From the Telegraph

An alleged MI6 station chief in Athens has been recalled to Britain “for his own safety” after being identified by a Greek newspaper.

It reported that he had taken part in the abduction and brutal interrogation of Pakistanis.

As the Government placed a gag order to stop British media from naming the alleged spy, who is officially accredited as a diplomat, a well-placed Greek security source said his recall was “not done as punishment or as retribution of any kind for the unfavourable turn of events”.

He added: “It is more of a standard precautionary measure because his intelligence role can no longer be effective in Greece.”

The Foreign Office declined to comment yesterday. It merely noted that Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, had previously dismissed as “utter nonsense” claims by the Pakistani workers to have been beaten by British and Greek counter-terrorism officers last July as they investigated links to the London bombings.

One claimed he had a gun put in his mouth as he was questioned about telephone calls to London and Pakistan.

Proto Thema, a Greek magazine, said the MI6 station chief had taken part in the interrogations with a second MI6 officer who was not named.

It also unmasked 15 Greek intelligence officials in revelations denounced by Athens as illegal “because they endanger national security”.

Greek authorities said they had had to recall two of their intelligence agents from Kosovo.

The alleged spy has previously been identified as an MI6 officer on the internet and in allegations made by Richard Tomlinson, a renegade MI6 officer.

Seven of the 28 detainees, who say they were held for several days then set free without charge, have lodged official complaints in Athens.

BBC News

Carol singers are to become the latest group to defy a ban on unauthorised protests around Parliament.

The group will test the limits of the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by singing in Parliament Square from 1800 GMT on Wednesday.

The law makes demonstrating without police permission an arrestable offence near Parliament.

Singers include long-term anti-war protester Brian Haw and Maya Evans – the first protester to be convicted.

Ironically Mr Haw is the one protester exempt from the ban, due to a Home Office drafting error.

He successfully argued in the High Court that as his four-year vigil pre-dated the law, he did not have to apply for authorisation to continue.

Since the law came into force in August, several people have been arrested and other protesters have been warned off.

Peace campaigner Ms Evans was the first to be convicted under the Act, after reading out the names of soldiers killed in Iraq at the Cenotaph.

Mr Haw will lead the Lord’s Prayer at the service on Wednesday, joined by others including former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, and a 7 July bombings survivor.

A spokesman for the carol singers, Tim Ireland, said: “In this instance, the police have not been notified. They’ve been invited, certainly, but they have not been notified.

“We believe that the public has the right to gather in a public place and sing Christmas carols. The police may see things differently, we shall see.”

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman was not able to comment on whether a carol service constituted a demonstration and said a decision about whether to take action would be taken on the day.

Hundreds of people will today risk arrest and prosecution by singing Christmas Carols in Parliament Square.

I urge you to join us if you can make it, in Parliament Square on Wednesday this week at 6pm. It’s important to protect these traditions, beloved of us all in this country for a thousand years. Now more than ever.”

Please see details in above post.

A petition has been launched demanding an enquiry into the London bomb attacks of the 7th July.

To view the petition click here

British agents are being accused of involvement in the kidnapping and “psychological torture” of 28 men in Greece during the hunt for the terrorists behind the July 7th bombings.

Listen to the BBC Radio interview here

Referring to the Law Lords ruling and subsequent statements from the UK government:

The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, said it was untrue the UK Government did not use information from torture…

“As long as we kept within that guideline, then if the Uzbeks or the Syrians, or the Egyptians or anyone else tortured someone and gave us the information that was OK,” said Mr Murray.

From an article in Siber New Media

For a clear analysis of the case against the governments line go here

From BBC News

Click here to listen to Craig’s comments on this breakthrough during thursday’s Simon Mayo Radio 5 Live show

Secret evidence which might have been obtained by torture cannot be used against terror suspects in UK courts, the law lords have ruled.

The ruling means the home secretary will have to review all cases where evidence from other countries might have been obtained in this way.

It is a victory for eight men who were previously detained without charge. The government says it does not use evidence it knows to have been obtained by torture.

Human rights

The ruling centres on how far the government must go to show improper methods have not been used. The Court of Appeal ruled last year that such evidence was usable if UK authorities had no involvement.

But eight of the 10 foreign terror suspects who were being held without charge, backed by human rights groups, challenged that ruling. They argued evidence obtained in US detention camps should be excluded.

