TORTURE CASE RATTLES TRANSATLANTIC ALLIANCE

Senior British judges thumbed their noses at London and Washington by refusing to keep secret evidence that the CIA tortured a detainee and the British government knew about it. The detainee was Binyan Mohammed, an Egyptian, who was given refugee status in the U.K. in 1994.

In releasing eight paragraphs, which had been scratched from a previous High Court hearing at the request of the British government, the public learned that the British government and its intelligence community knew about the torture of Mohamed. By delivering their ruling, three Court of Appeal judges showed they were not going to capitulate to political pressure to conceal their own government’s complicity in what they regarded as a breach of international law. Pressure on the judges to hide what London and Washington knew about Mohamed’s treatment in CIA custody had come from none other than the White House and Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who publicly warned that release of the paragraphs could jeopardize the future sharing of intelligence with Britain. The British government, which is in the midst of a controversial inquiry into its unqualified support for the invasion of Iraq, tried to persuade its courts to withhold the material, which confirmed that CIA reports about Mohammed’s condition had been read in London and that his treatment breached international undertakings made by the U.K. in 1972 with respect to Geneva Conventions. Nevertheless, under intense pressure from the Obama White House, lawyers instructed by Home Secretary, David Miliband, tried to convince the Court of Appeal that national security trumped the release of the paragraphs.
The British judiciary, which has often been conservative when handling matters pertaining to national security, took a different view. The appeal judges decided it was in the public interest to expose their own government to scrutiny of what it knew and denied it knew about the torture of Binyan Mohammed. It has been reported, however, that the same judges made a concession to 10 Downing Street by not releasing damning evidence showing British foreign intelligence agents were not only complicit in Mohammed’s torture but had shown a total disregard for his suffering.
What makes this case so explosive for Washington and London is that it opens up a possible legal debate about the CIA’s rendition program, thereby exposing both governments to charges of war crimes before the International Criminal Court. At the highest levels of government in London and Washington there is a genuine fear the London ruling will lead to further scrutiny of the CIA’s use of “black sites” and the roles played by other foreign intelligence agencies in facilitating renditions, or providing alternative interrogation sites. It is likely attention will focus on the fact that U.S. Joint Special Operations Command has been running its own secret sites across Afghanistan and elsewhere. Barack Obama promised to close all CIA black sites there is no evidence he has done so, or has ever addressed the issue of the Joint Special operations sites, some of which have been referred to by detainees as “the salt pit” and “the prison of darkness.”
The revelation Binyan Mohamed was tortured in a black site highlights increasing evidence that suspects are still continually rounded up and “disappeared” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the past year, families in Afghanistan have claimed that loved ones were snatched in the middle of the night by U.S. Special forces and were not seen again. The families believe their kin are being held incognito in “dark prisons.” One such “prison” exists outside Kabul and some detainees who were held there later talked about been chained in darkness for weeks. Binyan Mohamed was held in the Kabul black site for four months. His story highlights how, post 9/11, the Bush administration had a no-holds barred attitude to interrogation. There are now suspicions that, for all its rhetoric the Obama administration has not ended the Bush policy.
Mohammed was arrested in late 2001 in Pakistan where he was held for several months and interrogated by CIA and British MI6 agents. In the summer of 2002, the CIA renditioned him to Morocco, which has a long history of using torture. Over the next 18 months, Moroccan interrogators broke some of his bones and cut his genitals and chest with a scalpel and razor blades. They told him the U.S. wanted him to give evidence in court against senior Al Qaeda figures they had in custody. All he had to do was say in court what he would be briefed to say. It is now believed he was kept for a long time in Morocco to allow the wounds to his genitals and bones to heal.
At 2:05 a.m. on January 22, 2004, he was flown in a CIA registered Boeing-737 jet, # N313P, to Kabul. According to the Council of Europe, the same jet was used later that day to rendition another detainee from Macedonia to Kabul. When Mohamed arrived at Kabul airport, he was whisked off to the CIA’s “dark prison” outside Kabul instead of the U.S. run prison at Bagram air base. He was held there until May before being transferred to Bagram and subsequently to Guantanamo. While he was in the “dark prison” he was allowed outside once for fifteen minutes. He later said it was the first time he had seen daylight in two years. His CIA interrogators shackled him, continuously deprived him of sleep and threatened him to such an extent he had to be kept under observation to stop him harming himself. The British judges concluded his detention had to be extreme if his captors had been worried about his state of mind.
In September 2004, he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay where he was held until February 2009 when he was cleared of all charges and released into the custody of the British. On his arrival back in Britain, he was freed. One of the startling aspects of his confinement is that he says he was forced to sign a statement admitting he plotted with Jose Padilla to explode a dirty bomb in the U.S. The so-called “Padilla dirty bomb plot” has since been exposed as an intelligence agency fiction.
Since the decision by the three Court of Appeal judges to release the classified paragraphs, the British government has sought to distance itself from charges it colluded in torture. Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, tried to set the record straight with the following declaration:
It appears that after 9/11 the U.S. changed the rules of engagement for their staff in the fight against international terrorism. When this became clear to us, Agency guidance to our own staff was changed to make clear their responsibilities, not just to avoid any involvement or complicity in unacceptable practice, but also to report on them.”
Some observers deemed Miliband’s statement a specious attempt to protect Britain’s security services, which are due to face additional scrutiny when more cases like Binyan Mohamed’s reach the British courts. One of the ironies of the Binyan Mohamed saga is that the British judges’ refusal to play ball with London and Washington, and the British public’s interest in the truth about the darker side of the war on terror, are not matched by opinion in the U.S. On the contrary, Congress and the mainstream media have shown little appetite for shedding light on those alleged to have abused international law, including hired mercenaries, now called contractors. As for the American public, too many people prefer the fictional world of “Jack Bauer” in which torture is a necessary evil, as long as we are using it.