The Independent have Jack Straw well and truly cornered:
Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Craig Murray, who was sacked as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan in 2004 after alleging that Britain used intelligence obtained by the CIA under torture, said he attended a meeting at the Foreign Office where he was told that “it was not illegal for us to use intelligence from torture as long as we did not carry out the torture ourselves” and claimed this policy came directly from Mr Straw.
The former Foreign Secretary said: “At all times I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the law. I hope to be able to say more about this at an appropriate stage in the future.”
I hope so too, and I hope that the appropriate time is either at the Old Bailey or The Hague.
Straw has climbed down a bit from his days of power and glory, when he told the House of Commons, immediately after sacking me, that there was no such thing as the CIA extraordinary rendition programme and its existence was “Mr Murray’s opinion.” He no longer claims it did not exist and he no longer claims I am a fantasist. He now merely claims he was not breaking the law.
His claim of respect for the law is a bit dubious in the light of Sir Michael Wood’s evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry. Wood said that as Foreign Office Legal Adviser, he and his elite team of in-house FCO international lawyers unanimously advised Straw the invasion of Iraq would be an illegal war of aggression. Straw’s response? He wrote to the Attorney General requesting that Sir Michael be dismissed and replaced. And forced Goldsmith to troop out to Washington and get alternative advice from Bush’s nutjob Republican neo-con lawyers.
Jack Straw did not have any desire to act legally. He had a desire to be able to mount a legal defence of his illegal actions. That is a different thing.
Should any of us live to see the publication of the Chilcot Report, this will doubtless be clear, though probably as a footnote to page 862 of Annex VII. That is how the Westminster establishment works.
The SNP has weighed in on the side of the angels:
Revelations by the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan of the UK’s knowledge and acceptance of torture must see those involved answer questions on what happened.
In an article in the Mail on Sunday, Mr Murray reveals that he attended a meeting at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office where he was told that “it was not illegal for us to use intelligence from torture as long as we did not carry out the torture ourselves” and revealed that this policy came directly from Jack Straw.
Mr Murray also reveals that “there was a deliberate policy of not writing down anything… because there should not be evidence of the policy.”
Craig Murray also states that “for the past year the British Ambassador in Washington and his staff have regularly been lobbying the US authorities not to reveal facts about the UK’s involvement in the CIA torture programme” and claims that is one of the reasons the full Senate report has not been published.
The SNP has called for a full judicial inquiry to be set up as a matter of urgency to get to get to the truth of who knew what and when.
Commenting, SNP Westminster Leader Angus Robertson MP said:
“Mr Murray’s revelation of the attitude taken by then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw only adds to the urgency with which we need a full judicial inquiry.
“Craig Murray’s article lifts the lid on the UK’s role in the human rights abuses that the US Senate has reported on and there can be no more attempts to avoid answering the tough questions that have been posed.
“Clearly answers are needed just as much from the politicians who led us at the time as from those directly involved in what was going on. The need for an independent judicial inquiry is now clear for all to see.
“It is also long past time that the findings of the Chilcot inquiry were published and there can be no more delays to that report being made public.
“There needs to be a full judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of the UK’s involvement in rendition flights that passed through UK territory and the UK’s wider knowledge of the abuses that the Senate has revealed.”
Craig Murray’s revelations can be viewed on page 25 of today’s Mail on Sunday
But with Malcolm Rifkind being promoted everywhere by the BBC to push his cover-up, it remains an uphill struggle.
I get the impression that it should now be more straightforward to positively identify rendition flights here and elsewhere:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-raj-persaud/cia-torture_b_6304202.html
And:
The U.K. government assisted in the extraordinary rendition of individuals, gave
the CIA intelligence that led to the extraordinary rendition of individuals, interrogated individuals who were later secretly detained and extraordinarily rendered,
submitted questions for interrogation of individuals who were secretly detained and
extraordinarily rendered, and permitted use of its airspace and airports for flights
associated with extraordinary rendition operations
As D. Milband knew, and subsequently agreeed:
A 2007 European Parliament report “[e]xpresse[d] serious concern about the 170 stopovers made by CIA-operated aircraft at UK airports, which on many occasions came from or were bound for countries linked with extraordinary rendition circuits and the trans-
fer of detainees.”
Reports describe Glasgow’s Prestwick airport as a “crucial staging point” in extraordinary rendition circuits.
In addition, two British overseas territories, Diego Garcia and the Turks and Caicos, were used by the CIA extraordinary rendition program on various occasions.
