Torture flights: what No 10 knew and tried to cover up
Investigate, Impeach, Imprison | 19.01.2006 20:12
Torture flights: what No 10 knew and tried to cover up
Leaked memo reveals strategy to deny knowledge of detention centres
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday January 19, 2006
The Guardian
The government is secretly trying to stifle attempts by MPs to find out what it knows about CIA "torture flights" and privately admits that people captured by British forces could have been sent illegally to interrogation centres. A hidden strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about rendition - the US practice of transporting detainees to secret centres where they are at risk of being tortured - is revealed in a briefing paper sent by the Foreign Office to No 10.
Article continues
The document shows that the government has been aware of secret interrogation centres, despite ministers' denials. It admits that the government has no idea whether individuals seized by British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have been sent to the secret centres.
Dated December 7 last year, the document is a note from Irfan Siddiq, of the foreign secretary's private office, to Grace Cassy in Tony Blair's office. It was obtained by the New Statesman magazine, whose latest issue is published today.
It was drawn up in response to a Downing Street request for advice "on substance and handling" of the controversy over CIA rendition flights and allegations of Britain's connivance in the practice.
"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail", Mr Siddiq writes, "and to try to move the debate on, in as front foot a way we can, underlining all the time the strong anti-terrorist rationale for close cooperation with the US, within our legal obligations."
The document advises the government to rely on a statement by Condoleezza Rice last month when the US secretary of state said America did not transport anyone to a country where it believed they would be tortured and that, "where appropriate", Washington would seek assurances.
The document notes: "We would not want to cast doubt on the principle of such government-to-government assurances, not least given our own attempts to secure these from countries to which we wish to deport their nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism: Algeria etc."
The document says that in the most common use of the term - namely, involving real risk of torture - rendition could never be legal. It also says that the US emphasised torture but not "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment", which binds Britain under the European convention on human rights. British courts have adopted a lower threshold of what constitutes torture than the US has.
The note includes questions and answers on a number of issues. "Would cooperating with a US rendition operation be illegal?", it asks, and gives the response: "Where we have no knowledge of illegality, but allegations are brought to our attention, we ought to make reasonable enquiries". It asks: "How do we know whether those our armed forces have helped to capture in Iraq or Afghanistan have subsequently been sent to interrogation centres?" The reply given is: "Cabinet Office is researching this with MoD [Ministry of Defence]. But we understand the basic answer is that we have no mechanism for establishing this, though we would not ourselves question such detainees while they were in such facilities".
Ministers have persistently taken the line, in answers to MPs' questions, that they were unaware of CIA rendition flights passing through Britain or of secret interrogation centres.
On December 7 - the date of the leaked document - Charles Kennedy, then Liberal Democrat leader, asked Mr Blair when he was first made aware of the American rendition flights, and when he approved them. Mr Blair replied: "In respect of airports, I do not know what the right hon gentleman is referring to."
On December 22, asked at his monthly press conference about the US practice of rendition, the prime minister told journalists: "It is not something that I have ever actually come across until this whole thing has blown up, and I don't know anything about it." He said he had never heard of secret interrogation camps in Europe. But Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, recently disclosed that Whitehall inquiries had shown Britain had received rendition requests from the Clinton administration.
In 1998, Mr Straw, then home secretary, agreed to one request, but turned down another because the individual concerned was to be transported to Egypt. He agreed that Mohammed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, could be transported to the US for trial via Stansted, according to the briefing paper. Owhali was subsequently given a life sentence.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, which has demanded an inquiry into allegations of British collusion in rendition flights, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the memo. "The government seems more concerned about spinning than investigating our concerns," she said. She has written to Mr Straw saying the government must now give its full support to the inquiry conducted, at Liberty's behest, by the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Michael Todd.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said Mr Blair had fully endorsed Ms Rice's statement, yet the prime minister had clear advice that it might have been deliberately worded to allow for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. "I am submitting an urgent question to the speaker and expect the foreign secretary to come to parliament to explain the government's position," he said. "Evasion can no longer be sustained: there is now overwhelming evidence to support a full public inquiry into rendition."
Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of the parliamentary group on rendition, said last night: "All the experts who have looked at Rice's assurances have concluded that they are so carefully worded as to be virtually worthless. Relying on them, as the government appears to be doing, speaks volumes". He said his committee would pursue the issue.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1689856,00.html
FO paper reveals British knowledge of torture flights
· Leaked document shows shift in official stance
· Unease over legality of British cooperation
Ian Cobain
Thursday January 19, 2006
The Guardian
The government's desperation to get on to "the front foot" over its role in the CIA's so-called rendition campaign, as laid bare by the leaked Foreign Office briefing paper, dates back to the disclosure last September of the extent of British support for the operation. An investigation by the Guardian had shown that the CIA's aircraft had flown in and out of Britain at least 210 times after the attacks of 9/11.
Article continues
Some flights were on unconnected US government business, and the purposes of other journeys were unclear. Some, however, were clearly involved in rendition operations: the abduction of terrorism suspects who were taken to secret interrogation centres in countries where torture is commonplace.
At that time, the government denied all knowledge of the CIA using British territory for refuelling during such operations, despite the fact that the agency was using RAF bases as well as civilian airports. One Foreign Office official even attempted to dismiss it as "a conspiracy theory".
Four months on, official inquiries are under way in Germany and Spain. The Council of Europe is also investigating the CIA's use of the continent's airports and airspace. In Milan, a magistrate has issued warrants for the arrest of 19 American agents said to have abducted a Muslim cleric who was dragged off a street and spirited away to Egypt. Yesterday, the European parliament established a commitee of inquiry to look into the CIA's "transportation and illegal detention of prisoners" and threatened what it described as "political action" against any country found to be involved.
With feelings running high among European parliamentarians and human rights activists, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, made a remarkable statement before boarding a flight to Berlin in December, conceding the existence of the rendition campaign. While denying that the US transported anyone "for the purpose of interrogation using torture", Ms Rice insisted that "hard choices" must be made during counter-terrorism operations. Renditions, she suggested, might have saved thousands of lives. The leaked briefing paper, written two days after this statement, makes clear that the Foreign Office was aware of the CIA's requests for British logistical support. As the author admitted: "We now cannot say that we have received no such requests for the use of UK territory or airspace." The document also shows that the FO knew of the existence of secret interrogation centres, and it betrays the mounting alarm in Whitehall that some detainees could initially have been seized by British troops in Afghanistan or Iraq.
The paper makes clear that the view of Foreign Office lawyers is that any rendition which places a detainee at risk of being tortured "could never be legal".
Critically, it adds, British cooperation "would also be illegal if we knew of the circumstances". This was 15 days before Tony Blair said at a press conference: "I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything illegal has been happening here at all."
The rendition programme began during the Reagan era, when men wanted in the US for a range of offences would be captured overseas and brought to the US without any extradition process. They would be read their rights, given lawyers and then put on trial. A succession of federal court judgments upheld the legality of this policy.
Requests for British logistical support date at least to 1998, when the Clinton administration decided that the CIA could abduct four suspected Islamist terrorists in the Balkans and take them to Cairo for questioning by the Egyptian intelligence service. Three of those men are now believed to be dead, while the fourth says he was tortured.
In convincing themselves of the legality of this operation, CIA and White House lawyers appear to have relied upon a narrow reading of international law, and upon a reservation that the US expressed when it ratified the Convention Against Torture. Article 3 of the convention makes clear that it is illegal to take a detainee to any country "where there are substantial grounds for believing he would be in danger of being subjected to torture".
Washington said it understood "substantial grounds" to mean that it was "more likely than not that he would be tortured".
Since then an unknown number of men have disappeared into what has been described as a secret gulag. A small number have emerged, and told of suffering terrible torments in Cairo, Damascus, Islamabad, Kabul and Rabat. There are rumours of others being held in Thailand and Uzbekistan, and even reports of secret detention centres in Poland and Romania.
Despite Ms Rice's insistence that the US would never move a detainee around the world for the purpose of having them tortured, critics on both sides of the Atlantic say there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that this is exactly what is happening.
Typical, perhaps, is Benyam Mohamed, 27, an Ethiopian who grew up in Notting Hill, west London, and who spent more than two years being flown to various destinations by US officials for interrogation in Morocco and Afganistan following his arrest in Pakistan.
Mr Mohamed, 27, is said by the US to have plotted to murder large numbers of civilians in the US. He denies this. When eventually taken to Guantánamo Bay, Mr Mohamed told his lawyer that he had been beaten, deprived of sleep, drugged and subjected to non-stop noise. He also showed scars on his genitals, which he said had been slashed with a razor. Fellow detainees, he said, had completely lost their minds - "and I'm dead in the head."
