Blairwatch provides an excellent summary of some of the recent proceedings of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
But time marches on and it is still not clear whether the FAC will follow through on their undertaking to obtain crucial minutes and documentation of meetings that discussed the British use of information obtained via torture?
“Clean Skins”, by Rachel North
The Government cannot afford to say that Iraq and the bloody aftermath have gifted those who recruit and train these young men with a PR strategy that keeps making more willing martyrs, soldiers, jihadi warriors. The hideous irony – that the ‘War on Terror’ has only made more terror, fear and has generated many more terrorists – dare not be mentioned.
By Hannah Strange from UPI
Politicians and human rights groups are ratcheting up the pressure on the British government to investigate reports of U.S. rendition flights passing through its territory, after the Council of Europe said European governments almost certainly knew of the “illegal” practice.
Members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rendition met with representatives from leading human rights groups in Westminster Wednesday to discuss what steps to take to force an investigation, to which the government has so far been resistant.
The Newstatesman has published the full version of the secret Foreign Office memo on British involvement in US rendition flights.
As Tony Blair prepared to face Commons questions about British involvement in early December, his officials asked the Foreign Office for a briefing document. The resulting memo, signed by Irfan Siddiq, a private secretary at the Foreign Office, and addressed to Grace Cassy, assistant private secretary at No 10 Downing Street, paints an astonishing picture.
Extraordinary rendition, it declares bluntly, “is almost certainly illegal”, and if Britain co-operated with an illegal act of this kind, “such an act would also be illegal”.
The PDF file of the memo can be read here
The lies are catching up with him…
From The Observer
The Foreign Secretary has been formally challenged by a parliamentary committee to explain why he twice gave them misleading answers during inquiries over the secret transport of terrorism suspects around Europe.
The Labour chair of the powerful Commons Foreign Affairs Committee has written privately to Jack Straw, amid deep irritation from members over his testimony on extraordinary rendition – the spiriting away of foreign citizens without the normal extradition process, which critics argue may lead to torture.
Last October, Straw denied to the committee that Britain had received any requests for rendition. In fact, as he conceded in a parliamentary statement less than six weeks later, it had received three in 1998 and approved one. Appearing before the committee in December, Straw ridiculed claims of British involvement in the interrogation of Pakistani terror suspects arrested in Greece as ‘nonsense’, only to confirm three weeks later that British intelligence officers were present, although abuse is denied.
The row comes ahead of an interim report from the Council of Europe into claims that the US has ‘rendered’ suspects in Europe.
Paul Keetch, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, said it was ‘unacceptable’ that Straw had had to correct himself twice, while Labour member Eric Illsley said he was ‘cheesed off’ with the Foreign Secretary describing allegations as nonsense, only to find out from newspapers that they were true.
Straw also admitted that while foreign flights to military airbases normally require clearance from the Ministry of Defence, American planes have a ‘block agreement’ to come and go freely. This might help explain a leaked memo from Straw’s office, disclosed last week in New Statesman magazine, advising Downing Street to ‘avoid getting drawn on detail’.
By Marie Woolf in The Independent
Pressure over the use of British airports for secret CIA torture flights increased dramatically yesterday after it emerged that a Foreign Office minister misled Parliament over a meeting between the UN and UK civil servants about the issue.
The Independent on Sunday has learnt that Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, misled peers when he told the House of Lords that no such meeting had ever occurred.
But Martin Scheinin, the UN Human Rights Commission’s special rapporteur, travelled to London to hold meetings with Home Office and Foreign Office officials between 21 and 22 November last year. He raised concerns about the issue of “extraordinary rendition” – the policy of moving terror suspects to countries that use torture – and is so concerned following the lack of disclosure that he is writing to ministers.
Milan Rai, Maya Evans’ co-demonstrator, is belatedly charged with “organising” the demonstration for which she was prosecuted late last year. Will he become Blair’s latest Prisoner of Conscience?
Press release from Justice Not Vengeance
FIRST CHARGE FOR ‘ORGANISING’ UNAUTHORISED DEMONSTRATION OPPOSITE DOWNING ST
Today, Thursday 19 January 2006, Milan Rai, 40, became the first person to be charged with organising an unauthorised demonstration in the vicinity of Parliament under the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. The maximum penalty for this charge is 51 weeks imprisonment.