In February 2008, Foreign Secretary David Miliband admitted that in 2002, two extraordinary rendition flights, each carrying one detainee, stopped over in Diego Garcia
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/files/globalizing-torture-20120205.pdf
(Plenty of verifiable references)
If Blair was unaware that this was going on, and more to the point why it was going on, please send me an edible hat.
Iain Orr
“I cannot trace the origins of the dispute – on this thread – about the “indigenous inhabitants” of the Falklands.”
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No, you can’t, because Mr Goss used that expression in some comments he made on another thread some time ago.
The thread in question was obviously not about the Falklands per se but I recall that Mr Goss threw in a reference to the Falklands in the course of rambling on about something else, I imagine in an attempt to exculpate the Argentine junta from their armed invasion of the Islands. The argument presumably ran a little as follows : the Argentinians were perfectly entitled to invade the Falklands because, why, the British themselves invaded them in the C19, expelling the “indigenous inhabitants”.
The problem with Mr Goss’s little attempt to support the Argentinian case (of course he would take the side of the Argentinian junta if only because their adversary was the UK!)was that there were no “indigenous inhabitants” for the British to expell.
I was so impressed by Mr Goss’s either ignorance or deliberate attempt to misinform that I decided to christen the event a “John Goss Moment” for us as shorthand for when he would come out with similarly egregious claims in the future.
Mr Goss has not, of course, disappointed: the “secret” Rapallo Treaty (and there have been other examples) refers.
In essence, a “John Goss Moment” consists in (1) a bold but entirely erroneous statement, (2) a refusal to admit error, and (3) when pinned into a corner, attempts to divert (his Rapallo post at 00h52 this morning refers).
“The troll has been leaving a large quantity of chaff on this thread as per usual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaff_(countermeasure)”
__________________
The “as per usual” thoughtful and substantive response from the Doyenne of this blog, the one and only Mary.
But no answer, of course, from the Doyenne to my question about the links she alleged between Peshawar and Sydney and the publication of the US Senate Committee report on CIA behaviour. “As per usual”.
Peacewisher
“@Habby: I am not being cute! If you aren’t prepared to reveal how you feel that’s your privilege”
________________
I’m afraid you’re being very cute.
I’m astonished that the statement “My position on torture is that I am aganst it” is insufficient as a description of what I feel.
Perhaps you were looking for comments full of internet fire and brimstone, dire internet threats against torturing states, floods of internet tears on behalf of the victims, savant commentataries on international law – on other words, the baring of an anguished soul in the best traditions of so many of the denizens of this blog?
If so, sorry to disappoint; you’ll have to make do with a short, factual statement.
Glenn_UK
“@Iain Orr : “ In democracies we are responsible for what the governments we elect do. Let’s concentrate on that rather than letting off self-rightous farts against countries that are not our allies and in which we have no votes”
Indeed – particularly when such crimes occurred many decades before some of us here were even born.”
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Do you mean crimes like “..the concentration camps in the Boer War, the castration of the Mau Mau… the lunatic cruelty of the Opium wars etc… to which KOWN lovingly referred yesterday in his apologia for the anti-West brigade?
Iain Orr
“The point, however, about such crimes is not whether they were committed against fellow-countrymen or not (see a comment by Habbabkuk) but what responsibility the international community – if such exists (I often doubt it)- has to object (well-intentioned bloggers) or intervene (well-armed troops). In democracies we are responsible for what the governments we elect do.”
_______________
Does the time you posted explain what appears to be a slight illogicality – perhaps even confusion – in the above? (“international community”/”govts we elect”)?
But perhaps I misinderstand…..
Thanks Brian – I have an intrinsic affection for Nafeez Ahmed and support his Insurge Intelligence: Watchdog Journalism for the Global Commons:
http://www.patreon.com/nafeez
It must be wise to direct attention and apply our creative energy to power this project. In scientific terms this is to entangle and apply intent. While proven at/on the quantum plane, the equivalent is possible at a macro, global or cosmic dimension. It begins by believing.
All the work the Dear Leader does for AGI is pro bono….the other one’s got bells on it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11262947/Questions-over-Tony-Blairs-opaque-deals-in-Africa.html
(2013)
http://www.e-ir.info/2014/05/24/south-sudan-struggling-to-stay-alive/
(2014)
Governance advisor, eh?
Glenn_UK
Again, your post is long and, frankly (and at the risk of the Idiot Macky crowing “defeat! defeat!) I don’t feel like investing too much time in answering every individual point.
Just the following and then I must away.
“Does anyone here on the lefty persuasion try to excuse the evil actions of “Red” China? Do they have anything but massive sympathy for Tibet?”
