Torture: Hang On David and Alan!

Is it just me or have David Miliband and Alan Johnson just put their hands up to Britain’s colluding in the torture of Binyam Mohamed and others?

When detainees are held by our police or Armed Forces we can be sure how they are treated. By definition, we cannot have that same level of assurance when they are held by foreign governments, whose obligations may differ from our own.

Yet intelligence from overseas is critical to our success in stopping terrorism. All the most serious plots and attacks in the UK in this decade have had significant links abroad. Our agencies must work with their equivalents overseas. So we have to work hard to ensure that we do not collude in torture or mistreatment.

Whether passing information which might lead to suspects being detained; passing questions to be put to detainees; or directly interviewing them, our agencies are required to seek to minimise, and where possible avoid, the risk of mistreatment. Enormous effort goes into assessing the risks in each case. Operations have been halted where the risk of mistreatment was too high. But it is not possible to eradicate all risk. Judgments need to be made.

Sorry? Has the world gone completely upside down? It’s impossible to eradicate all risk of British agents and departments colluding in torture? So it’s not possible to stop picking suspects up and sending them to be ‘interrogated’ for us in countries which are known to torture? This is a government whose operations are guided by human rights legislation and obligations – it cannot say ‘where possible’! I can’t believe I just read this – New Labour spin trying to legitimise collusion in torture. Are these perhaps ministers with something to be worried about?

Tony Blair and Torture

Tony Blair was aware of the ­existence of a secret interrogation policy which ­effectively led to British citizens, and others, being ­tortured during ­counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered ­guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers ­questioning detainees in Afghanistan who they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not “be seen to condone” torture and that they must not “engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners”.

But they were also told they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated.

“Given that they are not within our ­custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this,” the policy said.

(source)

Now the Metropolitan Police…Tortures?

It’s not something they’re not already known to do. But still the newest claims about the Metropolitan Police’s behaviour are shocking:

Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of an anti-corruption inquiry.

The torture claims are part of an investigation which also includes accusations that evidence was fabricated and suspects’ property was stolen. It has already led to the abandonment of a drugs trial and the suspension from duty of several officers.

However, senior policing officials are most alarmed by the claim that officers in Enfield, North London, used the controversial CIA interrogation technique, in which water is poured on to a cloth covering the suspect’s face, causing them to feel they are on the point of suffocation.

Alan Johnson has his work cut out for him. New Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has already abandoned the concept of ‘institutional racism’ as a viable tool to use in Met reform, and has supported his force after the G20 policing disaster (what is going on with the IPCC investigation by the way?). Is it any wonder that fundamental human rights might also be being breached by these thugs?

Poems from Guantánamo

Vodpod videos no longer available.

It’s quite timely to look back at this video by Amnesty International and Riz Ahmed. Of course many people imprisoned by the United States and United Kingdom under the auspices of the ‘War’ on Terror were entirely innocent. Yet many people are still prepared to dismiss torture, despite the experiences of people like Binyam Mohamed – a British national who underwent extraordinary rendition and was tortured over a period of years. Denying the humanity of other human beings is wrong for any reason. That way lies another Holocaust.

How Did We Get to Torture?

Vodpod videos no longer available.

(with thanks to Paul Canning)

And the Daily Kos has a superb, fully referenced timeline detailing this mess the United States has got itself into around torture. Merely reading the Red Cross’ report about torture at Guantánamo Bay makes for harrowing reading. The United States, more than most countries, is supposed not to be about the wanton infliction of cruel and degrading treatment on others for any reason. This isn’t a political perspective, this is about basic humanity. Bear in mind even Bush’s FBI director has publicly stated that torture never prevented a single terrorist atrocity in the post-9/11 period. Yet even now war criminals like Dick Cheney continue to justify their behaviour when in office. Scared of having to face justice perhaps?

