UK

British inquiry shown graphic evidence of Iraq torture

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Published March 5, 2013, in Iraq, Torture, UK

By Estelle Shirbon

LONDON (Reuters) – A public inquiry in London into allegations that British soldiers killed, mutilated and tortured Iraqi detainees after a battle in southern Iraq was shown gruesome photographs of bloodied corpses on Monday.

The Al-Sweady Inquiry, ordered by the British government in 2009 to get to the bottom of disputed events in the aftermath of the battle of Danny Boy on May 14, 2004, began oral hearings after three years of exhaustive detective work.

The allegations are that soldiers captured a number of Iraqis during fighting near the Danny Boy checkpoint, about 5 km (three miles) from the town of Majar al-Kabir, and took them to the Camp Abu Naji base, where some were murdered and others tortured.

The military denies any unlawful killings or ill-treatment in the aftermath of the battle.

A decade after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the issues of why the British military got involved and how the war was conducted are still hotly debated in Britain.

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British terror suspects quietly stripped of citizenship… then killed by drones

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Published March 2, 2013, in Extrajudicial killings, UK

FD Editor’s Note:  I didn’t think any country could rival the USA for Islamophobia.  The UK takes this one.  I do hope and pray that this is not next on our agenda here in the US.  Then again, Obama really had no problem with murdering the two American citizens by drone.  I suppose the UK is just trying to be proper about it.

By Chris Woods, Alice K Ross and Oliver Wright

dronesThe Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American drone attacks.

An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism for The Independent has established that since 2010, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, has revoked the passports of 16 individuals, many of whom are alleged to have had links to militant or terrorist groups.

Critics of the programme warn that it allows ministers to “wash their hands” of British nationals suspected of terrorism who could be subject to torture and illegal detention abroad.

They add that it also allows those stripped of their citizenship to be killed or “rendered” without any onus on the British Government to intervene.

At least five of those deprived of their UK nationality by the Coalition were born in Britain, and one man had lived in the country for almost 50 years. Those affected have their passports cancelled, and lose their right to enter the UK – making it very difficult to appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision. Last night the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Simon Hughes said he was writing to Ms May to call for an urgent review into how the law was being implemented.

The leading human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce said the present situation “smacked of mediaeval exile, just as cruel and just as arbitrary”.

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UK pays out millions to Iraqi torture victims

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Published December 21, 2012, in "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques", Detainee, Iraq, Iraqi Detainee, Torture, UK

Britain has paid out $22.7m to Iraqis who accused UK troops of illegally detaining and torturing them following the 2003 invasion.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) on Thursday confirmed a report in the Guardian newspaper which revealed that the government had given compensation to 205 complainants over the last five years, with more than 700 claims expected next year.

“We will compensate victims of abuse where it is right to do so and seek to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice“- MoD spokesperson

Some $13.4m was paid to 162 Iraqis this year, with the average settlement being $113,500 plus costs.

The claims stem back to the five-year occupation of the southeast of the country and have mostly been brought by male civilians who claim they were beaten, threatened and deprived of sleep before being interrogated by British troops.

The ministry confirmed the payouts but defended Britain’s record in Iraq.

“Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast majority have conducted themselves with the highest standards of integrity and professionalism,” said a spokesperson.

“All allegations of abuse will always be investigated thoroughly. We will compensate victims of abuse where it is right to do so and seek to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.”

In 2010, the ministry set up the the Iraq Historical Allegations Team (IHAT), which is examining the possibility of criminal charges related to the abuse allegations.

IHAT has paid particular attention to the actions of a military intelligence unit called the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT).

JFIT interrogators filmed themselves threatening and abusing detainees, who appeared in footage to be bruised too tired to stand up. IHAT referred three soldiers to the Service Prosecuting Authority but prosecutors judged that that the incidents did not warrant war-crimes charges.