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It is probably true that no one has come out, on this blog, with a defence of China’s “Great Leap Forwards” and the 45 million-odd deaths resulting from it, but it would nevertheless be refreshing (let’s say) if some on or other would occasionally refer to it when fulminating on about state sponsored terrorism as a subject. Which has not of course been the case. Corrections welcome, as always.
I have not heard, either, any expression of sympathy for Tibet. But let us take your example of Tibet as a little “test case”, shall we? Could we perhaps ask a couple of the geo-political commenters on here (no, not you, Mary!) too tell us, briefly, what they think of China’s forcible incorporation of Tibet? Mr Goss, Macky, KOWN – over to you.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“If you genuinely feel these are misplaced sympathies of “the left”, I have to say you are completely wrong – you are actually condemning an entire liberal, progressive movement based on stereotypes and supposed sympathies which do not exist.”
___________________
I would vigorously contest the notion that the majority (not all!)of the regulars on here represent – or have anything in common with – “the entire liberal, progressive movement”. On the contrary, they appear to me to be the very antithesis of that movement.
I note Komodo that an online petition demanding the “Global Legacy” award by the US arm of the charity ‘Save the Children’ be revoked, has attracted more than 113,000 signatures.
Six in a row. A record?
Iain Orr
“I cannot trace the origins of the dispute – on this thread – about the “indigenous inhabitants” of the Falklands.”
__________________
You won’t find this because it does not exist. It comes from the imagination of someone unable to count on both hands. Also unable to apologise for misleading. If Noddy had to nod his head for every apology he owes to people on this blog the little bell on his blue hat would never stop ringing.
@Habby: Thanks for the reply but you didn’t answer the question about what you think should happen to those who are enablers of torture.
People like this for example:
http://rt.com/usa/214411-cheney-torture-report-us/
Bliar and Straw are not exceptionally viscious servants of empire, merely the flavour of the day. They fit into a well worn mold. John Newsinger catalogues the trail of brutality in “The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire”
Exerpts here, http://thebloodneverdried.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/excerpts-from-john-newsingers-the-blood-never-dried-a-peoples-history-of-the-british-empire/
Just like today the perpetrators and hangers on sought to defend extreme brutality done in our name. Describing an incident in the Third opium war Reverend RJL M’Ghee wrote that after a “…ferocious bombardment the fort was stormed with at least 2000 Chinese killed. ‘It was indeed an awful sight, limbs blown away, bodies literally burst asunder, one black and livid mess of blood and wounds.’ He could only be thankful that ‘since there were such weapons in existence, they were in our hands – ours, who would use them to preserve the peace of the world than ever to make an aggressive or unjust war.’
Plus ça change…!
…
Ba’al.
Great links. The net tightens around the Great Liar! 🙂
…
Mary.
You know what to do with chaff and droppings. http://enviroworld.ca/wp-content/themes/enviroworld/images/hands_in_compost.jpg
Weasel and mealy mouthed words from government ministers in the Lords in reply to Jenny Tonge’s questions.
6. Baroness Tonge: What assessment have HMG made of the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s recent suggestion that Israel should offer economic incentives to encourage the transfer of Israeli Arabs to a Palestinian state?
7. Baroness Tonge: Further to the Written Answer by Baroness Anelay of St Johns on 21 November, what representations will HMG make to the government of Israel to hold a full and transparent investigation into the death of Youssef al Ramouni?
Nos 6-7 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/141216w0001.htm#14121649000761
8. Baroness Tonge: What action are HMG taking to discourage incitement to violence and to promote religious tolerance in Jerusalem?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/141216w0001.htm#14121649000765
9. Baroness Tonge: Was any attempt made to prevent Professor Mordechai Kedar from entering the UK in order to speak to the Zionist Federation and Sussex Friends of Israel in Brighton on 8 December, in the light of his reported comments in respect of raping the wives and mothers of Hamas militants?
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/141216w0001.htm#14121649000765
10. Baroness Tonge: What representations have HMG made to Israel concerning the United Nations report on the number of patients in Gaza waiting to leave for critical treatment; and what progress has the European Union made in respect of ending the blockade?
11. Baroness Tonge: What action are HMG taking to encourage the Geneva Convention summit to discuss the situation in Palestine and human rights?
Nos 10-11 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201415/ldhansrd/text/141216w0001.htm#14121649000777
Nos 3-11 Lords Written Answers
You got into the Sri Lanka Guardian, btw, Craig…
http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2014/12/put-blair-and-straw-on-trial-for-torture.html
I read Mary the Lords are “considering their position” on Palestine & Human Rights.
