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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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May 6th,
2008 - Guantánamo Briton Sues UK over ‘Torture Evidence’ |
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Guantánamo Briton Sues UK
over ‘Torture Evidence’ By Sadie Gray The Guardian May 6, 2008 The last British resident
left in Guantánamo Bay is suing the UK government for refusing to produce
evidence that he was a victim of extraordinary rendition and torture. Binyam Mohamed faces a US military
commission which could sentence him to death, and his lawyers say proving
that the case against him is based exclusively on evidence extracted by
torture, following his rendition by the CIA, is vital to his defence. Today, they lodged papers at
the high court in London, seeking a judicial review to force the Foreign
Office to release information on his movements. Government lawyers had
answered a previous defence request, saying "the UK is under no
obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in
assuring that torture evidence is not admitted". Mohamed's solicitor, Richard
Stein of Leigh Day & Co, today said: "He has been the victim of
extraordinary rendition, horrific torture, years of detention without trial,
all apparently with the assistance of or, at least, the Nelsonian blindess of
the British government. "It beggars belief that
they will not lift a finger to help a British resident when he may face the
death penalty." Clive Stafford Smith, who
has represented Mohamed for three years, said it had been established that
British intelligence questioned him for three hours in Karachi in 2002. Mohamed said in his evidence
that the security service officer indicated he would be taken to an Arab
country. His legal team said that showed British intelligence knew of the
plan to transfer him to Morroco, and that flight records relating to the
island of Diego Garcia could also establish his movements. Mohamed was born in Ethiopia
in 1978 and came to the UK in 1994 as a 16-year-old student. Seeking
political asylum, he was given leave to remain and got a job as a janitor in
Kensington, London. But he developed a drug
habit and decided to resolve his personal problems by travelling. About to
return to the UK from Pakistan, he was arrested on a visa violation and was
handed over to the US authorities. From July 2002 until January
2004, he was imprisoned and tortured in Morrocco, before being transferred to
the "dark prison" in Kabul. He was flown to Guantánamo Bay in May 2004. Stafford Smith said:
"The moral compass of this government seems to have caught a very
perverse magnet. "Since when could we
criticise the US for 'kangaroo courts' in Guantánamo while simultaneously
leaving Binyam Mohamed to be condemned, based on evidence tortured out of him
with a razor blade to his penis? "Abolishing a 10% tax
rate is one matter; abandoning our commitment to the convention against
torture is quite something else." External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/06/guantanamo.usa Guantanamo man says govt
knew he would be tortured By Mark Trevelyan Reuters May 6, 2008 London - British
intelligence knew in advance that a former London janitor now awaiting trial
by a U.S. military commission in Guantanamo Bay would be tortured in an Arab
country to extract evidence, his lawyers allege. Lawyers for Ethiopian-born
Binyam Mohamed, 29, filed a High Court case on Tuesday to try to force the
government to give evidence that would help his defence to expected charges
before the tribunal at the U.S. detention camp on Cuba. They say a British security
official interviewed Mohamed after he was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002,
and told him he would be transferred to an Arab country and tortured. Mohamed says he was flown to
Morocco in July 2002 on a CIA plane and held there for 18 months, during
which time he says he was repeatedly stripped naked and cut with a scalpel on
his chest and penis. He was transferred to Afghanistan in 2004 and finally,
later that year, to Guantanamo. His lawyer Clive Stafford
Smith said the British authorities had a duty to reveal what they knew, in
order to support his case that terrorism allegations against him are false
and based on torture. "The issue here is not
really legal, the issue is moral," Stafford Smith told a news
conference. "What possible moral
position can the British government take that gives them the right to deny
this sort of assistance to a person who's had a razor blade taken to his
genitals?" Mohamed told Stafford Smith
that an officer of MI5, told him in the 2002 interview in Pakistan that he
would be transferred to a third country. "They gave me a cup of
tea with a lot of sugar in it. I initially only took one. 'No, you need a lot
more. Where you're going, you need a lot of sugar,'" Mohamed quoted the
officer as saying. "I didn't know what he
meant by this, but I figured he meant some poor country in Arabia. One of
them did tell me I was going to get tortured by the Arabs." While under interrogation in
Morocco, Mohamed says he was asked questions about his life in London that
could only have been based on information supplied by British authorities. A parliamentary committee
said last year there was a "reasonable probability" that
intelligence passed from Britain to the United States was used to interrogate
Mohamed. The committee's report,
parts of which were deleted for national security reasons, said it did not
know whether he was held and tortured in Morocco. Tuesday's High Court case
was filed against Foreign Secretary David Miliband. No comment was
immediately available from the Foreign Office. Mohamed's case has been
highlighted in investigations by human rights groups and the Council of
Europe into alleged "extraordinary renditions" by the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency - secret flights to deliver terrorist suspects to
countries where they then faced torture. The United States denies
torturing suspects or transferring them to countries that do. © Thomson Reuters 2008. All
rights reserved. External link: http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKL0613482420080506 |