They ruled that one interrogator had committed offences, but that they were “in accordance with the training that they had been given” and warned against prosecution. A former JFIT guard told the Guardian that he was ordered to drag blindfolded prisoners around assault courses where they could not be filmed.

“[Rather than] a small number of mis-behaving individuals, rights groups say it was a systematic and systemic problem,” said Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from London. 

“They say the training that troops had been put through led to these problems, [creating] the kind of environment where abuse might happen … that it was not just a few bad apples.”

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Court rules US rendition ‘unlawful’

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Published November 2, 2012, in Afghanistan, Rendition, UK, Younas Rehmatullah

The handing over of a Pakistani national by Britain to the US and his continued detention without trial were found by the Supreme Court to be unlawful and potentially a war crime.

Yunus Rahmatullah was detained by British forces in Iraq in 2004 and handed to the US who renditioned him to Bagram airbase in Afghanistan where he remains without charge or trial despite having been found to pose no further threat in 2010.

Legal action charity Reprieve successfully sought a writ of habeas corpus compelling Britain to seek Mr Rahmatullah’s release arguing that as the detaining power it retained responsibility for his well-being.

The US failed to act on the writ and it was subsequently discharged.

Efforts to get the writ reinstated failed today.

However, in a damning ruling, the Supreme Court dismissed the British government’s appeal to overturn the decision to grant the writ and criticised its failure, on three occasions, to request Mr Rahmatullah’s return.

The panel suggested that these failings may amount to a war crime, stating that Mr Rahmatullah’s rendition to Afghanistan was a prima facie breach of article 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention and therefore “his continued detention post-transfer is unlawful.”  

The British government entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the US, in which it was explicitly stated that it could seek the return of any detainee handed over on request.

The court found Britain should have demanded Mr Rahmatullah’s return firstly when it found out he had been unlawfully transferred to Afghanistan, again when the US decided he no longer needed to be detained and finally when the US declared the war in Iraq over.

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Torture UK: why Britain has blood on its hands

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Published October 20, 2012, in Torture, Torture flights, UK

By Ian Cobain
 When the US and its allies went to war in Afghanistan in 2001, it was inevitable that a small number of those captured on the battlefield would be British. For more than a decade, MI5 had been aware that British Muslims had been travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan in what it saw as a form of jihadi tourism that posed no threat to the UK. All that changed after 9/11. 

Among the Britons who were picked up in the wake of the attacks was a man called Jamal al-Harith. Born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester in 1966, Harith had converted to Islam in his 20s and travelled widely in the Muslim world before arriving in Afghanistan. After 9/11, he had been imprisoned by the Taliban, who suspected him of being a British spy. At one point he and several other prisoners were forced to share their large cell with a horse that had offended a local Taliban leader in some ill-defined way. A British journalist found Harith languishing in the prison in January 2002 and alerted British diplomats in Kabul, believing they would arrange his repatriation. Instead, they arranged for him to be detained by US forces, who took him straight to an interrogation centre at Kandahar.

Harith then spent two years at Guantánamo, being kicked, punched, slapped, shackled in painful positions, subjected to extreme temperatures and deprived of sleep. He was refused adequate water supplies and fed on food with date markings 10 or 12 years old. On one occasion, he says, he was chained and severely beaten for refusing an injection. He estimates he was interrogated about 80 times, usually by Americans but sometimes by British intelligence officers.

Nine months after his release, Harith issued a statement in which he said he was still in pain as a result of the beatings he received before interrogation. “The irony is that when I was first told in Afghanistan that I would be in the custody of the Americans, I was relieved. I thought that I would then be properly dealt with and returned home without much delay.”

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Human rights abuses could be covered up under new justice bill proposals

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Published February 11, 2012, in human rights, UK, UK Lies

Lawyers criticise changes that could cloak sensitive information about state complicity in torture and threaten open trials

Toby Helm

Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke is pushing ahead with the proposals despite
opposition from special advocates Photograph: David Jones/PA

Ministers and the intelligence services will be able to cover up sensitive information relating to the state’s complicity in torture and secret rendition, under controversial plans likely to be included in the Queen’s Speech in May.

Sources at the Ministry of Justice say the plans, first outlined in a green paper in October last year, are likely to be included in a justice bill in the next session of parliament in a move that critics say will fundamentally undermine Britain’s tradition of open justice.

The plan could mean that so-called closed material procedures – in which secret evidence is withheld from the claimant and the press in a closed court – would be introduced more widely into civil law. This would allow the government or its agencies to defend serious allegations knowing that damaging information would never emerge.

Examples of cases which opponents say could be held under such procedures include those where torture victims sue the government, where inquests are held relating to soldiers killed by friendly fire, or where actions are lodged alleging police negligence.

The claimants would be represented by special advocates who would be barred from discussing the evidence with them. The government is pushing ahead despite the fact that out of 69 currently appointed special advocates, 57 have signed a response hitting out at the proposal – saying there is no reason to justify such sweeping changes.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which will launch a campaign against the plans on Tuesday, said: “What bitter irony if the government’s answer to the worst excesses of the ‘war on terror’ were an even bigger, darker cloak over the secret state. If these proposals represent the agencies’ response to concerns about complicity in torture, they are surely either unnecessary or dangerous.

“If flirtation with extraordinary rendition was an aberration after 9/11, why wreck the whole civil justice?”

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How Labour secretly put Libyan dissidents under house arrest at Gaddafi’s behest following Blair’s ‘deal in the desert’

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Published September 10, 2011, in Libya, UK, UK Lies

By Ian Birrell and Abul Taher

Labour used controversial control orders to put Libyan dissidents in Britain under house arrest – at the behest of Colonel Gaddafi. 

The revelation will revive the debate about the draconian anti-terrorism measures and raise questions over whether they have been misused as tools of international diplomacy. 

The disclosure, in documents abandoned in the British Ambassador’s residence in Tripoli, suggests at least 12 UK-based opponents of Gaddafi may have been double-crossed by the Labour Government.

 'Family man': A picture of Gaddafi and daughter Aisha, now 35, found at his Tripoli home‘Family man’: A picture of Gaddafi and daughter Aisha, now 35, found at his Tripoli home

More than 50 Libyan dissidents won asylum in Britain 15 years ago, at a time when Gaddafi was an international pariah.

But after Tony Blair signed his infamous ‘deal in the desert’ in 2004, bringing Gaddafi in from the cold, several people were designated a terrorist risk and put under house arrest. The documents suggest their alleged crimes were ‘passport forgery’ and ‘fundraising for relatives’.

 Now some of those dissidents have returned to Libya as part of the Allied-backed operation to install a new pro-Western administration.

Tory MP David Davis, who was Shadow Home Secretary when control orders were introduced, said: ‘It looks as if the Labour Government used control orders as a way of appeasing Gaddafi by handicapping his opponents, rather than as a way of protecting the safety of British citizens. There should be a proper inquiry.’

 

 

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British spy agencies agreed to pay Guantanamo Bay detainees millions

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Published August 7, 2011, in Guantanamo, UK

British spy agencies likely agreed to pay former detainees at Guantanamo Bay millions of dollars from their own budget, new accounts show.

Details of the payments by M15 and M15 are revealed in the accounts for the security and intelligence agencies, published this week.

They show that the agencies spent £13.7 million ($U.S. 22.4 million) on “losses and special payments” in the 12 months to the end of March this year and about $19.6 million of this is estimated to have gone to legal claims by former detainees.

The Telegraph reports:

A note to the accounts says the sum was swelled by “an SIA [Security and Intelligence Agencies] contribution to a payment in respect of legal claims in excess of £250k”.

The actual figure paid to the Britons is not given, because of a confidentiality agreement with the lawyers of the former terrorist suspects.