One might argue that rather than considering their position from under that mountain, they should think of themselves as seeing the world from its summit, with the appalling vista of a destroyed Palestine that vantage point offers. Is that not a better way to view the matter? We need only preserve our equanimity to see the merit of this perspective.
Sofia I often recommend that book, The Blood Never Dried. It should be a school text book.
~~~
I often think of these honourable men.
In the 20s, L E O Charlton refused to drop mustard gas on the Iraqi people and resigned his commission in the RAF.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Charlton
About that, Bomber Harris said: “The only thing the Arab understands is the heavy hand.”
Nothing has changed.
Recently, Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall Smith refused to return to Iraq. He knew that he would be involved in torture of Iraqi prisoners in an illegal war. A ghastly Judge Advocate fined him and sentenced him to time in a military prison.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Kendall-Smith
Some others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iraq_War_resisters
Ex-Mossad chief: Peace will elude us until we treat Palestinians with dignity….
There will never be peace in the Middle East as long as Israelis don’t treat the Palestinians as equals.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/ex-mossad-chief-peace-will-elude-us-until-we-treat-palestinians-with-dignity/
@Sofia: the empire ended after ww2. All British post-war leaders, Eden possibly excepted, steering around involvement in military solutions, other than in Northern Ireland… and what a mistake that was!
Blair tried and succeeded in reviving UK militarism, using slipstream from US military might. Four military interventions in four years after he became leader, and then Iraq… I think he is worse than his predecessors in that respect.
“Nothing has changed.”
Ain’t that the truth.
Thanks for the link to the Nafezz Ahmed interview Brian, it explains why the Guardian and its commentators are strangely quiet on torture, it would open up a can of worms for their apologist to Zionist torture.
Ba’al once again points to the fact that we have enough information on the principal torturers and starters of illegal wars to go ahead with a prosecution. My heart sinks at the prospect of having to listen to Bliars tear jerking mutterings of how he felt it to be his calling, blah blah, trying to bring in his religious confusion.
Should one favour a quick ‘austerity treason trial’ and hanging?, rather than waste large amounts of cash on lawyers? cash we have not got because one of the principal torturers felt it was not necessary to support a finance bill in 2006, before the housing bubble burst.
If we are going back to Victorian times economically and watch on as our social structures and services are destroyed by the rich landed gentry and their puppets in power, then we could also turn back justice to a more summary outcome, could we not.
what say, was there mileage in Milosovics trial? Four years of trial with many judges a whole village full of officials beavering away to proof that Milosovics gave the orders to genocide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_the_former_Yugoslavia
Prosecute Bliar and Straw now! before their offspring carries on this dynasty of shame, these judicially corrupt people who have no time to look at the devastation and hardship they’d cause, the multiple death they created by their machinations of grandeur, their Leviathan power projections, their lying and misleading of Parliament, deliberately, not to speak of their hollow excuses and the ever changing justifications and denials they offer to make out that they have done nothing wrong.
Its enough now, they should stand up for their crimes and people like Owen Jones, young, active and professing to be made of heart and guts, would do well to speak out, support their real colleagues, such nafeez Ahmed, rather than kowtowing to some ‘ueberschmutzfink’ puppet and his repressive hangers on.
Fallon (yes that worm) is to comment on the completed al Sweady Inquiry this afternoon. It cost a mere £25m and exonerates the army.
British Soldier Torture Claims ‘Lies’ – Inquiry
An inquiry that lasted five years and cost the taxpayer £25m finds claims British soldiers tortured captured Iraqis were “lies”.
http://news.sky.com/story/1393405/british-soldier-torture-claims-lies-inquiry
Good timing Sir Thayne.
@Nevermind. Yes, it was ridiculous that the Milosovic trial went on and on. But he was in prison during this time, was he not…
This would be the trial of the century! Up to the legal people to make sure that the truth comes out. The cost could be covered by media rights, etc.
Giyane @ 2.50 am – Thank you for reminding us all of Craig’s evidence. I found his arguments about UK policy being, as he said, “schizophrenic” persuasive. As I think you and others will agree, that has been a widespread phenomenon in this and many earlier UK (and other) governments. We are thus deadened to it, except when, as in this case, it is highlighted through close argument on a matter of high moral importance.
I genuinely do not fully understand the question you have put to me, viz “My question to you therefore is whether you personally accepted the fact that Tony Blair and Jack Straw had unilaterally agreed to George Bush’s new ground rules.” Are you talking about my understanding as a serving UK diplomat from 8 June 2001 (when Jack Straw became Foreign Secretary) up to December 2002 (when I retired); or about my understanding at later periods, notably in the aftermath of the House of Commons decision (on the advice of Tony Blair and Jack Straw) to agree to join the US government in the invasion of Iraq?
