Andy Worthington, author of “The Guantánamo Files”, reports on the latest news about British resident Binyam Mohamed, who has just been put forward for trial by Military Commission at Guantánamo, at the same time that a UK court has made a ruling in his favour regarding his demand that the UK government reveal evidence of what it knew about his rendition to torture.
On Tuesday, the same day that the Pentagon officially filed charges against Guantánamo prisoner and British resident Binyam Mohamed, who will face a trial by Military Commission for “conspiracy” and “providing material support for terrorism,” a UK court approved his request for judicial review, requiring the British government to reveal whatever evidence it holds regarding the British security services’ knowledge of his rendition from Pakistan to Morocco for torture, and details of whatever information was also provided to his Moroccan torturers about his life in Britain.
Mr. Mohamed, 29, who sought asylum in the UK in 1994 and was later granted indefinite leave to remain, travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001 to overcome a drug problem that had plagued him in the UK, and, he said, to see Muslim countries “with his own eyes.” Seized in Pakistan in April 2002, as he attempted to fly back to the UK, he spent three months in Pakistani custody, where he was interrogated by agents of the US intelligence services -- and on one occasion by British agents -- and was then rendered to Morocco, where proxy torturers, working on behalf of the US, tortured him horribly in brutal “interrogations,” which regularly involved cutting his penis with a razor blade (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/02/terrorism.humanrights1).
Despite this torture, Mr. Mohamed has stated that his lowest point came when his interrogators questioned him about his life in London, and he realized that they were privy to personal details that could only have been supplied by the British intelligence services. In Guantánamo, Mr. Mohamed explained to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith of the legal action charity Reprieve ( http://www.reprieve.org.uk/), “The interrogator told me, ‘We have been working with the British, and we have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?’ … To say that I was disappointed at this moment would be an understatement” ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/398635.html).
Mr. Mohamed’s torture continued when he was flown to Afghanistan in January 2004, and held at the “Dark Prison,” a secret CIA-run prison near Kabul, which was, effectively, a medieval dungeon with the addition of extremely loud and repetitive music and noise, pumped into the cells 24 hours a day. He was then transferred to the US military prison at Bagram airbase, where the abuse was so severe that several prisoners were killed.
Mr. Mohamed arrived at Guantánamo in September 2004, and was put forward for trial by Military Commission in November 2005. However, after one memorable appearance before a judge, when he held up a hand-written sign declaring that the Commissions were actually “Con-missions,” the entire process was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June 2006 -- although it was revived by Congress later in the year.
Last summer, the British government requested Mr. Mohamed’s return to the UK, along with four other British residents ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/08/07/deals-with-dictators-undermined-by-british-request-for-return-of-five-guantanamo-detainees/), but although three of these men were freed in December, the US administration turned down the request for the return of Mr. Mohamed, evidently because it planned to press charges against him.
Responding to the Pentagon’s announcement, Reprieve issued a press release condemning the charges and highlighting criticisms of the Commission process by senior British officials. It was noted that the British government had denounced the Commissions -- and in fact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 2004 Human Rights Annual Report stated, explicitly, that they “would not provide sufficient guarantees of a fair trial according to international standards” -- and that Lord Steyn had described the trials as a “kangaroo court.”
It was also noted that the allegations against Mr. Mohamed “centred on a long-discredited ‘dirty bomb plot,’ in which US citizen Jose Padilla was meant to have planned to explode a nuclear bomb in a US city” ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/09/04/jose-padilla-more-sinned-against-than-sinning/). Reprieve added that the charges had been discredited within the Bush administration, and were dropped against Mr. Padilla, who “had the benefit of a civilian court.” It was, indeed, no less a figure than Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy to defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who, in 2002, admitted that “there was not an actual plan” to set off a radioactive device in America, that Mr. Padilla had not begun trying to acquire materials, and that intelligence officials had stated that his research had not gone beyond surfing the internet. Jose Padilla, of course, was also made to suffer horribly despite the absence of an “actual plan” -- and was held in solitary confinement in a US brig for three and a half years until he apparently lost his mind -- but although it was scandalous that his brutal treatment as an “enemy combatant” held without charge or trial on the US mainland was excluded from his trial last year, it was at least appropriate that all mention of the spectral bomb plot had been dropped ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/01/22/why-jose-padillas-17-year-prison-sentence-should-shock-and-disgust-all-americans/).
Reprieve also explained the significance of Binyam Mohamed’s judicial review. The decision for this to go ahead followed a previous request for intelligence relating to Mr. Mohamed’s case, which was recently turned down by the government’s lawyers on the grounds that “the UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted” and that “it is HM Government’s position that … evidence held by the UK Government that US and Moroccan authorities engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained” by the British lawyers who are trying to provide Mr. Mohamed with a fair trial.
Openly critical of the government lawyers’ response, Mr. Justice Saunders approved the judicial review (also demanding that the hearing be “expedited”), and explained, “If it is correct that in the course of an interrogation, in which material supplied by the Defendant [HM Government] was employed, the Claimant [Binyam Mohamed] was tortured, then it is arguable that there is an obligation to disclose material which may assist Claimant in establishing before the American Military Court that he was tortured. Whether the Court should exercise its discretion not to order disclosure can only be determined at a full hearing.”