The Special Immigration Appeals Court (SIAC) must now investigate whether evidence was obtained by torture, the law lords have ruled.

‘Important day’

Daily Telegraph legal correspondent Joshua Rozenberg told BBC News 24 the ruling was a “very significant blow for the government”.

He said it would not be enough for suspects simply to say the evidence against them had been obtained under torture – it was up to SIAC to investigate their claims. But if the government was not prepared to say where evidence has come from, it must find other evidence to justify their continued detention.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights pressure group Liberty, said: “This is an incredibly important day, with the law lords sending a signal across the democratic world that there is to be no compromise on torture.

“This is also an important message about what distinguishes us from dictators and terrorists. We will not legitimise evidence obtained by torture by using it in our justice system.”

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has said he would deport anyone considered a threat to national security. But the suspects have the right of appeal to SIAC.

Extracts from a debate in the House of Lords on the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill (6th December). The full transcript can be found in Hansards

Baroness Stern: The new Clause 51 proposed by the Government will include within that definition acts of committing, preparing or instigating terrorism, and acts of encouraging or inducing others to commit, prepare or instigate terrorism, whether or not the acts themselves amount to an actual or “inchoate” offence. That may sound eminently reasonable until we remember, first, the definition of terrorism being used here, and, secondly, that it covers acts wherever they are committed, whether in Uzbekistan, North Korea or perhaps Burma.

I cannot do better than draw to the attention of the House the view of the Joint Committee of Human Rights on this issue:

“To redefine the scope of Article 1F(c) exclusion so as to catch anyone who has threatened damage to property as a means to political change anywhere in the world, and anyone who in the Secretary of State’s view has engaged in one of the unacceptable behaviours such as ‘justifying’ terrorism, is in our view to broaden the scope of the exclusion in Article 1F(c) in a way which is not itself compatible with the Refugee Convention”.

It seems to me, although of course I am not a lawyer, that advocating the overthrow of a repressive regime’for example, that in Uzbekistan’and supporting a move to another form of government such as democracy is enough to ensure that you will not get the protection of the United Kingdom, should you be able to flee before the secret police get you. In my view, that is a deeply shaming position for us to find ourselves in, and a long way from the haven for the Huguenots mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville.

The position is not improved by the provision in Clause 7 that requires appeals against deportation on national security grounds to be brought out-of-country. The Joint Committee considers that the failure of the new clause to preserve an in-country appeal on asylum grounds gives rise to a risk of incompatibility with the refugee convention…

Clause 53 will introduce a new test for the deprivation of a person’s British citizenship….the basis for the Secretary of State to deprive a person of British citizenship will be that he is,

“satisfied that deprivation is conducive to the public good”….

I have one more question for the Minister: how do the Government propose to reconcile the work of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, in reviewing the definition of terrorism in the 2000 Act with the plans to use that definition straight away across such a wide range of new legislation?

A letter published in the Pakistan Daily Times

Sir: Just as the CIA have their notorious programme whereby the ‘suspect’ is sent for further questioning to key torture destinations around the world, there is plenty of evidence that British intelligence agencies do the same. Earlier, in September, in a statement to the Law Lords by the head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller argued for the efficacy of torture in preventing a terrorist plot.

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, cites a few examples from Uzbekistan ‘ a woman who was raped with a broken bottle and died after ten days of agony; the old man who was suspended by wrist shackles from the ceiling while his children were beaten before his eyes; the man whose fingernails were pulled off and who was immersed to his armpits in boiling liquid; and the 18-year-old whose knees and elbows were smashed and whose hand was immersed in boiling liquid until the flesh started to peel from the bone.

In light of this, the British anti-terror Bill seems hypocritical. It makes their stance on human rights a lot less credible.

MARYAM PARACHA

MPs should resist the stampede to allow 90-day detentions and look at what police did or did not do to stop the 7/7 attacks

By Gareth Peirce in The Guardian

Any MPs who hold misgivings about supporting an invasion on the basis of a dossier later discovered to have been utterly misleading ought now to be demanding a proper, transparent investigation into what the police did and did not do that might have prevented the bombings in London of July 7; and they ought to treat with extreme caution the “dossiers” prepared to support 90-day detentions.