On either timescale, I was not aware of Tony Blair and Jack Straw “unilaterally” [meaning what? Without consulting law officers? Without making any statement to Parliament?] agreeing to any set of specific “new ground rules” published by George Bush. I am not saying that there were no such new ground rules, simply that I am not aware of ever seeing the text of them, either as a serving diplomat or later. There may well be a locus classicus for them and I would be grateful if you or others could indicate where to find them, since such a text would help considerably to illuminate the lines of argument adopted by Craig and others who gave evidence to the Joint Committee Against Torture.
The best way I can explain, with hindsight, how the UK reacted to the changed US “strategy” for conducting the War on Terror is that it used chop logic to resolve a big dilemma. The USA was unilaterally (ie without engaging in discussion with other parties to the relevant conventions, some of which it had in any case not signed) redefining what in its eyes counted as torture. Even without that change and new guidelines, the UK had its own experience (eg in Kenya, Northern Ireland as two of the best documented cases) of getting intelligence obtained by torture and of using it operationally, even if it was not admissible in a court of law.
We are all familiar with the sort of “thought experiment” that by engaging in torture another country has discovered and has informed your homeland security agents that a terrorist group plans to release a biological warfare bomb in the capital of your country during a state visit from a friendly Head of State. Such scenarios manage to turn most Kantians into reluctant utilitarians.
But we are dealing with real torture in the real world and its (possible) justification. As far as I can see, Sir Michael Wood ingeniously combined the doomsday scenario justification for using the information with implicit acceptance of the US redefinition of torture. Without that implicit acceptance [on the lines of “what the US does is not, by its definition torture and who are we as a blindly loyal ally not to take at face value its own interpretation of what it is doing?”], the UK would be in the position of having to take action against the USA as a country which engages in torture (like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, Egypt…)
In the real world, as the redacted report on the CIA makes even clearer, we have also become aware that in a significant number of cases people were tortured not so they would tell the truth but so that they would tell valuable lies, which could serve as “evidence” that Saddam was in cahoots with bin Laden.
What Craig did in his evidence was to articulate – more clearly than had been done before by a person who had handled false “evidence” procured by torture – that complicity is not just feeding questions to the torturers and/or sitting in the same room when the torture took place. What is fundamentally immoral is, as Craig expressed it, that “we are creating a market for torture” (28 April 2009, Q 102).
That’s my best shot at answering your question. Can you now please tell me what crime I have committed, when and where, under what legislation (or widely accepted moral code) and whether I am still committing that crime? Can you similarly state what you understand to be Craig’s crimes? His position is of course very different from mine in that he took the initiative to ask HMG to confront the incoherence of the instructions he was being asked to carry out in Uzbekistan. Comments from others also welcome.
Set up and appointed by Bob Ainsworth, Defence Secretary. Remember him?
http://www.alsweadyinquiry.org/the_team/index.htm
He is still at the trough apparently although we never hear of or from him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ainsworth
Bob Ainsworth: I wouldn’t have backed Tony Blair’s war if I’d known the truth about WMDs
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1235640/Bob-Ainsworth-I-backed-Tony-Blairs-war-weapons-mass-destruction.html
LOL
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30498850
Kerry mislays backbone, again.
Iain Orr: “I am not saying that there were no such new ground rules, simply that I am not aware of ever seeing the text of them, either as a serving diplomat or later.”
Well Iain, I am a humble house-bashing electrician, but I still have to know what Amendment 3 of the BS 7671 is going to change when it comes into force on January 15 2015.
My question is very simple and since you have answered it clearly, I would open it up to the whole of the office-dwelling corporate-troughing community. If the guys at the top order illegal practises, should one A/ pretend one has not noticed and use hierarchical management as a cover for implementing the new rules; B/ Complain to one’s line manager and impose on oneself a process of disciplinary bullying and personal humiliation leading to one’s dismissal; or C/ take one’s complaint to the top, tell them that they are incompetent and their decisions are illegal and await dismissal for somehow not having ones bottom smacked enough as a child.
Craig did C/
“Weasel and mealy mouthed words from government ministers in the Lords in reply to Jenny Tonge’s questions.
6. Baroness Tonge: What assessment have HMG made of the Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s recent suggestion that Israel should offer economic incentives to encourage the transfer of Israeli Arabs to a Palestinian state?”
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She’s back on Israel again!
Still, I suppose we should praise her self-restraint; I was expecting something on Page 1. 🙂