Clive Stafford Smith: Britain’s omertà on torture is a crime

[EFerrari]

Clive Stafford Smith: Britain’s omertà on torture is a crime

David Miliband claims the UK is bound by a pledge of confidentiality to the US not to discuss shared intelligence on terrorism. On the contrary, says Binyam Mohamed’s lawyer. If it relates to the violent abuse of suspects, to suppress it is illegal

Sunday, 22 February 2009

There has been much ado of late about the horrific abuse of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident held in Guantanamo Bay. First, he was tortured in Pakistan at the behest of the American authorities – sleep deprived, brutally beaten, hung from the ceiling in the strappado position (with an appropriate nod to the Spanish Inquisition), and threatened with rendition to an unpleasant Arab country where his treatment would be even worse. Fulfilling this promise, the CIA duly rendered him to Morocco, where his tormentors took a razor blade to his penis over 18 months.

In due course, the CIA picked up the husk that remained, and carried him to the “Dark Prison” in Kabul for another five months of the third degree. After a spell in Bagram air base in Afghanistan, he was shuttled to Cuba, where he has spent the past four years in a concrete cell, divorced from the rule of law.

It has been my privilege, as a lawyer with the UK charity Reprieve, to represent Binyam. We hope to have him home within the next 48 hours, but that will merely be the next chapter in his story. Torture cannot simply be swept under the rug as an embarrassing secret that governments would rather forget.

In 2005, I spent three draining days across a table from Binyam in his Guantanamo gaol, noting down his torture diary. “You’ll have to fill in the emotion,” he told me. “I’m kinda dead in the head.” Every essential of Binyam’s story has been corroborated. We have slowly dragged the torture documentation from unwilling govern-ments on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet virtually none of these documents have been made public. The skeletal chronology that I am permitted to sketch out here comes from the fragments made public so far.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/clive-stafford-smith-britain8217s-omert224-on-torture-is-a-crime-1628828.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. MI5 knew we were torturing British terror suspects, claim Pakistan agents

By Jason Lewis and Edna Fernandes

Pakistani secret service agents say they routinely tortured British terror suspects in their custody with the full knowledge of MI5 and MI6.

The damning testimony is set to increase the pressure on Foreign Secretary David Miliband after he blocked the release of secret US evidence allegedly confirming torture took place.

The claim comes as former British asylum seeker Binyam Mohamed is expected to fly back to the UK tomorrow after being released from US custody at Guantanamo Bay.

In the past eight years, he claims he was flown to secret torture centres in Pakistan, Morocco and a US-run ‘Dark Prison’ near Kabul, Afghanistan.

He says he was beaten, chained, deprived of sleep and had his genitals cut with a razor.

SNIP

Last night Human Rights Watch, which has previously given evidence to the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, said it was convinced Britain was ‘outsourcing torture’.

A senior official with HRW said: ‘Our new report will provide greater detail of what amounts to torture and British awareness and effective complicity in the torture of suspects.’ Asked who was involved on the British side, the official said: ‘British security agents.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1151867/MI5-knew-torturing-British-terror-suspects-claim-Pakistan-agents.html

[EFerrari]

2. . . .

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. David "don't mention the penis slashing" Miliband had been talked about as a future Labour leader

I hope his behaviour in this situation has put a stop to that. I certainly intend referring to him as David "don't mention the penis slashing" Miliband from now on, unless he really comes clean. With any luck, his name will become synonymous with penis slashing.