seven US departments and agencies, including the FBI, Interpol and the CIA, under freedom of information legislation. The group asked the State Department to supply files on “the circumstances and extent of participation in (rendition) programmes by the UK” and on the US’s control and treatment of detainees. The State Department initially refused to release any information relating to the 12 documents, but relented on the day they were due for review by a US court but giving only imprecise details of their content.

The issue of extraordinary rendition (the state-arranged kidnap and cross-border transporting of individuals for interrogation) has long been controversial. In the US its practice was initially denied and then admitted. In 2005, Mr Straw, then Foreign Secretary, said “there simply is no truth” in claims of UK involvement in rendition. But three years later, his successor David Miliband said: “I am very sorry indeed to have to report to the House [of Commons] the need to correct those and other statements on the subject.”

One legal case that stalled a full investigation into UK involvement in rendition was that of Abdelhakim Belhadj, an opponent of Libya’s then president Muammar Gaddafi, who was rendered to Libya in 2004. A letter later emerged from a senior MI6 official to the head of Libyan intelligence, describing the UK’s apparent delivery of Belhadj into Libyan hands as “the least we could do”. Mr Belhadj is still trying to pursue a civil claim for damages in the English courts.

The Gibson report, an inquiry into the possible UK involvement in redition set up in 2010, was curtailed and published incomplete because of legal cases such as Mr Belhadj’s. Of the 12 documents revealed in outline on 6 March, the Gibson report refers to just three. Apart from the five exchanges between Mr Straw and Mr Powell, the documents contain the following:

* A letter from a British embassy official to a State Department counterpart about a possible visit to Guantanamo to visit UK detainees.

* A three-page letter from Mr Blair to Mr Bush in November 2003 about legal procedures for processing UK detainees at Guantanamo.

Gitmo: The Movie - Inside Guantánamo Bay
6
show all
* A further letter from Mr Blair to Mr Bush in December 2004 on conditions for the return of UK detainees to the UK.

* A letter from Condoleezza Rice, then assistant to the president for national security, to Sir Nigel Sheinwald, foreign affairs adviser to Mr Blair, dated March 2004, about the conditions for the transfer of British nationals detained in Guantanamo.

* A two-page letter from then Foreign Secretary David Miliband to Ms Rice in 2007 about Guantanamo detainees with links to the UK.

* A two-page letter from then UK Foreign Secretary William Hague to Hillary Clinton, dated July 2010, expressing concern about Guantanamo.

In 2010, Mr Miliband admitted to The Independent on Sunday: “The facts are that bad things were done by the Americans after 2002 and they didn’t tell anyone else.” Last night Mr Tyrie said: “Either these documents are insignificant – which seems unlikely as the State Department thought them relevant – or they are highly significant. If there is concern about the names of British officials being revealed, those can easily be redacted.

7-guantanamo-torture-get.jpg
Key documents that could shed light on allegations of UK collusion in torture and rendition are being suppressed by the British government (Getty)
“The ISC and Gibson should have seen these documents already, and – bar three of them – it seems they haven’t. As each piece of new information about the scale of UK complicity has come to light, it has usually been accompanied by a reassurance that this is the full extent of the UK facilitation of the US programme of kidnap and torture. The conclusions of the 2007 ISC report were shown to be misleading and inaccurate by the Binyam Mohamed litigation …. It is likely that only a judge-led inquiry can get to the bottom of this.”

READ MORE
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Activists demand arrest of prince accused of torture during Bahrain
Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London and author of a book on post-9/11 torture told the IoS last night: “The failure to disclose the full contents of these documents, several of which seem to be newly identified, will serve only to fuel suspicion of a cover-up. Facts, rumour and allegation meld seamlessly into an unhappy story that undermines our supposed commitment to the rule of law and an end to impunity.

“The Government should support Andrew Tyrie in his efforts, and cauterise the festering wound that is the allegation of UK complicity in torture: since the US seems to have no objection, all these documents should be published now.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “We will never defeat evil in the world by covering up our own Government’s past complicity in torture. The Prime Minister must take a lead from one of his most respected MPs. Every day this shameful cover-up continues makes it a little harder to win the ideological war against Isis.”

