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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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February 12th,
2009 - British Group Heads to Guantanamo to Free Resident News article from the Associated
Press |
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British Group Heads to
Guantanamo to Free Resident By Paisley Dodds Associated Press February 12, 2009 London - A British court met
Wednesday to reconsider a case regarding a British resident being held in
Guantanamo - a lawsuit that stands to embarrass the American and British
governments over torture allegations. British Foreign Secretary
David Miliband, meanwhile, announced that a doctor and other British
officials would visit Binyam Mohamed at the US prison camp on Cuba's eastern
tip. Mohamed has been on a hunger strike for more than a month and is being
force-fed. He launched the strike to protest his continued detention. Charges
against him were dropped last year. "The visit will help us
make preparations for his return," said Miliband, after talks with
Mohamed's military lawyer, Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, who appealed to
Britain to pressure President Barack Obama's administration for Mohamed's
release. Mohamed's imminent release
raises a series of awkward questions for the United States and Britain. Mohamed claims that, before
he was sent to Guantanamo in 2004, he was held in Pakistan where he was
beaten by Pakistani authorities and interviewed by a British security agent
from MI5. After three months in Pakistan, he says the United States sent him
to Morocco where he was interrogated and brutally tortured - his penis was
allegedly slashed with a scalpel - for 18 months. The United States has never
publicly acknowledged extraordinary renditions to places such as Morocco and
the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, and still refuses to say where
Mohamed was for 18 months. British officials claim they didn't know he was
being sent to Morocco, although an MI5 officer interviewed him in Karachi,
Pakistan, shortly before he was allegedly sent to Morocco's capital of Rabat. Mohamed's attorneys sued
last year in Britain before the charges were dropped against him in
Guantanamo, fighting for 42 intelligence documents the United States had
shared with Britain. Mohamed claimed the material proved he was tortured. Although Mohamed's defense
attorneys were eventually allowed to see the documents - some of which had
been redacted - several media organizations, including The Associated Press,
sued to make the documents public. In their ruling last week,
justices John Thomas and Lloyd Jones said the documents detailed Mohamed's
treatment but that the material could not be made public. The justices cited
Miliband's assertion that the United States could threaten to withhold
valuable intelligence information if the material was put into the public
domain. Miliband then said there was
never a threat, which prompted Mohamed's attorneys and media organizations to
ask the justices to reconsider their ruling. The British government and the
claimants have 21 days to make fresh arguments. Mohamed's attorneys say Britain
has a responsibility to come clean if it knew Mohamed had been tortured at
the hands of the United States. They also claim Britain had knowledge of
Mohamed's rendition, which would violate British law. "Disclosure matters
because we need to know did torture happen - was the government
involved?" said opposition Conservative lawmaker, David Davis. "If
it was, was it as a matter of policy or was it a matter of freelancing ... We
need to make sure it never happens again." According to a transcript seen
by The Associated Press on Wednesday in High Court, a British security agent
from MI5 identified only as "Witness B" testified last year before
the justices that he interrogated Mohamed in Pakistan on May 17, 2002 - more
than a month after he was first arrested for using a false passport after
leaving Afghanistan. Although the MI5 agent
reported no signs of mistreatment, he noted Mohamed looked thinner than his
picture. "It caused me
sufficient concern for me to have noted it and recorded it," the agent
said. Although the agent conceded
that "the Pakistani authorities were not held to be particularly high
paradigms of human rights," he believed Mohamed was fit to be
interviewed and that Mohamed had not complained of any mistreatment. The agent denied he had been
sent to pressure Mohamed and that he believed that any "information
which is obtained through any form of duress is by its nature
unreliable." There was no indication in
the testimony that MI5 knew Mohamed was allegedly about to be sent to Morocco. Britain's Intelligence and
Security Committee issued a report in 2007 saying that they interviewed
officials from MI5 and were told that Britain only became aware of Mohamed's
rendition to Morocco in 2005, a year after he was in Guantanamo. The report also claimed that
Britain's security service had no other contact with Mohamed after the 2002
interview in Karachi. "With hindsight, it is
regrettable that assurances regarding proper treatment of detainees were not
sought from the Americans in (Mohamed's) case" and that British security
agencies passed on intelligence information to his American captors,"
the members of the committee wrote in the parliamentary report. Meanwhile, a veteran U.S.