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1689834,00.html
Leaked memo reveals strategy to deny knowledge of detention centres
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday January 19, 2006
The Guardian
The government is secretly trying to stifle attempts by MPs to find out what it knows about CIA "torture flights" and privately admits that people captured by British forces could have been sent illegally to interrogation centres. A hidden strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about rendition - the US practice of transporting detainees to secret centres where they are at risk of being tortured - is revealed in a briefing paper sent by the Foreign Office to No 10.
Article continues
The document shows that the government has been aware of secret interrogation centres, despite ministers' denials. It admits that the government has no idea whether individuals seized by British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have been sent to the secret centres.
Dated December 7 last year, the document is a note from Irfan Siddiq, of the foreign secretary's private office, to Grace Cassy in Tony Blair's office. It was obtained by the New Statesman magazine, whose latest issue is published today.
It was drawn up in response to a Downing Street request for advice "on substance and handling" of the controversy over CIA rendition flights and allegations of Britain's connivance in the practice.
"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail", Mr Siddiq writes, "and to try to move the debate on, in as front foot a way we can, underlining all the time the strong anti-terrorist rationale for close cooperation with the US, within our legal obligations."
The document advises the government to rely on a statement by Condoleezza Rice last month when the US secretary of state said America did not transport anyone to a country where it believed they would be tortured and that, "where appropriate", Washington would seek assurances.
The document notes: "We would not want to cast doubt on the principle of such government-to-government assurances, not least given our own attempts to secure these from countries to which we wish to deport their nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism: Algeria etc."
The document says that in the most common use of the term - namely, involving real risk of torture - rendition could never be legal. It also says that the US emphasised torture but not "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment", which binds Britain under the European convention on human rights. British courts have adopted a lower threshold of what constitutes torture than the US has.
The note includes questions and answers on a number of issues. "Would cooperating with a US rendition operation be illegal?", it asks, and gives the response: "Where we have no knowledge of illegality, but allegations are brought to our attention, we ought to make reasonable enquiries". It asks: "How do we know whether those our armed forces have helped to capture in Iraq or Afghanistan have subsequently been sent to interrogation centres?" The reply given is: "Cabinet Office is researching this with MoD [Ministry of Defence]. But we understand the basic answer is that we have no mechanism for establishing this, though we would not ourselves question such detainees while they were in such facilities".
Ministers have persistently taken the line, in answers to MPs' questions, that they were unaware of CIA rendition flights passing through Britain or of secret interrogation centres.
On December 7 - the date of the leaked document - Charles Kennedy, then Liberal Democrat leader, asked Mr Blair when he was first made aware of the American rendition flights, and when he approved them. Mr Blair replied: "In respect of airports, I do not know what the right hon gentleman is referring to."
On December 22, asked at his monthly press conference about the US practice of rendition, the prime minister told journalists: "It is not something that I have ever actually come across until this whole thing has blown up, and I don't know anything about it." He said he had never heard of secret interrogation camps in Europe. But Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, recently disclosed that Whitehall inquiries had shown Britain had received rendition requests from the Clinton administration.
In 1998, Mr Straw, then home secretary, agreed to one request, but turned down another because the individual concerned was to be transported to Egypt. He agreed that Mohammed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, could be transported to the US for trial via Stansted, according to the briefing paper. Owhali was subsequently given a life sentence.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, which has demanded an inquiry into allegations of British collusion in rendition flights, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the memo. "The government seems more concerned about spinning than investigating our concerns," she said. She has written to Mr Straw saying the government must now give its full support to the inquiry conducted, at Liberty's behest, by the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Michael Todd.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said Mr Blair had fully endorsed Ms Rice's statement, yet the prime minister had clear advice that it might have been deliberately worded to allow for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. "I am submitting an urgent question to the speaker and expect the foreign secretary to come to parliament to explain the government's position," he said. "Evasion can no longer be sustained: there is now overwhelming evidence to support a full public inquiry into rendition."
Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of the parliamentary group on rendition, said last night: "All the experts who have looked at Rice's assurances have concluded that they are so carefully worded as to be virtually worthless. Relying on them, as the government appears to be doing, speaks volumes". He said his committee would pursue the issue.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1689856,00.html FO paper reveals British knowledge of torture flights
· Leaked document shows shift in official stance
· Unease over legality of British cooperation
Ian Cobain
Thursday January 19, 2006
The Guardian
The government's desperation to get on to "the front foot" over its role in the CIA's so-called rendition campaign, as laid bare by the leaked Foreign Office briefing paper, dates back to the disclosure last September of the extent of British support for the operation. An investigation by the Guardian had shown that the CIA's aircraft had flown in and out of Britain at least 210 times after the attacks of 9/11.
