My blog existence has been almost nil for a couple of weeks due to a truly terrible internet connection here in Ghana (where I still haven’t got everything on the project finished to the state where I can fly to Norwich North).

I recall a speech Peter Hain gave about ten years ago to the effect that the adoption of new technologies could lead Africa to catch up with the rest of the world economy, bypassing the smokestack age. In fact of course the advent of new technology leaves Africa further and further behind. “Broadband” here is 512 kb/ps and costs US $300 a month. In fact it is giving me 7 kb/ps.

But not only my virtual existence is tenuous. I have been surprised to discover that it seems that I was mistaken about my physical existence too. Today The Guardian leads with the story that Tony Blair knew of a secret UK policy of receiving intelligence from torture. The Guardian goes big, with five follow up articles.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/18/tony-blair-secret-torture-policy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/18/torture-mi5-policy-terrorism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/18/torture-intelligence-abuse

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2009/jun/18/torture-uk-interactive

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/audio/2009/jun/18/terror-interrogation-torture-tony-blair

The strange thing is, I could have sworn that I had been a British Ambassador and had been smeared in a campaign orchestrated by No 10, and then sacked, for opposing this torture policy. I thought I had blown the whistle on this policy five years ago and published a number of government documents which proved the existence of this policy. I even thought I had written a book about it which became a bestseller.

I appear to have been suffering from this delusion over a lengthy period, because I also thought that I gave detailed evidence on all of this just six weeks ago to a parliamentary committee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

But all that cannot be true. For one thing, David Miliband gave evidence on UK complicity in torture two days ago to another parliamentary committee, and not one MP mentioned the eye witness testimony I had just given, which contradicted much of what David Miliband had said. For another, the Guardian’s survey of key points of evidence for the existence of a secret pro-torture policy, does not mention anywhere that it was denounced by a British Ambassador who was sacked for it and published documentary proof.

I cannot quite explain to you how unpleasant it feels to be written out of history before you are dead. Stalin of course airbrushed people out of the official photos all the time. At least he had the decency to kill them first.

David Miliband refused to testify to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights about UK complicity in torture. That in itself is an example of how useless our parliament is and of the contempt in which the executive hold it. Thr JCHR was set up by the Commons and Lords specifically to monitor the UK’s compliance with its international human rights obligations. In the case of a most serious breach, government ministers can simply refuse to appear before the committee. What use is it?

Had Miliband testified at the JCHR, he would have been confronted with my evidence and that of others and expected to respond.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

Instead, Miliband appeared before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, with its absolute New Labour majority.

I am in Accra and have not had any internet connection for two days. Today I have, but very very slow and I can’t watch Miliband’s appearance. If I buffer for three minutes I can get a twelve section tape. So I have been sampling his evidence. As far as I can tell nobody confronted him with my evidence. But from around 48 minutes he tells a direct lie, that we do use intelligence from torture but only where it concerns a direct threat to life.

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=4317

As I testified to the JCHR, the torture material which I was seeing from Uzbekistan plainly did not fall into this category, yet I was told it was “Useful” to the intelligence services and we ahould continue to receive it. The meeting at which Iwas told this was minuted by the FCO.

Our parliament is pathetic in allowing Miliband to testify before a different body to that which heard the contrary evidence. But even so, even from the snatches I have been able to view, Miliband comes over as shifty and the government’s determination to continue receiving intelligence from torture glare through the carefully contrived answers.

Comment from those more able than I to see a fuller part of his evidence would be very welcome.

It is no surprise to me that detectives in the Metropolitan Police have been using waterboarding.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/10/met-police-waterboarding-claim

The government has specifically decided that it is acceptable to gain information from torture in the context of the “War on Terror”. When I recently gave evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, to the effect that torture is now government policy, I was disappointed to find that rather than take the view that torture is illegal, the MPs were concerned to establish just how much torture material might be accepted before it becomes illegal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG4ey3GtbP8

The prohibition of torture must be absolute. Once you say it is OK in some circumstances, once you admit torture into government policy, it will spread like a cancer. You cannot then claim to be shocked that agents of the state thought that, if it was justified in x case, it might be justified in y case too.

This is well understood in international law. That is why Article 2 of the UN Convention Against Torture states:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

We are a signatory to that convention and bound by it in law. But as anybody will plainly learn who watches the youtube link posted above, we are plainly breaking it. It is the grossest hypocrisy. New Labour have sent public policy back to medieval times. Is it any wonder the police follow?

It also points up perfectly the hypocrisy of Gordon Brown’s reform plan. He says he wishes to

strengthen the powers of parliamentary select committees. But Foreign Secretary David Miliband has point blank refused to appear before the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights to answer questions on government policy on using torture material. New Labour’s real attitude to parliament and people is one of total arrogance.