Army interrogator insisted in an affidavit released Wednesday that he never
witnessed Mohamed being abused and said the suspect cooperated in a terror
probe after he was captured. The official first
encountered Mohamed on July 21, 2004 at a U.S. detention center in
Afghanistan. The interrogator described establishing a friendly relationship
with Mohamed, and said the detainee provided detailed descriptions of
abandoned terrorist training camps that helped U.S. investigators and
identified suspects. The interrogator's account
is contained in a sworn statement filed in federal court in Washington. The
name is redacted. The affidavit was provided to The Associated Press by the
military. "I greeted Mr. Mohamed
with a traditional Islamic greeting and Mr. Mohamed reciprocated. I introduced
myself using my real name and shook Mr. Mohamed's hand," the
interrogator recalled of their first meeting. "At the conclusion of the
interview, Mr. Mohamed agreed to continue his cooperation and to provide
truthful information to me." But the sworn statement
leaves blank the crucial 18 months that Mohamed was allegedly held in Morocco
and later at a CIA secret prison in Afghanistan before being taken to Bagram. A Foreign Office spokesman,
speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy, said
Wednesday that the team traveling to Cuba won't bring Mohamed back
immediately but that Miliband was pressing the U.S. to quickly clear him for
release. The team is expected in
Guantanamo next week. Associated Press writers
David Stringer and Dean Carson in London and Andrew Selsky in San Juan,
Puerto Rico contributed to this report. Copyright © 2009 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5junnlo64ITDwX7j8laiUSbOIYtIgD969Q7A00 Secrecy surrounds Guantanamo
man By Jonathan Beale BBC News February 12, 2009 The case of Binyam Mohamed,
the last British resident held in Guantanamo Bay, has already caused a
political storm in Britain. The waves of that row are
now being felt right here in Washington. The key question is whether
Mr Mohamed was subjected to torture. His lawyers are in no doubt, claiming he
was beaten while in custody in Pakistan, before being secretly flown to
Morocco for interrogation and torture. It is alleged that his brutal
treatment there included having his genitals slashed with a scalpel. The
lawyers and Mr Mohamed himself claim that the mistreatment continued while he
was held in US custody, first in the "Dark Prison" in Afghanistan,
then in Guantanamo where he is still being held. British Foreign Office
officials, accompanied by a Metropolitan Police doctor, are now preparing to
fly out to Guantanamo to examine the claims and could arrive as early as next
week. But already the US military
is trying to get out its side of the story. The Pentagon has always said it
does not condone or practice torture but has thus far provided little detail
about Mr Mohamed's treatment. It has not even admitted
that he was flown to Morocco for interrogation as part of the CIA's secret
programme of extraordinary rendition. Affidavit But last night the US
military hit back against the torture allegations. A senior US military
interrogator who says he interviewed Mr Mohamed on six separate dates in 2004
at Bagram, and then a further 14 times after his transfer to Guantanamo, has
submitted a sworn affidavit to a Washington court. The interrogator's name and
some other details have been edited out of the 19 pages of sworn statement
seen by the BBC. Crucially, it does not give any detail of Mr Mohamed's time
in Morocco. But the statement paints a
very different picture of Mr Mohamed's treatment. The US army interrogator -
who first encountered Binyam Mohamed at Bagram airbase on 21 July 2004 - says
that he was "not aware that anyone at Bagram took coercive, threatening
or violent action against Mr Mohamed during this period". He says their initial
discussion was about the Ethiopian national's treatment: "Mr Mohamed
informed me that he was being treated well at Bagram and that he was
receiving appropriate medical care and religious accommodation. I did not
notice any physical bruising or marks on Mr Mohamed's person." The interrogator, who has
served in the US Army for 18 years, talks about Binyam Mohamed's "polite
and co-operative demeanour" as he was asked about allegations that he
had trained at an al-Qaeda camp. He says: "I knew Mr Mohamed had
attended Al-Farouq [the camp's name]." Courteous He claims the detainee drew
a sketch of the camp and after a number of sessions provided a statement
about his activities. "Mr Mohamed was polite, courteous and respectful
throughout the process of writing his statement," the interrogator says. Mr Mohamed's lawyers have consistently
denied US claims that he has links to terrorism or had been trained at an
al-Qaeda camp. When Mr Mohamed was
transferred to Guantanamo in late 2004 the sessions continued. The unnamed
interrogator says that when he asked Mr Mohamed about his health "he did
not raise any allegations or concerns with me about physical abuse or
mistreatment at Guantanamo." In their meetings he tried
to provide the detainee with various items including a book by Charles
Dickens, he claims, plus an extra pair of socks and a pillow. At one point he alleges
noticing "what appeared to be healed burn scars on Mr Mohamed's right
arm. I asked Mr Mohamed about the scar and he explained that the injury was
the result of a fire involving kitchen oil when he was very young. I did not
notice any other physical bruising or marks on Mr Mohamed's person, and Mr
Mohamed did not identify any other scarring, bruising or injuries during my
interviews with him". Separately two US officials
have told the BBC that Mr Mohamed has been medically examined and no evidence
was found that his genitals had been slashed. The "interviews"
with this army interrogator ended in December 2004 when he received orders to
deploy to Afghanistan. The interrogator says that towards the end of their
meetings Mr Mohamed requested "time to think about whether he wanted to
co-operate with the Government". Mr Mohamed is currently on
hunger strike in protest at his treatment. His US military defence lawyer who
saw him last week describes him now as "skin and bones". Even if the sworn statement
from the US army interrogator is an accurate full account, it still barely
lifts the heavy veil of secrecy surrounding Binyam Mohamed's treatment -
particularly with regard to what happened in Morocco. Soon British officials will
have the chance to speak to Mr Mohamed. The Pentagon still insists no
decision has been taken to release him, but Mr Mohamed's lawyers hope this is
the beginning of the process which will see him returned to the UK. Only then may we begin to understand
more about his case. External link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7885211.stm |