Rai, author and activist with the anti-war group ‘Justice Not Vengeance’ (JNV), was arrested on 25 October last year for organising the demonstration that led to the conviction of Maya Evans, also of JNV (2).
He was not charged then. The Crown Prosecution Service have delayed a
decision, citing problems with the CCTV footage of the incident. (Maya Evans was convicted without the benefit of such footage.)
Rai and Evans were arrested opposite Downing Street, while they held a two-person ceremony of remembrance, reading the names of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers who have died in the illegal occupation of Iraq (3).
Rai, who recently spent two weeks in Lewes prison for an anti-war
protest, said: ‘We should not have to ask permission to remember the
dead. I am prepared to go to court and I am prepared to go to prison to oppose war and the erosion of our rights.’
ENDS
Notes:
1. Milan Rai is the author of 7/7: The London Bombings, Islam and the
Iraq War (Pluto, due in April 2006)
2. Maya Evans was convicted on 7 December 2005 of taking part in an
unauthorised demonstration in the Designated Area
3. See www.j-n-v.org for further details.
The government is secretly trying to stifle attempts by MPs to find out what it knows about CIA “torture flights” and privately admits that people captured by British forces could have been sent illegally to interrogation centres, the Guardian can reveal. A hidden strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about rendition – the US practice of transporting detainees to secret centres where they are at risk of being tortured – is revealed in a briefing paper sent by the Foreign Office to No 10.
The document shows that the government has been aware of secret interrogation centres, despite ministers’ denials. It admits that the government has no idea whether individuals seized by British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have been sent to the secret centres.
Dated December 7 last year, the document is a note from Irfan Siddiq, of the foreign secretary’s private office, to Grace Cassy in Tony Blair’s office. It was obtained by the New Statesman magazine, whose latest issue is published today.
It was drawn up in response to a Downing Street request for advice “on substance and handling” of the controversy over CIA rendition flights and allegations of Britain’s connivance in the practice.
“We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail”, Mr Siddiq writes, “and to try to move the debate on, in as front foot a way we can, underlining all the time the strong anti-terrorist rationale for close cooperation with the US, within our legal obligations.”
The document advises the government to rely on a statement by Condoleezza Rice last month when the US secretary of state said America did not transport anyone to a country where it believed they would be tortured and that, “where appropriate”, Washington would seek assurances.
The document notes: “We would not want to cast doubt on the principle of such government-to-government assurances, not least given our own attempts to secure these from countries to which we wish to deport their nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism: Algeria etc.”
The document says that in the most common use of the term – namely, involving real risk of torture – rendition could never be legal. It also says that the US emphasised torture but not “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”, which binds Britain under the European convention on human rights. British courts have adopted a lower threshold of what constitutes torture than the US has.
The note includes questions and answers on a number of issues. “Would cooperating with a US rendition operation be illegal?”, it asks, and gives the response: “Where we have no knowledge of illegality, but allegations are brought to our attention, we ought to make reasonable enquiries”. It asks: “How do we know whether those our armed forces have helped to capture in Iraq or Afghanistan have subsequently been sent to interrogation centres?” The reply given is: “Cabinet Office is researching this with MoD [Ministry of Defence]. But we understand the basic answer is that we have no mechanism for establishing this, though we would not ourselves question such detainees while they were in such facilities”.
Ministers have persistently taken the line, in answers to MPs’ questions, that they were unaware of CIA rendition flights passing through Britain or of secret interrogation centres.
On December 7 – the date of the leaked document – Charles Kennedy, then Liberal Democrat leader, asked Mr Blair when he was first made aware of the American rendition flights, and when he approved them. Mr Blair replied: “In respect of airports, I do not know what the right hon gentleman is referring to.”
On December 22, asked at his monthly press conference about the US practice of rendition, the prime minister told journalists: “It is not something that I have ever actually come across until this whole thing has blown up, and I don’t know anything about it.” He said he had never heard of secret interrogation camps in Europe. But Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, recently disclosed that Whitehall inquiries had shown Britain had received rendition requests from the Clinton administration.
