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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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February 14th,
2009 - Rendition Case Enters ‘Bizarre’ Realms of Secrecy |
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Rendition Case
Enters ‘Bizarre’ Realms of Secrecy By William Fisher Inter Press Service February 14, 2009 A prominent British-American
lawyer who represents an Ethiopian-born Guantánamo detainee is charging that
U.S. Defense Department officials are intentionally concealing evidence of
his client's rendition and torture from President Barack Obama. The lawyer is Clive Stafford
Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve. He says he sent a letter to
Obama through the Defense Department detailing "truly medieval"
abuse inflicted on Binyam Mohamed, but that much of it was blacked out,
preventing the president from reading it. In the letter to the
president, Stafford Smith urges Obama to be aware of the "bizarre
reality" of the situation. "You, as commander in chief, are being
denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been
committed by U.S. personnel. This decision is being made by the very people
who you command." The central figure in this
British case is the same Binyam Mohamed who appealed a separate U.S. case, on
behalf of himself and four other terror suspects, to the U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in San Francisco last week. In that case, government
lawyers from the Obama administration sought a decision not to reinstate a
case that was thrown out by a lower court last year because government
lawyers argued successfully that allowing the case to go forward would
jeopardize U.S. national security. In opposing reinstatement of
the case, Obama's lawyers used the same "state secrets" privilege
used by Bush lawyers in the original case. The appeals court has not yet
ruled in the case, which charges that a subsidiary of the Boeing Company,
Jeppesen Dataplan, knowingly provided aircraft and logistical services to
facilitate the Central Intelligence Agency's rendition of Mohamed to overseas
prisons where he was tortured. The letter and its
blacked-out attachment were disclosed as two high court judges agreed to
reopen the court case in which Mohamed's lawyers, the Guardian newspaper and
other media are seeking disclosure of evidence of alleged torture against
him. Mohamed's lawyers are
challenging the judges' gagging order, claiming that David Miliband, the
foreign secretary, changed his evidence. The attachment is titled "Re:
Torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed by US personnel." The entire
body of the memo and the name of its recipient are also redacted. Stafford Smith told IPS in
an email exchange that his letter to President Obama speaks for itself. He
says he doesn't know who redacted the materials he submitted to the Defense
Department. In a judgment last week,
British Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones stated repeatedly
that Secretary Miliband claimed the U.S. had threatened to stop sharing
intelligence with Britain if information relating to Mohamed's alleged
torture was disclosed. Miliband subsequently denied the U.S. had applied such
pressure, but a U.S. State Department spokesperson thanked the British
government for respecting the confidentiality of shared intelligence. The
British case will be reopened next month. Stafford Smith's letter to
Obama says: "I am writing with great urgency concerning the rendition
and torture of a Guantánamo Bay prisoner represented by our charity. His name
is Binyam Mohamed, and he is a British resident." "You will doubtless
have been informed about Mr. Mohamed's torture - he was abused in truly
medieval ways over a period of more than two years in Pakistan (at the behest
of the U.S.), then again in Morocco (where he had been rendered by the CIA),
and then in the Dark Prison in Kabul. There has been a firestorm in the media
of our closest ally, the United Kingdom because, according to two British
judges, the Bush Administration 'threatened' to withdraw national security
cooperation with the UK if the judges ordered the release of materials
concerning the torture of Mr. Mohamed in U.S. custody." "The British judges
bowed to this 'threat' - but suggested at the end of their Judgment that your
administration might reconsider the position taken by your predecessors.... "Since we, at Reprieve,
are U.S. lawyers with appropriate security clearances, we have access to this
classified material. We have therefore assembled a memorandum that collates
the evidence of torture in question. It is attached...for now, to deal with
the British judges' request, we are submitting this information to you with
no reference to any agent's name, or even the location of the abuse. Thus, as
the British judges suggested, there is nothing in the memo that divulges
material that should be considered classified." "We are submitting this
letter and attachment to the Privilege Review Team established by the
Department of Defense to deal with these issues...If the DOD is unwilling to
forward this material to you, then we will send you only what we are allowed
to send you - which will be a copy of this letter and a redacted version of
the memo illustrating the extent to which it has been censored." Earlier, Mohamed's
U.S.-appointed military lawyer told a press conference that his treatment
"would make waterboarding seem like child's play." The Guardian newspaper
reported that Stafford Smith and his military lawyer last week met in private
with members of the British intelligence and security committee, the group of
MPs and peers facing mounting criticism in Westminster over claims it failed
to effectively scrutinize the activities of MI5, the British intelligence
agency. Stafford Smith said he told
the committee it would have been "absolutely impossible" for it to
have cleared MI5 of involvement in the torture of Mohamed had it seen 42 key
documents in the case - as he has - that Miliband says cannot be released for
reasons of national security. Binyam Mohamed is a
30-year-old Ethiopian who was granted political asylum in Britain in 1994. In
2002, he was seized by Pakistani authorities and turned over to U.S.
intelligence officials in connection with the Bush administration's
extraordinary renditions program. He was shuttled between CIA-operated
facilities in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Morocco. During this period of
U.S.-sponsored detention, according to court papers, Mohamed was
"routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness.
His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to
make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot tingling liquid was
then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was
frequently threatened with rape, electrocution, and death." Mohamed, who had been
scheduled for release from Guantánamo shortly, has been on a hunger strike
for the past month. He is reported to be close to death. External link: http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=14246 |