Robin Soans’s play finds the normal in the extreme

By Kevin Cullen in the Boston Globe

There was a moment when she was reading Robin Soans’s script for “Talking to Terrorists” that Carmel O’Reilly found herself almost unconsciously nodding in recognition. It was the line in which a British Army colonel remarks that had he grown up in Crossmaglen, a village hotbed of the Irish Republican Army, “I would have been a terrorist.”

O’Reilly, artistic director at the Sugan Theatre Company, grew up in a small village in County Fermanagh, a rural corner of Northern Ireland, and Catholic boys she knew joined the IRA after they’d been beaten or humiliated by British soldiers in the early 1970s. She became a teacher in a technical school, and one night she was stopped by masked men who had mounted a checkpoint. But the masked men weren’t men, they were boys — Protestant teenagers who had joined a loyalist paramilitary group to battle the IRA — and she recognized their voices behind the masks. They let her go.

The next day in school, she and the boys behind the masks greeted one another as if nothing had happened.

Now O’Reilly is directing Sugan’s production of “Talking to Terrorists,” which makes its US premiere tonight at the Boston Center for the Arts. Drawing on interviews with those who have committed, witnessed, or been victims of terrorism, the play suggests that terrorists are not psychopaths but often shockingly normal — extremists made by extreme situations.

O’Reilly doesn’t have to be convinced that, given a particular set of circumstances and experiences, anyone can become a terrorist. “I’ve seen it,” she says, “with my own eyes.”

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From the Scotsman: Taking prisoners to the edge of drowning ‘not torture’ says FO, by James Kirkup

FORCING a prisoner’s head under water until they believe they are drowning does not necessarily constitute torture or abusive treatment, the Foreign Office has said.

The equivocal statement has fuelled suspicions that Britain is turning a blind eye to practices by its allies that many international lawyers believe are illegal.

Holding mock executions is banned in international law, yet simulated drowning is specifically intended to persuade subjects that they are about to die.

Known as “waterboarding,” forms of simulated drowning have been used to torment prisoners since the Middle Ages. Victims experience an automatic gag reflex and acute terror, quickly and inevitably pleading for the ordeal to end.

In a written parliamentary exchange, the Foreign Office was asked whether “the infliction of simulated drowning falls within the definition of torture or cruel and inhumane treatment used by the government for the purposes of international law.”

Replying, Ian Pearson, a junior Foreign Office minister, gave what some saw as a vague answer. “Whether the conduct described constitutes torture or cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment for the purposes of the UN Convention Against Torture would depend on all the circumstances of the case,” Mr Pearson wrote.

Waterboarding is one of the “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” that US intelligence officers are said to use against suspected international terrorists.

The CIA version of the technique sees the subject strapped to a board, feet raised. Cellophane is wrapped over the nose and mouth and water is poured over the head.

The technique has since been used on senior al-Qaeda figures in US custody, intelligence sources say. US officials have never denied those claims.

There is no suggestion that British military or intelligence officers have used waterboarding directly against prisoners.

Human rights groups yesterday condemned the Foreign Office’s ambiguous legal position on simulated drowning.

James Welch, the legal director of Liberty, said Mr Pearson’s answer suggests ministers are ignoring international treaty obligations. “It is incredible that a government minister, mindful of our obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, UN Convention Against Torture and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, could possibly consider that holding someone under water with the intention of making them think they were going to drown was anything but torture,” he said.

Kate Allen, Amnesty International’s UK director, said the government must take a much clearer position against techniques like waterboarding.

“Instead of equivocating the government should be clearly condemning all forms of torture, including partial drowning, death threats, sensory deprivation and indeed all forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” she said.

From Rachel North

Why is it an insult when the father of a bomb survivor, a gentle man of God, who has never caused trouble in his life, asks for a public enquiry? Why is his question not answered?

The British government has tried to circumvent restrictions on the supply of military vehicles to the Uzbek government by allowing the sale of land rovers to be modified for military use by a third party.