In 1998, Mr Straw, then home secretary, agreed to one request, but turned down another because the individual concerned was to be transported to Egypt. He agreed that Mohammed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, could be transported to the US for trial via Stansted, according to the briefing paper. Owhali was subsequently given a life sentence.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, which has demanded an inquiry into allegations of British collusion in rendition flights, said she was “deeply disappointed” by the memo. “The government seems more concerned about spinning than investigating our concerns,” she said. She has written to Mr Straw saying the government must now give its full support to the inquiry conducted, at Liberty’s behest, by the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Michael Todd.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesman, said Mr Blair had fully endorsed Ms Rice’s statement, yet the prime minister had clear advice that it might have been deliberately worded to allow for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. “I am submitting an urgent question to the speaker and expect the foreign secretary to come to parliament to explain the government’s position,” he said. “Evasion can no longer be sustained: there is now overwhelming evidence to support a full public inquiry into rendition.”
Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of the parliamentary group on rendition, said last night: “All the experts who have looked at Rice’s assurances have concluded that they are so carefully worded as to be virtually worthless. Relying on them, as the government appears to be doing, speaks volumes”. He said his committee would pursue the issue.
Update: An interview on BBC radio this morning with the editor of the New Statesman and the chair of the parliamentary committe on extraordinary rendition can be heard here 
A landmark speech by ex Vice President Al Gore yesterday called for the defence and preservation of the US constitution, an end to executive abuse, and compliance with international law. Referring to the issue of extraordinary rendition and torture he cites the work of Craig Murray. His quote is taken from the Tashkent Telegrams, documents that the British Government has strived to keep from public access.
“The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals in foreign countries and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture.
Some of our traditional allies have been shocked by these new practices on the part of our nation. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan – one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons – registered a complaint to his home office about the senselessness and cruelty of the new U.S. practice: “This material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful.”
The full text of the speech is given below:
“Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our fellow citizens-Democrats and Republicans alike-to express our shared concern that America’s Constitution is in grave danger.
In spite of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.
By Catherine MacLEOD in The Herald
CRITICS gave the government a rocky ride in parliament over its refusal to mount a judicial inquiry into claims that the US has used UK airports to fly terror suspects abroad for torture.
In a written statement, Jack Straw, foreign secretary, disclosed that the UK had refused a US request in 1998 to refuel a flight carrying detainees en route to the US. In December, he had told MPs that another request had been refused, while two others had been approved when Bill Clinton was in the White House. To little avail, he repeated assurances that a trawl of Foreign Office records had found no record of any requests for extradition rendition flights to pass through the UK.
In the Commons, MPs demanded that the government should set out the grounds on which it judges the flight requests, but Kim Howells, foreign office minister, was unmoved.
Nick Clegg, the LibDems’ foreign affairs spokesman, maintained the government had doubts about the US policy, whatever its public protestations. He said: “The ambiguity of the government’s position on this clandestine practice of extraordinary rendition seems to deepen with every answer given. “Clearly (Mr Straw’s answer) indicates that the government, at least behind the scenes, had much graver doubts about this clandestine practice than it has been prepared to give so far. Why were these flights refused?”
Mr Howells dismissed Mr Clegg’s objections as anti-US sentiment. He argued that the LibDems were employing typical tactics to throw mud at the Bush administration in the hope some of it might stick. He said: “This government is opposed to torture, it does not torture anyone, nor would we ever put up with any other administration torturing individuals. We will watch this very carefully as we always have done.”
William Hague, shadow foreign secretary, sought assurance that the rendition through the UK leading to torture in a third country had not taken place, and Mr Howell was adamant that the government would never co-operate in any operation involving torture.
Sir Michael Rose, the retired British army General who led United Nations forces in Bosnia has called for Tony Blair to be impeached for taking the country to war in Iraq on false grounds. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, he said that Blair must not be allowed to “walk away”, and must be held accountable in order to deter future politicians from making the same mistakes. Asked whether he believed his views were shared by senior officers still serving in the army, Rose suggested that a “debate” had been going on.
You can listen to the interview here (Real Player)
See also: Blairwatch – General Sir Michael Rose calls for Blair to be Impeached
The campaign for impeachment is online: ImpeachBlair.org
Update (10/01): Many mainstream papers are now running with this story. A quote from the Guardian
“…people have seen their political wishes ignored for reasons that have now proved false. Nor has there been any attempt made in parliament to call Mr Blair personally to account for what has transpired to be a blunder of enormous strategic significance,” he writes.
It should not be surprising that “so many of the voters of this country have turned their backs on a democratic system which they feel has so little credibility and is so unresponsive”.
The Guardian writes on how powerless Tony Blair has become to stem a tide of embarrassing disclosures, including the Tashkent Telegrams.
