Straw in the Stink 1095

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The Mail on Sunday is doing a very good job on the odious Jack Straw’s involvement in torture and persecution. I think that at last the truth has entered the established narrative. There is a little box in the report about my own evidence to Scotland Yard. I will type it out here as the Mail’s box format here is not internet searchable:

“Torture” Evidence Handed to the Yard

Further pressure was piled on Jack Straw last night over the “rendition” of Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhadj after sensitive documents were handed to Scotland tard detectives.

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, passed the documents to police as part of the inquiry into the behaviour of Ministers and intelligence officials over the detention of Mr Belhadj in Bangkok in March 2004.

The opponent of Colonel Gadaffi was flown to Tripoli, where he claims he was tortured.

Mr Straw, who was Foreign Secretary at the time, has denied ever condoning the use of torture to extract information.

But the documents appear to cast doubt on that position.

One memo, headed “Uzbekistan: Intelligence Possibly Obtained Under Torture” contains minutes of a meeting Mr Murray held with senior Foreign and Commonwealth officials on March 8, 2003 to discuss his concern that the UK could be in breach of international law by possessing intelligence obtained by torture.

The minute, dated March 10 2003, quoted Linda Duffield, then the FCO’s Director of Wider Europe, apparently justifying the use of such material as part of the fight against terrorism.

A second memo, dated March 14 2003, and written by Simon McDonald – the Straw’s principal Private Secretary – to Ms Duffield says Straw has read the minutes and “agrees that you handled this very well”.

Mr Murray is understood to have told police that during Mr Straw’s time at the FCO diplomats were told to only refer to the policy on torture verbally.

Mr Murray said last night “My evidence stated that Jack Straw introduced a policy of allowing evidence obtained by torture to be used. I also told them that written evidence had been destrpyed, and we were told to not commit details into writing.”

There is a slight misquote in the above. It should say Jack Straw introduced a policy of allowing intelligence obtained by torture, not evidence. In fact it was specifically stated such intelligence would not be produced as evidence in court (people were imprisoned without charge or rendered instead). The instruction not to put things in writing was given to me personally, I don’t know if others were told the same. As I was the only one protesting, perhaps not.

These links are to the documents in question.

duffieldminute

mcDonald

Wood

The first two were obtained by Freedom of Information Act request. Details of the CIA’s colllusion with the Karimiv regime’s torturers have been redacted by the FCO. Last week Jack Straw came out and argued strongly for the effective abolition of the Freedom of Information Act. Now there is a coincidence for you.

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1,095 thoughts on “Straw in the Stink”

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  • Komodo

    I guess that will be described as a Freudian slip by some…should read “..trying NOT to mention…” of course.
    And poor Jack is only trying to balance the interests of the large Muslim electorate in his constituency with the demands of his colleagues’ Israel-backing donors, isn’t he?

  • Rose

    Komodo – what an enlightening read from the link you provided; it’s one thing to feel in your water that there’s something rotten in the whole edifice, and another to have it all laid out.
    Thanks for digging around – I can understand you getting sick of it all though – too much rolling in the dirt can’t be good, but perhaps that’s why you have a leathery protective skin.

    Cosy little chummy chat between Harumph and Cameron this morning, which no doubt will be trumpeted as hard – hitting serious questioning. I wonder whether our laughter ever penetrates the sound-proofing.

  • Komodo

    And here’s Jack with some very premature optimism on Afghanistan; you are invited to lol. The FPC had been founded three years earlier under the benign gaze of a Mr. Blair.
    .
    http://fpc.org.uk/articles/168
    .
    Hard to deduce from this that he would ever express the slightest misgiving about Iraq (which hadn’t happened then)

  • Komodo

    Thanks, Rose. If one other person sees something they hadn’t previously noticed, it’s worth the muckraking. As one who spends some time hovering round the rear ends of buffalo, waiting to get a bite in, I am inured to the hazard, however.

  • Mary

    No way do I sign any of the pretences from Azaaz.
    .
    This is to say to to Karimov that if he papers over the cracks, we will carry on supporting and supplying him.
    .
    ‘To US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
    .
    We call on you to publicly condemn forced sterilisations and other human rights abuses inside Uzbekistan. We urge you to end the flood of cash and re-impose sanctions on the Uzbek regime until independent experts confirm these atrocities have ended. Finally, we call on you to ensure that military assistance to Uzbekistan is contingent on wide-ranging improvements in human rights.’
    .
    See
    http://wrongkindofgreen.org/2012/03/07/the-grotesque-and-disturbing-ideology-at-the-helm-of-avaaz/
    on the selective focus.

  • John Goss

    Love the links you keep finding Komodo. That last one has Jack Straw speaking twelve months before he and Blair committed us into an illegal war with Iraq.
    .
    “We have committed £118 million to two Conflict Prevention Funds, through which the Ministry of Defence, the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office work together in pursuit of a common set of objectives: fundamentally, to reduce the number of deaths and injuries caused by violent conflict.”
    .
    Sick bag anyone?
    .
    Mark Golding, thanks for keeping us updated on suspicious ‘suicides’ or murders. At least there is going to be an inquest into the death of Gareth Williams, unlike David Kelly and, it would seem, Mark Duggan, who we know was murdered by police marksmen. Don’t know yet about Dr Richard Holmes. His work might be too sensitive to warrant an inquest.

  • Mary

    We already have BigPharma, BigOil. Now even bigger BigBabyFood. The goal is China apparently.
    .
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/23/nestle-buys-pfizer-baby-food-business?newsfeed=true
    .
    Don’t you know that breast is best Mr Nestle and Mr Pfizer? And Mums and Dads how about some home cooked pureed food for the toddlers? I see the Mums putting the little bottles of manufactured stuff into the cafe microwaves to warm them up. They cost just under £1 each. The children are being fed junk food at a very young age.