Article continues
Some flights were on unconnected US government business, and the purposes of other journeys were unclear. Some, however, were clearly involved in rendition operations: the abduction of terrorism suspects who were taken to secret interrogation centres in countries where torture is commonplace.
At that time, the government denied all knowledge of the CIA using British territory for refuelling during such operations, despite the fact that the agency was using RAF bases as well as civilian airports. One Foreign Office official even attempted to dismiss it as "a conspiracy theory".
Four months on, official inquiries are under way in Germany and Spain. The Council of Europe is also investigating the CIA's use of the continent's airports and airspace. In Milan, a magistrate has issued warrants for the arrest of 19 American agents said to have abducted a Muslim cleric who was dragged off a street and spirited away to Egypt. Yesterday, the European parliament established a commitee of inquiry to look into the CIA's "transportation and illegal detention of prisoners" and threatened what it described as "political action" against any country found to be involved.
With feelings running high among European parliamentarians and human rights activists, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, made a remarkable statement before boarding a flight to Berlin in December, conceding the existence of the rendition campaign. While denying that the US transported anyone "for the purpose of interrogation using torture", Ms Rice insisted that "hard choices" must be made during counter-terrorism operations. Renditions, she suggested, might have saved thousands of lives. The leaked briefing paper, written two days after this statement, makes clear that the Foreign Office was aware of the CIA's requests for British logistical support. As the author admitted: "We now cannot say that we have received no such requests for the use of UK territory or airspace." The document also shows that the FO knew of the existence of secret interrogation centres, and it betrays the mounting alarm in Whitehall that some detainees could initially have been seized by British troops in Afghanistan or Iraq.
The paper makes clear that the view of Foreign Office lawyers is that any rendition which places a detainee at risk of being tortured "could never be legal".
Critically, it adds, British cooperation "would also be illegal if we knew of the circumstances". This was 15 days before Tony Blair said at a press conference: "I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything illegal has been happening here at all."
The rendition programme began during the Reagan era, when men wanted in the US for a range of offences would be captured overseas and brought to the US without any extradition process. They would be read their rights, given lawyers and then put on trial. A succession of federal court judgments upheld the legality of this policy.
Requests for British logistical support date at least to 1998, when the Clinton administration decided that the CIA could abduct four suspected Islamist terrorists in the Balkans and take them to Cairo for questioning by the Egyptian intelligence service. Three of those men are now believed to be dead, while the fourth says he was tortured.
In convincing themselves of the legality of this operation, CIA and White House lawyers appear to have relied upon a narrow reading of international law, and upon a reservation that the US expressed when it ratified the Convention Against Torture. Article 3 of the convention makes clear that it is illegal to take a detainee to any country "where there are substantial grounds for believing he would be in danger of being subjected to torture".
Washington said it understood "substantial grounds" to mean that it was "more likely than not that he would be tortured".
Since then an unknown number of men have disappeared into what has been described as a secret gulag. A small number have emerged, and told of suffering terrible torments in Cairo, Damascus, Islamabad, Kabul and Rabat. There are rumours of others being held in Thailand and Uzbekistan, and even reports of secret detention centres in Poland and Romania.
Despite Ms Rice's insistence that the US would never move a detainee around the world for the purpose of having them tortured, critics on both sides of the Atlantic say there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that this is exactly what is happening.
Typical, perhaps, is Benyam Mohamed, 27, an Ethiopian who grew up in Notting Hill, west London, and who spent more than two years being flown to various destinations by US officials for interrogation in Morocco and Afganistan following his arrest in Pakistan.
Mr Mohamed, 27, is said by the US to have plotted to murder large numbers of civilians in the US. He denies this. When eventually taken to Guantánamo Bay, Mr Mohamed told his lawyer that he had been beaten, deprived of sleep, drugged and subjected to non-stop noise. He also showed scars on his genitals, which he said had been slashed with a razor. Fellow detainees, he said, had completely lost their minds - "and I'm dead in the head."
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1689834,00.html
Investigate, Impeach, Imprison