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “The UK government stands firmly against torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment or punishment. The Intelligence and Security Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into detainee issues. The UK government is co-operating fully with this review.”

More about: RenditionTortureCIAWar On TerrorBritish governmentMiddle EastUSAmericas

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Government ‘leaked details from major rendition report to distract from criticism’, says senior MP

'These are not the government's reports to trail or leak as they wish,' states Dominic Grieve
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rendition-report-tortu re-interrogation-mi6-uk-government-mi5-a8417741.html

Kim Sengupta Defence Editor

Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) chairman Dominic Grieve said it was 'unacceptable' the government had briefed the media ( PA )
A powerful Commons committee behind a report on rendition due to be published this week has accused Theresa May’s government of leaking details from the document to “draw the sting” from strong criticism it is believed to contain about British policy on arrest and torture of terrorist suspects.

Members of the Intelligence and Security Committee believe that claims which have emerged that the US administration censored the report came from the British government in an attempt to divert attention from the UK’s culpability in rendition.

The report, in two parts, was sent to Downing Street on 10 May. In a highly unusual move the committee chairman, Dominic Grieve, spoke about the document before its publication.

Key documents on rendition suppressed by UK government

He said: “I find it unacceptable that the government has briefed the media on our reports before they are published. These are not the government’s reports to trail or leak as they wish.

“The government is, exceptionally, given sight of the reports ahead of publication so that they can check there is nothing in them which could harm UK national security.

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“The draft reports should have been kept on an exceptionally tight distribution within the government. It appears that procedure has been abused in order to leak details of the reports, so as to draw the sting on Thursday.”

It has been claimed that the Trump administration had demanded that certain information about joint and American operations should be deleted from the final draft of the report. Mr Grieve said: “I am – exceptionally – making a comment ahead of the publication of the report because I believe that otherwise we risk attention being distracted from the key headlines in those reports.”

Mr Grieve continued: “The committee has agreed to redact just one word in over 300 pages to meet a US security concern. On Thursday I will happily point you to where those asterisks are in the report and you can see for yourself that it is not a central issue, nor a controversial issue.


“The committee does not agree to redact material in its reports on the grounds of embarrassment to anyone. So I can assure you that the US has not made wholesale redactions to the reports, as suggested. I believe that the report makes a very strong statement, and I hope that attention will be rightly focused on that and there will be no further attempts to distract from it.”

Attorney general apologises on behalf of Theresa May to Libyan man who was tortured after MI6 helped with his kidnapping
It is believed that the report will recommend major changes in operations by Britain’s intelligence and security services abroad and greater scrutiny and acceptance of responsibility by ministers of the activities of the officers. It is also expected to criticise Downing Street blocking interviews with individual officers and insisting that only very senior staff would be allowed to talk to the committee.

An original inquiry into rendition was ordered by David Cameron soon after he became prime minister in 2010 amid demands for examination of collusion in abuse between Tony Blair’s government and George W Bush’s administration during the war on terror following the 9/11 attacks.


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Mr Cameron told the Commons that he was “determined to get to the bottom of what happened” and dismissed Labour’s stance, declaring: “I do not think for a moment that we should believe that the ISC should be doing this piece of work.”

The investigation, carried out by retired High Court judge Sir Peter Gibson, would, said the then-prime minister, be “short and sharp”.

Sir Peter concluded that British intelligence officers were instructed by their superiors not to interfere in torture of prisoners by US agents. His interim report, 540 pages long, was sent to Downing Street where it was eventually published in December 2013. The inquiry was then sent to the ISC for review and completion.

The human rights group Reprieve called for a public inquiry into rendition. It said in a statement: “In order to get to the truth and maintain public confidence, there must be an inquiry that meets the basic test of independence from government and which has the powers and scope necessary to ensure all appropriate evidence is examined.

“The chairperson should have absolute discretion over whether hearings are public and whether any redactions are made to the final report. The inquiry should have full legal powers to compel the production of evidence.”