The leader of the opposition, in the immediate aftermath of the bombings, asked for just such an inquiry. Were that to have been conducted, the present stampede, with justifications for numbers of days of detention plucked out of the air, could not possibly be happening. While some reports have hinted at police incompetence and failure to arrest those involved in advance of the bombings, these are likely to be only the tip of the iceberg. A far-reaching inquiry might well show that not one second of additional time for interrogations would have been needed to redress a complete failure to use any of the powers already in police hands. All that is needed is for MPs to say: “Pause for a moment, let us have a proper, truthful explanation.”

As a starting point for its justification, the police dossier revisits the ricin case, in which a number of innocent men were acquitted – an outcome intensely disliked by the police. Now they claim that had they had 90 days, or perhaps 29, or maybe 19, the outcome would have been very different, and that “the suspect who fled the country while on bail and who eventually proved to have been a prime conspirator would have stood trial in this country”. The police held that suspect for two days. It was their decision to release him. Where does the need for 90 days come from?

In contradiction of the police claim that they needed more time to liaise with foreign jurisdictions, the head of MI5 is on record as saying that this country could not make inquiries of a regime such as Algeria (to discover if the originator of information had been tortured) lest it stop the free flow of information.

So far as 90 days might have been advantageous “to understand the complexities of the conspiracy before the decision was required to charge or release”, the police appear to forget that from day one they (and the prime minister) were trumpeting a plot involving chemical weapons. Two years later it was left to a hapless witness from Porton Down to suggest that it was his fault that the instantaneous discovery that there had been no ricin had not been communicated to Scotland Yard or the government. Memories are short. The rush to judgment came not from any 14-day restriction (most of those charged were held for considerably less than seven days); it came from an urgent political desire to seize upon a pot of Nivea cream that in the end was discovered to contain no poisonous material.

Further justifications are just as shoddy. Time is needed to “establish the identity of subjects”. What is not explained is that at Paddington Green police station, suspects often wait for 48 hours or considerably longer for a first interview confined to name, address and elementary background details. Look at any custody record of any detainee under terrorism legislation, and you will see that for 90% of the time or more no interviews take place. Solicitors often beg for some movement; demands after as much as a week for a reason to be given for the arrest fall on deaf ears. Solicitors waiting to be present at interviews that never take place can be seen patrolling Edgware Road, since the rebuilding of the security section, at a cost of millions, failed to leave room for them – and did not provide more than two interview rooms. So when the turn comes for detainees to be interrogated, they are told there is “no interview room at the moment”.

Where is the detainee meanwhile? I find it impossible to believe that the grim unpleasantness of the cells can be anything other than intended, especially given the costly revamp. It has left 365 hideous white tiles on the walls of each cell (as an Irishman counted some years ago). There is a hard plastic mattress on a wooden plank, with an open toilet at one end. A bare light in the high ceiling is difficult enough to read by, but the life-saving distraction of reading matter is more often than not forbidden. There is no natural light; the 14 days of detention are spent in an underworld without fresh air or proper ventilation – an inescapable part of the anticipated experience. In warm weather, heat comes from pipes under the bunk. In cold weather, unpleasant-smelling oil heaters are pushed uselessly into the corridors.

At the end of a 14-day period of interviews, lawyers themselves are often ill and exhausted. Effects on detainees are far more drastic: in a number of cases, police have had to pay compensation to innocent detainees who suffered permanent trauma after their release; one woman’s menstrual cycle was drastically altered after a seven-day detention, and her partner suffered alopecia; many students have never resumed their studies; one man succeeded in committing suicide, and many others have tried.

MPs would do well to remember the legislative stampede in December 2001 to detain foreign nationals indefinitely without trial. Parliamentarians were reassured that detention would be a last resort; that reassurance was entirely false. Men who it was claimed were the most serious terrorism suspects in this country at the time were not questioned for 14 minutes, let alone 14 days.

Parliamentarians have been duped twice into supporting steps necessary for a “war on terror”. To allow this to happen a third time would be a wholesale dereliction of their duty.

‘ Gareth Peirce is a partner at Birnberg Peirce solicitors who has represented numerous detainees under the Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001

From BBC Online

Plans to allow people to be prosecuted in the UK for encouraging terrorist attacks abroad have been branded a “dangerous nonsense”.

The plans came under fire in the Commons as MPs debated details of the Terrorism Bill.

But minister Paul Goggins said all terrorism had to be tackled and the government won a vote on the issue. Earlier, the home secretary said his anti-terror laws were still on course despite a climbdown on Wednesday.