This is, hopefully, a significant step forward in securing the return of Mr. Mohamed to the UK, where he will happily face any charges laid before him that were not obtained through the use of torture. Otherwise, as it stands at present, the US administration’s determination to press charges against Mr. Mohamed threatens only to lead to a highly visible trial, in one of the world’s most notorious prisons, in which evidence of Mr. Mohamed’s torture threatens to embarrass both the US and UK governments.
Andy is the author of "The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison" ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/).
Mr. Mohamed, 29, who sought asylum in the UK in 1994 and was later granted indefinite leave to remain, travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001 to overcome a drug problem that had plagued him in the UK, and, he said, to see Muslim countries “with his own eyes.” Seized in Pakistan in April 2002, as he attempted to fly back to the UK, he spent three months in Pakistani custody, where he was interrogated by agents of the US intelligence services -- and on one occasion by British agents -- and was then rendered to Morocco, where proxy torturers, working on behalf of the US, tortured him horribly in brutal “interrogations,” which regularly involved cutting his penis with a razor blade (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/02/terrorism.humanrights1). Despite this torture, Mr. Mohamed has stated that his lowest point came when his interrogators questioned him about his life in London, and he realized that they were privy to personal details that could only have been supplied by the British intelligence services. In Guantánamo, Mr. Mohamed explained to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith of the legal action charity Reprieve (
http://www.reprieve.org.uk/), “The interrogator told me, ‘We have been working with the British, and we have photos of people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?’ … To say that I was disappointed at this moment would be an understatement” ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/05/398635.html). Mr. Mohamed’s torture continued when he was flown to Afghanistan in January 2004, and held at the “Dark Prison,” a secret CIA-run prison near Kabul, which was, effectively, a medieval dungeon with the addition of extremely loud and repetitive music and noise, pumped into the cells 24 hours a day. He was then transferred to the US military prison at Bagram airbase, where the abuse was so severe that several prisoners were killed.
Mr. Mohamed arrived at Guantánamo in September 2004, and was put forward for trial by Military Commission in November 2005. However, after one memorable appearance before a judge, when he held up a hand-written sign declaring that the Commissions were actually “Con-missions,” the entire process was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June 2006 -- although it was revived by Congress later in the year.
Last summer, the British government requested Mr. Mohamed’s return to the UK, along with four other British residents (
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/08/07/deals-with-dictators-undermined-by-british-request-for-return-of-five-guantanamo-detainees/), but although three of these men were freed in December, the US administration turned down the request for the return of Mr. Mohamed, evidently because it planned to press charges against him. Responding to the Pentagon’s announcement, Reprieve issued a press release condemning the charges and highlighting criticisms of the Commission process by senior British officials. It was noted that the British government had denounced the Commissions -- and in fact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s 2004 Human Rights Annual Report stated, explicitly, that they “would not provide sufficient guarantees of a fair trial according to international standards” -- and that Lord Steyn had described the trials as a “kangaroo court.”
It was also noted that the allegations against Mr. Mohamed “centred on a long-discredited ‘dirty bomb plot,’ in which US citizen Jose Padilla was meant to have planned to explode a nuclear bomb in a US city” (
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/09/04/jose-padilla-more-sinned-against-than-sinning/). Reprieve added that the charges had been discredited within the Bush administration, and were dropped against Mr. Padilla, who “had the benefit of a civilian court.” It was, indeed, no less a figure than Paul Wolfowitz, then the deputy to defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who, in 2002, admitted that “there was not an actual plan” to set off a radioactive device in America, that Mr. Padilla had not begun trying to acquire materials, and that intelligence officials had stated that his research had not gone beyond surfing the internet. Jose Padilla, of course, was also made to suffer horribly despite the absence of an “actual plan” -- and was held in solitary confinement in a US brig for three and a half years until he apparently lost his mind -- but although it was scandalous that his brutal treatment as an “enemy combatant” held without charge or trial on the US mainland was excluded from his trial last year, it was at least appropriate that all mention of the spectral bomb plot had been dropped ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/01/22/why-jose-padillas-17-year-prison-sentence-should-shock-and-disgust-all-americans/). Reprieve also explained the significance of Binyam Mohamed’s judicial review. The decision for this to go ahead followed a previous request for intelligence relating to Mr. Mohamed’s case, which was recently turned down by the government’s lawyers on the grounds that “the UK is under no obligation under international law to assist foreign courts and tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is not admitted” and that “it is HM Government’s position that … evidence held by the UK Government that US and Moroccan authorities engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained” by the British lawyers who are trying to provide Mr. Mohamed with a fair trial.
Openly critical of the government lawyers’ response, Mr. Justice Saunders approved the judicial review (also demanding that the hearing be “expedited”), and explained, “If it is correct that in the course of an interrogation, in which material supplied by the Defendant [HM Government] was employed, the Claimant [Binyam Mohamed] was tortured, then it is arguable that there is an obligation to disclose material which may assist Claimant in establishing before the American Military Court that he was tortured. Whether the Court should exercise its discretion not to order disclosure can only be determined at a full hearing.”
This is, hopefully, a significant step forward in securing the return of Mr. Mohamed to the UK, where he will happily face any charges laid before him that were not obtained through the use of torture. Otherwise, as it stands at present, the US administration’s determination to press charges against Mr. Mohamed threatens only to lead to a highly visible trial, in one of the world’s most notorious prisons, in which evidence of Mr. Mohamed’s torture threatens to embarrass both the US and UK governments.
Andy is the author of "The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison" (
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/). 
e-mail:
Homepage:
