12/04/2006
BY HAMZA A. BAJWA
A report has brazenly implicated the British Government and the Secret Services’ involvement and attempted cover up of rendition flights and torture of British citizens this week.
The report ‘Fabricating Terrorism: British Complicity in Renditions and Torture’ has claimed to have unearthed damning evidence of not only the British authorities violation of international law in relation to illegal 'Torture' flights on British soil, but also claimed the intelligence services have gained information knowingly obtained from torture, and passed it on to other countries resulting in the detention, abuse and torture of detainees.
Published by the human rights group Cage Prisoners, the report has accused the British government of abrogating its responsibility towards British citizens by offering them nominal protection against the illegal actions of foreign governments.
It has also accused senior members of the British Government and authorities of supplying misinformation to Parliament, Parliamentary Committees and the general public regarding the British Government's involvement in rendition and torture.
The report is compiled and established from various sources, such as documentation supplied by plane spotters and human rights activists recording the use of British airspace by CIA chartered aircrafts during the process of rendition, including the infamous ‘Guantanamo Bay Express’. It also amassed evidence from 18 case studies detailing the experiences of British citizens subjected to torture as a consequence of the rendition process, as well as claiming that civil servants’ purposefully chose to ignore the suffering of the detainees despite the awareness of their precarious state.
One such case involved Binyam Mohammed Al Habashi where it was alleged that British intelligence agencies "supplied Moroccan interrogators with information to help the extraction of confessions in the torture sessions" which subsequently had a bearing on Binyam’s fate – his rendering to Guantanamo. In the case of Jamil El Banna and Bisher Al Rawi, British intelligence requested Gambian security forces to detain and interrogate them – a process described as ‘outsourcing torture’.
Moazzam Begg, who recently authored a book called ‘Enemy Combatant’ where he details the experiences of his "kidnapping" by Afghan and American forces and his detainment and torture at Guantanamo, said during an interview with Cage Prisoners: "British Intelligence has visited me throughout all my time in custody. So from Pakistan, they were there. In the beginning, when I first saw them, I thought this was a ray of hope, that the British were here, I'm going to get some consular access, I will get some communication to my family, I will get access to a lawyer, but they didn't do anything like that at all and disappeared completely. Then they reappeared by asking questions, again in Bagram and again on two or three occasions in Guantanamo."
Cage Prisoners, which works towards raising awareness of the condition of prisoners in Guantanamo and other detainees held as part of the 'War on Terror’, published the report to alert Britain and direct lawyers, politicians and the public to work towards forcing an end to "Britain’s role in these illegal and dangerous practices".
Geoffrey Bindman, chairman of the British Institute of Human Rights, wrote the foreword to the report in which he accused the Bush administration of having "thrown overboard nearly a thousand years of history by introducing a new concept of pre-emptive action, which in the name of countering terrorism justifies detention, torture and bombing on the basis of guesswork about what could happen, abandoning the need for evidence or fair legal processes".
He states that the UK Government has been "seduced by the rhetoric of the war on terror" and as a result ended up supporting these "inhuman US policies".
He adds: "In doing so it has undermined its own professed commitment to human rights and the rule of law. The case histories recounted in this report are appalling illustrations of brutal and inhuman treatment. If substantiated, they demonstrate an intolerable level of collaboration and collusion between UK and US authorities in the abuses which have taken place at Guantanamo and elsewhere through the "outsourcing" of torture. They also demonstrate a pathetic reluctance on the part of the UK government to stand up for the rights of its own citizens and permanent residents against illegal and unacceptable treatment."
He also commended those "courageous judges" who have refused the use of evidence obtained by torture and outlawed the indefinite detention of immigrants without trial in places such as Belmarsh.
He further stated that it was encouraging that an all-party parliamentary group had been established to examine the issue of extraordinary rendition.
"I hope this report will be read carefully by ministers and will have the impact it deserves. It is a damning indictment which will provide a useful resource for the parliamentary group. I expect it to fuel the momentum for a full and independent investigation of the compelling evidence which the authors have so diligently accumulated," he said.
The Report can be found at
www.cageprisoners.com