  • Komodo

    I remember a work colleague I used to credit with charm, wit, perception and intelligence…until the day I realised he was simply agreeing with everything I said. He was a nice guy, though….Straw had me fooled for much longer, until I realised he would agree with everything everyone said. In public…

  • Mary

    Straw refers to 9/11 when speaking in March 2002. Since 9/11 everything else has flowed.
    .
    The War in Afghanistan (2001-present), a new phase of the War in Afghanistan (1978-present), began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Afghan United Front (Northern Alliance) launched Operation Enduring Freedom. The primary driver of the invasion was the September 11 attacks on the United States, with the stated goal of dismantling the al-Qaeda terrorist organization and ending its use of Afghanistan as a base. The United States also said that it would remove the Taliban regime from power and create a viable democratic state. A decade into the war, the U.S. continues to battle a widespread Taliban insurgency, and the war has expanded into the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan.
    .
    Q Where are they now? And their revolting acolytes/mouthpieces like Adam Ingram? All doing nicely for themselves I guess having found niches for themselves.
    Geoff Hoon 11 October 1999 6 May 2005
    John Reid 6 May 2005 5 May 2006
    Des Browne 5 May 2006 3 October 2008
    John Hutton 3 October 2008 5 June 2009
    Bob Ainsworth 5 June 2009 11 May 2010

  • Komodo

    When Blair told the Commons his reasons for joining the Yanks in Afghanistan in 2001 (he was opposed by some of his backbenchers as I remember), the clincher for me (as a member of the public and recipient of propaganda) was the prospect of crippling the opium trade there. This could justify some killing, I thought. For the greater good. And Straw supported this line as late as 2004.
    .
    {http://www.iiss.org/EasySiteWeb/getresource.axd?AssetID=1004&type=full&servicetype=Attachment}
    .
    Since when,seemingly, it has rather disappeared from the agenda:
    .
    http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l7s9jfd53e1qdul0wo1_500.jpg
    .
    So, not a major objective, then.

  • Komodo

    Play fair, Mary. The award was for his work for Forces charities like Walking With The Wounded, ABF The Soldiers’ Charity and Help For Heroes.
    They need all the help they can get, as the government which created their customer base is both stingy and broke.

  • Giles

    I remember a work colleague I used to credit with charm, wit, perception and intelligence…until the day I realised he was simply agreeing with everything I said.

    .
    If you might say so, Komodo. :-&…

  • Mary

    Have you looked up the outfit that is giving out the gong to the twerp who once wore a cap with the motto ‘We Do Bad Things to Bad People’? That was when he returned from his photo ops visit to Afghanistan where he did a little calling in of aircraft, played around on somebody else’s motorbike and pressed some buttons on a machine gun.

    It has Kissinger on its board and these are its sponsors, a long list of the gangsters-in-charge and the powers-that-be.
    .
    http://www.acus.org/about/sponsors

  • Passerby

    Anyone recollect that monstrous Tartuffe, aka Bungalow Jack, and or Mr. Straw and his UN booklet that he used to flash around delivering lectures on “human rights”, and “war crimes”?

  • Komodo

    Harry’s a twerp. He’s expected to be. His genes and upbringing make it inevitable. Not so the dual amputees (and worse) returning from an insane war conducted by a bunch of corporate criminals in his dim grandmother’s name. They need all the help they can get – though some of them would deny this, honourably. I don’t care who’s handing out the gongs if the charities’ profiles and incomes benefit.
    .
    And Kissinger isn’t quite as simplistic a hawk as he is sometimes painted –
    http://www.samuelbrittan.co.uk/text94_p.html

  • Mary

    The British victims of the wars are the responsiblity of the governments who sent them to kill and maim, not charities. These charities, especially Help for Heroes and the Poppy Appeal, are used by the warmongers to promote the continuance of the wars. The Military Wives didn’t do badly either.

  • Rob Royston

    I see they are going to chip our dogs first, maybe that’s why it will be called “the mark of the beast”.

  • Komodo

    The British victims of the wars are the responsiblity of the governments who sent them to kill and maim, not charities.
    .
    In an ideal world, maybe. And the same goes for the Poppy Fund and Erskine… But I’m not seeing much more than fine patriotic words from governments of either tartan. Until I do, I’ll stay with my opinion. Present, practical help is worth supporting.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq Association

    Komodo – Great link to the ‘Straw-man’ lobbying sell-out thank-you.
    .
    I note that particular Straw enabled contract was signed in Feb. 2005 so I have passed the information to ‘Bridget’ – the tight lips are implicated in the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘double dealing’ with Israel during 2005 according to my insider.

  • John Goss

    Thanks for the link to Amanda Ward’s proposed statue of Brian Haw. There are some big names supporting this including Vanessa Redgrave, Dennis Skinner, Tony Benn and of course, Craig Murray.

  • nevermind

    Some great links youb are ploughing up Komodo and mary. Thanks to Dr. Paull for the petition, signed it.
    I also support a statue for Brian Haw and he deserves it more than some in that square, but would he wanted to be there?

  • Ruth

    Mary,
    Almost all your comments are off topic. This to me appears to reduce the impact of the thread.

  • Mark Golding - Children of Iraq Association

    Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! – and we have a winner for the most blatantly hypocritical executive order of all time…
    .
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/23/us-sanction-regimes-block-internet
    .
    I have sent President Obama an article on Sky News phone and email hacking in breach of the the Computer Misuse Act, which head of news at Sky News, John Ryley admits he was “not aware of” –
    .
    I wonder if Lord Justice Leveson will find this order, “very regrettable indeed!” – Yeh right!

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