“Another renegade ex-ambassador, Craig Murray – forced out of his job in Uzbekistan for objecting to British/US complicity in torture – is defying the same act with impunity. Over the New Year, he published on his website many classified Foreign Office telegrams and, in a modern touch, has ensured their circulation to more than 4,000 bloggers.”
By David Leigh in The Guardian
A series of important battles is going on between the prime minister’s men and a growing number of more junior officials over who is allowed to censor whom. Censorship attempts always have their funny side. Everyone had quite a laugh last year when Lance Price, the one-time spin doctor, defiantly published his diary entry saying that “we are devising a glasses strategy”. The short-sighted premier’s new specs were to be laid “accidentally” on his desk and a friendly profile-writer allowed to spot them. But Blair wanted Calvin Kleins, while Alastair Campbell thought an NHS pair would play better. Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, subsequently pronounced of these disclosures: “Making money out of private conversations is wrong” – which, considering the circumstances, was even more amusing.
The Register looks at the health of the OSA post the web release of the Tashkent Telegrams.
It has come as a surprise to some that I am not currently a guest of Her Majesty. It is plainly a disappointment to others, particularly the trolls who have been gleefully predicting on Lenin’s Tomb that the agents of the state will come and get us.
We have published what were, undoubtedly, classified British government documents. Under the notorious Official Secrets Act that is an offence, and everyone connected with it is plainly guilty. There is no public interest defence.
But there are problems with the Official Secrets Act. Despite New Labour attempts to roll them back, British criminal trials still involve juries, and they are reluctant to convict in OSA trials, where they often sympathise with the motives of the defendant. Clive Ponting was acquitted after leaking that the Belgrano was heading home when we sank it. The jury acquitted him, against the clear direction of the judge. And that was in the context of the Falklands War, which the British public supported. What chance of a conviction in the context of the Iraq war, which the British public oppose?
Katharine Gunn released details of GCHQ’s involvement with the NSA in bugging UN delegations in New York, and the government withdrew the charges against her rather than face a trial.
There is still time, but to date we haven’t even been questioned about the torture telegrams. This is sensible – no British jury is going to convict someone for campaigning against government complicity in torture, in support of George Bush. The publicity surrounding a show trial is not something the government would relish.
Which is why it is confusing that the government have decided to prosecute Messrs Keogh and O’Connor for their alleged involvement in the leaking of the memo about George Bush’s proposal to bomb al-Jazeera TV.
So why has that prosecution been brought? There are two vital factors.
Firstly, the UK government has little to fear from publicity. It reveals Bush as violent and unbalanced, but we knew that already. From a No 10 point of view, it shows Blair in a good light, talking Bush out of one of his madder schemes. It is evidence that Blair is not just Bush’s bitch. This is a message No 10 are keen to get across, so publicity? No problem.
Secondly, the memo was not successfully leaked. If there was indeed an effort to leak it, it was made by people operating in the wrong century. The document wound up at the Daily Mirror, who were too cowardly to publish and tamely gave it back to the government. The days of heroic editors and publishers in the deadwood press are long gone. The mainstream media are completely intimidated by government – especially, let it be said, the BBC.
By contrast, the torture telegrams were featured on over 4,000 blogs worldwide within 72 hours.
Over the al-Jazeera memo the government looks to be doing the right thing in thwarting bush, and the government looks strong and commanding in suppressing the memo. By contrast, on the torture telegrams, the government has been caught using material from the World’s most hideous torture chambers. Jack Straw and Tony Blair have been caught lying about the fact that they do this. And they have been shown to be completely impotent in their efforts to suppress the truth when faced with blogger revolt and modern technology.
They can still try to prosecute me if they want, but WE ARE THE PEOPLE!!
And we cannot be suppressed.
Craig
As official denials grow ever more opaque, evidence which points to Britain’s involvement in torture grows ever more transparent.
By Torcuil Crichton in The Herald
LIKE the nightmare instruments themselves, the screws of proof are being slowly tightened around Britain’s complicity in the international kidnapping, interrogation and torture of terrorist suspects.
A series of allegations and an increasing pattern of reports of British involvement in the trade of ‘extraordinary rendition’ is cornering the government in narrower and narrower denials.
An interesting Point:
I was head of the Cyprus Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when Asil Nadir of Polly Peck fled the UK while on bail (an old scandal you could google).