From Hansard

Q56 Richard Burden: One thing that was in your submission was the Land Rovers, the Turkish made Land Rover Defender 110 military vehicles which were used by Uzbek troops during the massacre of 2005. What you have said about that in your submission is that they were a gift from the Turkish government to the Uzbek government, and you think it is likely that they were produced under licence from the UK by Otokar, the Turkish company, although 70 per cent of the components were exported from the UK and therefore you say there is a loophole. We actually put this to the Government and said what do you say about this then, and I would like to read out to you what the Government said in response to that, and then perhaps you can give your response to that. What the Government told us was: “We understand that Land Rover sells flat-pack civilian Land Rover Defenders to the Turkish company in question, which then assembles and re-badges them for onward sale under its own name, using its own products and components, and according to designs for which that company holds the intellectual property rights. It is the Government’s understanding that these are not Land Rover approved products and it is therefore inaccurate to describe the company concerned as an overseas production facility for Land Rover. Under the EC Dual-Use Regulations … the UK has no power to control the export of civilian specification Land Rovers. To the extent that the buyer in Turkey converts the civilian vehicles using his own technology and without UK involvement, this is a matter for the Turkish authorities as regards any export from there.” That is what the Government said to us and I would be interested in your reaction to that.

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From BBC Online

Italian prosecutors have asked a judge to let David Mills, the husband of Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, be put on trial on corruption charges. Judicial sources said prosecutors had also asked for Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to be indicted.

They claim Mr Berlusconi paid Mr Mills $600,000 (‘344,000) for giving helpful testimony in two court cases.

By SUE LEEMAN in Seattlepi.com

LONDON – Britain issued new rules for diplomats Wednesday to stop the publishing of tell-all memoirs such as a recent portrayal of Prime Minister Tony Blair as starstruck and senior ministers as “political pygmies.”

Ministers were chagrined in November when former ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer published his explosive “D.C. Confidential.” Meyer depicted Blair as starstruck and failing to stand up for Britain in the run-up to the Iraq war, and he described senior Cabinet members as “political pygmies.”

In the memoir, Meyer also told how, as a Downing Street press secretary, he would brief former Conservative Prime Minister John Major as the premier washed and dressed in the morning, sometimes while Major’s wife, Norma, lay in bed.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who has accused Meyer of breaking a trust, published new guidelines Wednesday which specifically prevent Foreign Office staff from “writing anything that would damage the confidential relationship between ministers, or between ministers and officials.” Meyer’s book was submitted to the Cabinet Office which also consulted the Foreign Office before it was published.

Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has published documents he says prove that Britain knowingly received intelligence extracted under torture from prisoners in the former Soviet state. Murray was sacked over the allegations.

The revised guidelines advise that “the good conduct of government requires ministers to have confidence that they can have full and frank discussions with officials, without concern that these may then appear in the public domain.”

Jowell facing new Mills questions

From the Scotsman

Tessa Jowell is facing renewed questions over her estranged husband’s financial dealings as he awaits a decision over whether he will be tried for corruption in Italy.

The Culture Secretary denied earlier this week that David Mills had ever owned shares in pub chain the Old Monk Company after reports at the weekend that he made ‘67,000 from dealing in them.

But Italian prosecutors looking into Mr Mills’s affairs have released a series of letters suggesting a company owned by Mr Mills did own the shares. In a hand-written letter the beneficial owner of the company said she had transferred the shares to Mr Mills.

Tory opponents say Ms Jowell should have declared that in the register of MPs’ interests. Tory MP Nigel Evans said: “This is a declarable interest that should have been declared in the register of members’ interests. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day that his name wasn’t on the share ownership. If it was on the company that owned the shares and he benefited from the profit then clearly they were declarable.”

Mr Evans has written to the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Sir Philip Mawer, asking him to look into the claims.

Mr Mills, who split from Ms Jowell at the weekend, is expected to learn within days whether he and Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, will be put on trial for corruption. Both men deny that lawyer Mr Mills was bribed by Mr Berlusconi to give false evidence in another court case.

Magistrates in Milan are deciding whether to indict them, a move which would put Mr Mills’ financial affairs under renewed scrutiny.