(via Andrew Sullivan)

McCain Complains about ‘Witch Hunts’

It’s quite ironic for a former PoW who himself had been tortured, but presidential campaign loser John McCain is actually complaining about the prospect of Obama holding even the ‘Bush Six’, the lawyers who redefined torture into legality, to account:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned Thursday that any attempt by the Obama administration to prosecute the Bush-era lawyers who wrote memos signing off on waterboarding would start a “witch hunt.”

“If you criminalize legal advice, which is basically what they’re going to do, then it has a terribly chilling effect on any kind of advice and counsel that the president might receive,” McCain said during an interview on CBS’s “Early Show.”

The former GOP presidential nominee and POW supported Obama’s decision to end the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques but insisted that those who gave legal advice should not be prosecuted because they were “sworn to do their duty to the best of their ability.”

It’s a ridiculous, partisan claim to make. ‘Doing their duty to the best of their ability’ can’t possibly include twisting the law to enable the basest cruelty and inhumanity, merely because those even higher up say so.

But is Obama once again cold on the idea? For the sake of keeping the United States a ‘nation of laws’, we can only hope not.

Obama’s Long Game on Torture: Part 2

It’s looking increasingly like I was right – he is playing a long game:

Senior members of the Bush administration who approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures could face prosecution, President Obama disclosed today .

He said the use of torture reflected America “losing our moral bearings”.

He said his attorney general, Eric Holder, was conducting an investigation and the decision rested with him. Obama last week ruled out prosecution of CIA agents who carried out the interrogation of suspected al-Qaida members at Guantánamo and secret prisons around the world.

But for the first time today he opened up the possibility that those in the administration who gave the go-ahead for the use of waterboarding could be prosecuted.

The revelation will enrage senior Bush administration figures such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney.

The Obama administration views the use of waterboarding as torture, while Cheney claims it is not.

Obama, taking questions from the press during a visit by King Abdullah of Jordan, reiterated he did not believe in prosecution of those CIA agents who carried out the interrogations within the guidelines set down for them. But “with respect to shoe who formulated” the policies, “that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws”. He added: “I don’t want to prejudge that.”He also opened the way for a Congressional inquiry into the issue.

It’s a dangerous political game, trying to appease vested interests in the CIA and on the political right by not going for the flunkies, whilst implicitly begging for the political capital to go essentially after the ‘Bush Six’ – the men who wrote the memos authorising torture. It also explains why the Spanish Attorney-General is now eager to drop that country’s criminal proceedings. I think Andrew Sullivan is right when he says of Obama’s release of the memos and Cheney’s push to get more released:

this seems to me to be a real opportunity to set up the Truth Commission many of us have been asking for. Release all the data on the torture – all of it – alongside the intelligence we got from it. At least then we will have the data needed to see this in full perspective. It needs to be in context and it needs to be assessed by an independent panel – bipartisan and widely respected – along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. Decisions to prosecute could be made after all the material is laid out. This will take time – and should be done carefully and exhaustively.

A Quick Anti-Cheney Rant

In the wake of President Obama’s release of the four CIA ‘torture memos’, former Vice-President Dick Cheney has gone on the defence (attack really, he doesn’t ‘do’ defence):

“One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos… but they didn’t put out the memos that show the success of the effort,” Mr Cheney told Fox News.

“There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now.”

The American people should have a chance to weigh the intelligence obtained alongside the legal debate, he said.

Can I remind readers that Cheney is now a private citizen and not the vice-president?! I’ve never heard of previous presidents or vice-presidents trying to influence their successors like this. Even Al Gore behaved with dignity towards Bush, and later towards the Bush Administration over climate change. This is a shameless attempt at undermining the president, and Obama must do the right thing by completely ignoring him.

Can I also remind readers that human rights are indivisible? They’re either universally applicable – to everyone at all times – or you might as well dismiss the notion entirely. You don’t get to suspend the UDHR for people you don’t like (or who don’t like you) – that defeats the entire concept, equally as much as Obama’s allowing CIA flunkies who did torture to get away with it. I understand his political calculation in at least starting down that road, but he’s as wrong as Cheney is here. And considering the entire administration of which he was a part was built on a pack of lies, I wouldn’t believe a single document which Cheney says proves his point.

Spain Must Hold Them to Account!

You may have read how Spain’s Attorney-General tried to get judge Baltasar Garzón to drop his criminal proceedings against former Bush Administration officials (Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon’s general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers) for torture at Guantanamo Bay.

Well he’s circumventing the order, or at least trying to:

In a ruling on Friday, Garzon ignored this advice but also avoided a direct confrontation with the attorney general’s office by submitting the case to a lottery system which will now assign it at random to one of the six high court judges.

“Let it be assigned to the corresponding court,” Garzon said in the ruling.

The judge who gets the case will now have to decide whether to go ahead of it. Under the system, Garzon will have a one in six chance of getting the case back.

We can only hope that he succeeds. Having said that, their internal wrangling is causing the chain of responsibility for the Bush Administration’s policy of torture to continue to emerge, and is adding a whole new dimension to the argument. So Candido Conde-Pumpido would much rather someone go after the people who authorised the ‘Bush Six’ to give their rulings eh? Fine, but remember this:

The first memo [allowing torture], from 2002, approves waterboarding – which makes the suspect feel like they are drowning – and other harsh techniques on suspected high-level al-Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah.

It was written by former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee for the CIA’s top lawyer, John Rizzo. The CIA has confirmed that two other high-level al-Qaeda suspects were waterboarded.

The memo says: “We find that the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death” – one of the criteria for torture.

Obama wants the flunkies to stay immune, but didn’t comment on the ‘Bush Six’. Attorney-General Holder has tried to ignore them by saying the DOJ and ONC have ‘moved on’, but there are gaps they’ve both left open, should they need to go after the Six and their political masters in the future. As I said in my previous post I hope they are compelled to at some point in the future – if America is to be a nation of laws, Obama mustn’t be allowed to fall back on the Nürmberg defence for any reason. Should what I hope to be his gamble either not be real or not pay off, let Spain remain true to its own human rights legislation and at least go for those who rewrote the rulebook in order to legitimise torture by the American government.

Obama’s Long Game on Torture?

By now you’ll have seen the four memos released by Barack Obama, detailing the Bush Administration’s formal adoption of torture into CIA/US government practice. I understand Obama’s reluctance to move against those who both enabled and perpetrated what was perhaps the biggest outrage in American politics of all time, and instead say he’s banned the practice once again and that the country has moved on. But this leaves us with significant problems:

1) It reenables the Nürnberg defence – ‘I was only following orders’. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drawn up precisely to end such a ludicrous way out. Human rights are always in effect and must be defended by everyone at all times and everywhere. If Obama truly does let these people off the hook he’s as big a threat to human rights as Bush was.

2) It makes a mockery of his insistence that the US is a nation of laws. It either is or it isn’t. If the law has been broken the perpetrators must be brought to justice – it doesn’t matter at all who they are.

The thing is he’s a brilliant man who knows all of this, so what’s really going on? My guess, or rather my hope is this – he wants the demand for investigation and prosecution to come from below, from the grassroots. Why else would he have made such a wishy washy statement like

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

There’s nothing he can’t come back from here, should he feel ‘pressured’ by the public or Congress to do so. After all it’s the position he’s taken on gay marriage. It’s something he doesn’t agree with and doesn’t support, but should the public make it happen at grassroots level, as president he’ll support it. As Digby puts it:

I have to wonder if by releasing the memos they aren’t at least obliquely asking for the public to “make” them do it. They could have kept them secret, after all. If there were significant public pressure as well as pressure from congress, they would have enough cover to launch an investigation with the assurance they aren’t going to go the Bad Apple route.

I obviously have no idea whether they would welcome such a thing. But we should do it anyway.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Keep your fingers crossed. It’s an odd, and dangerous long game to play if that’s what he’s doing. But make no mistake this must not be allowed to go away, and my hope would be that if there needed to be a compromise for reasons Obama alludes to elsewhere in his statement, that it was the officials who enabled this who were prosecuted. Speaking of whom…