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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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February 10th,
2010 - Mohamed Case Shows MI5 to be Dishonest and Complicit in Torture |
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Top Judge: Binyam Mohamed Case
Shows MI5 to be Devious, Dishonest and Complicit in Torture Legal defeat plunges Security Service into crisis over torture
evidence, and it is revealed that judge removed damning verdict after Foreign
Office QC's plea By Richard Norton-Taylor & Ian Cobain The Guardian February 10, 2010 MI5 faced an unprecedented
and damaging crisis tonight after one of the country's most senior judges
found that the Security Service had failed to respect human rights,
deliberately misled parliament, and had a "culture of suppression"
that undermined government assurances about its conduct. The condemnation, by Lord
Neuberger, the master of the rolls, was drafted shortly before the foreign
secretary, David Miliband, lost his long legal battle to suppress a
seven-paragraph court document showing that MI5 officers were involved in the
ill-treatment of a British resident, Binyam Mohamed. Amid mounting calls for an
independent inquiry into the affair, three of the country's most senior
judges - Lord Judge, the lord chief justice, Sir Anthony May, president of
the Queen's Bench Division, and Lord Neuberger - disclosed evidence of MI5's
complicity in Mohamed's torture and unlawful interrogation by the US. So severe were Neuberger's
criticisms of MI5 that the government's leading lawyer in the case, Jonathan
Sumption QC, privately wrote to the court asking him to reconsider his draft
judgment before it was handed down. The judges agreed but
Sumption's letter, which refers to Neuberger's original comments, was made
public after lawyers for Mohamed and media organisations, including the
Guardian, intervened. They argued that Neuberger
had privately agreed with Sumption to remove his fierce criticisms without
giving then the chance to contest the move. In his letter, Sumption
warned the judges that the criticism of MI5 would be seen by the public as
statements by the court that the agency: - Did not respect human
rights. - Had not renounced
participation in "coercive interrogation" techniques. - Deliberately misled MPs
and peers on the intelligence and security committee, who are supposed to
scrutinise its work. - Had a "culture of
suppression" in its dealings with Miliband and the court. Sumption described
Neuberger's observations in his draft judgment as "an exceptionally
damaging criticism of the good faith of the Security Service as a
whole". His letter also refers to
the MI5 officer known as Witness B, who is understood to have interrogated
Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002. Witness B gave evidence in the hearings
and is now at the centre of a Scotland Yard investigation. Sumption's letter
implies that Neuberger did not believe that Witness B was acting alone and
that the judge believed that Witness B's conduct was "characteristic of
the service as a whole". The court's final ruling
forced the Foreign Office to publish a seven-paragraph summary of 42
classified CIA documents that were handed to MI5 before Witness B travelled
to Pakistan to interrogate Mohamed. These show that MI5 was aware that
Mohamed was being continuously deprived of sleep, threatened with rendition
and subjected to previous interrogations that were causing him
"significant mental stress and suffering". If administered in the
UK, the summary says, it would clearly be in breach of undertakings about
interrogation techniques made by the British government in 1972. The three judges referred to
a recent case in a US court where the judge found Mohamed's claims about how
he was tortured to be truthful. This vindicated his assertion that "UK
authorities had been involved in and facilitated the ill-treatment and
torture to which he was subjected while under the control of the USA
authorities". There were renewed calls
tonightfor an inquiry into MI5's involvement in torture overseas and into
government policies after the 9/11 attacks. Miliband told MPs that the
ruling was leading to a "great deal of concern" in the US. In a
statement to the Commons he said he had fought to prevent the release of the
information to defend the "fundamental" principle that intelligence
shared with the UK would be protected. The Foreign Office claimed
tonight that the criticisms in the draft judgment had been "unsubstantiated",
and denied that Sumption's approach to the court had been intended to
suppress criticism of MI5. Nevertheless, the court is to convene tomorrow to
reconsider whether to publish all or parts of the 21-line paragraph from the
draft judgment in which the criticisms appear. The editor of the Guardian,
Alan Rusbridger, wrote to the court after the Sumption letter came to light
on Monday night. He said today: "It is good news that - after a
challenge from the Guardian and other news organisations - the courts have
finally ordered the government to reveal evidence of MI5 complicity in
torture. This is a watershed in open justice in an area in which it is
notoriously difficult to shine a light. But it was extremely disturbing that
the government's lawyers made a successful last-ditch attempt to get the
master of the rolls to rewrite his judgment." External link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-mi5 |