It is thought that around £12 million (U.S. $19.6 million)  is likely to have been paid to the Guantánamo Bay suspects.

This is because the agencies have, on average, spent £1.5 million a year on losses and special payments over the past five years. The total compensation figure paid to 16 Britons, who were suing the government, is likely to be about £14 million, and will have been swelled by payments from other departments.

The former detainees have denied wrongdoing.

The men had claimed that the government had allowed them to be sent to be mistreated  tortured at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay.

The government has said it cannot reveal the details of any legal settlements with former detainees.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said: “For legal reasons we cannot comment on the details of any settlement the Government came to with former Guantánamo detainees.’’

The legal settlement was first announced by Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, to the House of Commons last November.

The payouts also were made to another four men who were not involved in the court cases but could have sued, the Telegraph says.

Meanwhile, lawyers for the men detained at Guantanamo Bay said they would not co-operate with an inquiry into Britain’s conduct as it pursued terrorism suspects after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. unless they were able to question spies and other witnesses, Associated Press reports.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered a sweeping investigation into allegations that British officials may have colluded in the mistreatment torture of detainees held overseas.

However, most intelligence officials are expected to appear in private and the government would have the final say on making sensitive documents public.

In a joint letter of objection sent to the inquiry’s legal chief, lawyers said the rules meant former detainees and their legal representatives would not have the chance to question spies or government ministers.

Source

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“Media and authorities aid anti-Muslim hatred in UK”

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Published August 7, 2011, in Islamophobia, UK

Hassan Ghani, Press TV, London

The actions of Anders Breivik in Norway have sent shockwaves across Europe, particularly here in the UK. Breivik claimed to have held links with far right groups in England, and shared their opposition to Islam. But fresh research into attitudes amongst Muslims indicates that they feel the authorities have failed to take the threat of the far right seriously.

There’s also a sense that some elements of the mainstream British media have helped to foster an environment in which anti-Muslim hatred can spread.

“So here’s an example of a story about Muslims. The headline says that as a result of complaints from Muslims a swimming pool has had its windows covered for reasons of modesty. And underneath the article readers are given a chance to add their comments, and predictably they range from anger to outrage directed at Muslims for apparently trying to change British culture. But, if you look at the very last line of the article, the reporter has been forced to include a response from the local council, who make it clear that the requests to cover the windows came from non-Muslims as well. So there’s no substance the story, but the damage is done.”

But some within the Muslim community are making efforts to build bridges on a grassroots level with wider society, bypassing the mainstream media. Projects such as Islam Awareness week reach out to non-Muslims and invite them into mosques and Islamic institutions.

The Islamic Forum of Europe is one of the organisations encouraging Muslims to pursue an active role in their local communities – whether it’s through interfaith meetings, providing food for the homeless, or cleaning up the streets.
But in the coming months the English Defence League plans to march on areas in London and the UK with significant Muslim populations. The police and authorities have generally facilitated their rallies under the pretext of freedom of speech. And although Prime Minister Cameron has ordered a security review following the terrorist attacks in Norway, it’s unclear if anything will change.

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UK torture inquiry faces boycott from rights groups

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Published August 5, 2011, in Torture, UK, UK Lies

Campaigners and lawyers of former detainees say they will boycott an inquiry into the alleged torture and mistreatment of UK terror suspects. They say the inquiry is neither transparent nor robust enough.

 An investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment of UK terror suspects is facing a boycott from rights campaigners and the lawyers of former detainees.

 An inquiry into detainee rendition was launched last year by British Prime Minister David Cameron, following allegations the UK colluded in torture of terror suspects. Cameron said then that he was “determined to get to the bottom of what happened” and that the UK believed in “fairness, freedom and human rights.”

 The inquiry, headed by Sir Peter Gibson, is due to start at the end of an ongoing police investigation into the allegations.

 Amnesty International are one of the groups in the boycott

 

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