Charles Clarke was forced by the threat of defeat in the Commons to back down on plans to extend detention powers in terrorism cases.

‘Ridiculous’

The Terrorism Bill creates several new offences, including encouraging or glorifying terrorism, preparing terrorist acts and attending terrorist camps. And it says those offences can be prosecuted in UK courts even if they are committed abroad.

Former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke said the plans would provoke all kinds of diplomatic and political problems “as soon as other governments realise they can start pursuing their enemies here and get them arrested”.

Labour MP John Denham, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said glorifying terrorism might not even be an offence in other countries. He said it was “ludicrous” to arrest people in the UK for doing something in another country where their actions were not illegal.

And Tory shadow attorney general Dominic Grieve said the plans would stop people who had tried to overthrow totalitarian regimes seeking refuge in the UK. “This law as drafted at the moment is a dangerous nonsense,” said Mr Grieve.

Terrorism camps

Home Office Minister Paul Goggins said terrorism increasingly had to be seen in its world context. And it had to be taken seriously wherever it happened and whatever the nationality of its victims, he argued.

The government defeated an attempt to change the plans by 303 votes to 211, a majority of 92. The bill would also create a new offence of attending places where terrorist training is taking place. A Conservative amendment to protect journalists trying to investigate terrorist training camps was defeated by 316 votes to 223.

Mr Goggins said it wasn’t up to “maverick journalists” to go to camps “to do their own investigations”.

Heading off defeat

The debate comes after the government scraped a one vote victory on Wednesday over plans to outlaw glorification of terrorism – Tony Blair’s slimmest ever majority. And Mr Clarke headed off a possible defeat on plans to extend the time terror suspects can be detained without trial from 14 days to 90 days.

He said he would seek agreement with all parties and bring forward new proposals early next week.

The media are treating the rules Blunkett has now broken as trivial. In fact they are not.

Blunkett took a directorship of, and shares in, a DNA technology firm. The biggest customer in the UK for DNA technology is ‘ the Home Office. This is not primarily in the glamorous world of Police and crime detection, though that is very important and what first comes to the popular mind. An even bigger, and exponentially growing, field for DNA testing is immigration control.

Every day immigration sections in Embassies and High Commissions around the World are overseeing thousands of DNA tests to prove relationships of visa applicants to relatives they wish to join in the UK. This usage expanded massively while Blumkett was Home Secretary ‘ and directly responsible for immigration. The Home Office does not actually pay for the test ‘ the applicant does that ‘ but does supervise the process, including the taking of samples.

So Blunkett is entering a field that is set to benefit directly from his ministerial activities. Few doubt that the government ultimately intends its War on Terror and ID card drive to result in the building of a national DNA ID bank. Again while Blunkett was Home Office Minister, the decision was taken that DNA samples taken from crime suspects will be retained on file, even if the suspect was completely innocent, perhaps one of thousands sampled in a widely spread net in a murder investigation.

DNA is the chosen weapon of Big Brother. That the most enthusiastic enemy of civil liberties should choose to invest in it, should worry us.

It is of course ironic that the other high profile use of DNA testing is paternity suits. It was DNA testing that proved that the right wing American society adulteress that Blunkett chose as his lover, was not carrying his baby. I have nothing at all against illegitimate people ‘ I am not married to my present partner. But maybe God decided Blunkett was enough of a bastard already.

Craig Murray

Pressure on Blunkett continues today with fresh evidence emerging of ignored warnings and doubts about the accreditation status of the company

From The Guardian:

Craig Murray makes a number of accusations about me (Hazel Blears made a claim I know to be false, October 19) over the decision to proscribe the Islamic Jihad Union. Readers will understand why I cannot provide full details of all the intelligence available on the IJU or the nature of intelligence operations in central Asia. What I can say is that the home secretary had the full intelligence picture, as presented by UK intelligence agencies, available to him when he took the decision to recommend that the IJU should be proscribed. The decision to proscribe the IJU – and 14 other organisations – was endorsed by both houses of parliament last week with not one member of either house voting against the order.

To assist parliament in coming to a decision, we provided a brief account of the activities of the IJU, including that in July 2004 an IJU cell mounted suicide attacks against the US and Israeli embassies in Tashkent. These attacks were condemned by the UN secretary general. The IJU has claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist crimes. The IJU is proscribed by the UN and I believe there was a clear case for the UK to take similar action.

Hazel Blears MP

Home Office minister