Nadir was in a hotel in North Cyprus, and I was discussing with MI6 a plan to kidnap him and bring him in to one of the UK sovereign base areas on the island.
The plan was blocked because, in a case recent at that time, the House of Lords had ruled that anyone taken unlawfully and brought into our jurisdiction could not be held and tried.
It ran through my mind again when considering the Athens case. The joy of extraordinary rendition is, of course, that you are not bringing them in to this country, where they would have the protection of the courts, but you’re kidnapping them and taking them to places where they can be abused and tortured.
Returning back down memory lane to the Nadir case, I am convinced there was complicity by the authorities in his escape. The police surveillance unit was stood down for the bank holiday weekend to avoid the expense of paying them overtime (I am not making this up). He plainly knew this was going to happen, because within minutes he was in a fast car (driven by a professional racing driver) who drove him to an airfield where a private plane was waiting with engines running.
There were many in the then political establishment who had taken Nadir’s shilling and didn’t want him in the witness box. That is why I was looking at extreme measures to get him back.
But you will have to wait until I have finished my second book, and it’s been banned, before you learn more of that…
Craig
By Tom Gordon in the Sunday Herald
Ministers were under attack last night for refusing to reveal secret legal advice on so-called American torture flights passing through Scottish airports.
The Scottish Executive said it was not in the public interest to disclose advice on extraordinary rendition, the process which critics believe involves the CIA flying terror suspects to be tortured in countries such as Morocco, Egypt and Uzbekistan. CIA-operated aircraft have made dozens of refuelling stops at Glasgow and Prestwick airports in recent years, although the executive has insisted there is no evidence of a torture connection.
In response to a freedom of information request lodged by the Sunday Herald, The Herald’s sister paper, the executive’s justice department refused to hand over material on rendition in case it prejudiced the workings of government. It said: “In our view, it would not be in the public interest to disclose legal advice.
From The Observer
British officials have admitted MI6 officers were present during the interrogation of 28 Pakistanis in Greece, despite apparent denials by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. They insist, however, that the officers took no active part in the men’s arrest, questioning or abuse that was later alleged.
As the story of the interrogation of the Pakistanis, picked up in Greece following the 7 July London bombings, has turned into a political scandal in Athens, officials in the UK have retreated from Straw’s insistence that the allegations of British involvement were ‘fabricated’ and ‘utter nonsense’.
The pro-torture arguments just don’t add up, according to Brigadier General David R. Irvine.
While torture apologists frequently make the claim that torture saves lives, that assertion is directly contradicted by many Army, FBI, and CIA professionals who have actually interrogated al Qaeda captives. Exhibit A is the torture-extracted confession of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al Qaeda captive who told the CIA in 2001, having been “rendered” to the tender mercies of Egypt, that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda to use WMD. It appears that this confession was the only information upon which, in late 2002, the president, the vice president, and the secretary of state repeatedly claimed that “credible evidence” supported that claim, even though a now-declassified Defense Intelligence Agency report from February 2002 questioned the reliability of the confession because it was likely obtained under torture. Click here to read more
Iraq protest in ‘demo ban zone’
More demonstrators have gathered in an “exclusion zone” to test the limits of a law banning protests without the police authorisation.
Catholic peace group Pax Christi read out names of children killed in the Iraq conflict at Downing Street.
Members said prayers at the event, which did not have police permission, but officers chose not to intervene.
Maya Evans, who read out names at the Cenotaph of soldiers killed in Iraq, has been convicted under the new law.
The 25-year-old was found guilty of breaching Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which covers a half-mile area around Parliament, and given a conditional discharge.
Since her conviction, others have been testing the new law – originally designed to evict peace protester Brian Haw, whose anti-war vigil has been a fixture in Parliament Square for four years.
He remains in the square, having successfully fought his case in the High Court.
On 21 December, about 100 carol singers gathered in Parliament Square, but no-one was arrested.
Pax Christi’s British chairman Stuart Hemsley told the BBC News website he read out the names of 29 British soldiers with children, who had been killed in Iraq.
The group also picked out the names of 50 Iraqi children aged five and under.
“We had no problems from the police whatsoever, they just stood there looking stony-faced. It was as if we weren’t there.
“I am not disappointed I have not been arrested but I wonder if this will now set a precedent.”
He said the group of 15 wanted to pray and worship at the seat of power in the hope they would continue to raise awareness of the situation in Iraq.