There is a very good article in the Independent by Simon Reid-Henry about the urgent need to call the government to account for its complicity in torture – something parliament seems not to care about at all.

Even without a judicial inquiry, therefore, perhaps there is at least one lesson to be learned from all this: that we must unpick ourselves from the dangerous tangle of national security and state secretiveness. As worrying as the prospect of British complicity in torture is, more worrying still is the apparent capacity of our government to keep brushing such claims of complicity aside

.

http://opinion.independentminds.livejournal.com/831661.html

A commenter has left this about Andrew Dismore, the Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Commission on Human Rights. The email address and ISP connected to the comment (which I shall not reveal) appear to confirm this was from an Uzbek source, It is worth noting that there are a number of good disaffected young people inside the Uzbek foreign ministry.

Mr Dismore is a friend of Uzbeki regime. He has been in our Embassy in London on several occasions for treatment with plov and shashlik (famous uzbek national dish). In 2003-2004 he promoted Uzbekistani interests, and like many other, he played great role in putting Uzbeki pressure on British FCO to sack their Ambassador Murray from his office in Tashkent.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/torture_the_gua.html#comments

I have been trying to check up on this. The comment was made on my posting which included reference to Dismore’s efforts from the chair to minimise the impact of my evidence on UK complicity in torture. It goes without saying that if Dismore had indeed had any role in prompting my dismissal, he should have declared this at the Select Committee. A friend of mine with very strong Labour Party connections, told me recently that she had been talking to one of Jack Straw’s former New Labour Special Advisers in the FCO. She mentioned she knew me, and he said he had last heard of me when he approved my letter of dismissal. For a Special Adviser to be involved in any way in the dismissal of a civil servant is of course in complete contravention of the Civil Service Code.

It is also true, and appalling, that the Uzbek government was told I had been dismissed, before I was told myself. All of which does fit with the idea that New Labour were discussing it with the Uzbek government.

In looking for further evidence to support or refute my informant, I bear in mind that Andrew Dismore is the Vice Chair of the Labour Friends of Israel. The Karimov regime is of course a long term supporter and strategic partner of Israel – one of the very small group of countries which always supports Israel at the UN General Assembly. The Israel link could be what led Dismore into support for the Uzbek regime.

There is substantial evidence for this. In the middle of a long speech in Parliament against Palestinian terrorism, Andrew Dismore suddenly switched to describing an alleged terrorist attack on Uzbekistan, and then switched back to the Palestinians again:

Andrew Dismore

…there was an attempted attack on the Maccabiah games in Jerusalem. Salem Taleb Al-Darawi, of the PFLP, was one of those involved. It was described as a Xjoint operation” and a PFLP militia group was involved. Perhaps most chilling of all was the attempt to bring down the Israeli equivalent of the twin towers when, on 7 May this year, Israeli soldiers intercepted a truck filled with more than half a tonne of high explosives, the target being the 50-storey Azrieli towers. Again, two of those involved were senior PFLP leaders, Ra’ad Nazel, the area commander for the PFLP, who was killed in the operation, and another PFLP commander who was arrested. Let us contrast that record with that of the JI organisation, which was accused only of planning attacks. I think that the PFLP attacks were much more serious.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is being proscribed because it is supposed to have launched a sophisticated bombing campaign in Tashkent, which was directed against the Uzbekistan regime. We should note that it was not directed against UK interests. However, in the past few months the PFLP has organised more bomb attacks. On 3 September, a car bomb and three other bombs exploded in Jerusalem and nine civilians were injured. On 17 October 2001, there was a car bombing in the Gaza strip at Nahal Oz. On 16 February 2002, two children were killed and 27 wounded when a PFLP suicide bomber exploded himself at a crowded shopping mall in Karnei Shomron. On 19 May 2002, the PFLP carried out a suicide bombing in the coastal city of Netanya, in which three people were killed and 59 wounded, which was apparently planned from prison by Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the PFLP, according to telephone taps, while he was supposed to have been guarded by UK and American prison guards as part of the agreement with the Palestinians and the Israelis.

The “bombings” to which Dismore refers form a key part of the propaganda of the Karimov regime, but are a total fiction. I was in Tashkent that day and I went right to the site of each of the four alleged bombs, in one case arriving less that an hour after the alleged explosion. It was very obvious from the physical evidence that there had in fact been no explosions. My investigations at the time are described in great detail in Murder in Samarkand. So why did Dismore in the middle of a speech about Israel big up a Karimov propaganda big lie?

His speech was about only two situations: Israel and Uzbekistan. That is at least circumstantial support that our Uzbek informant is indeed telling the truth about Dismore.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo021030/debtext/21030-08.htm

In April 2004 Dismore asked a parliamentary questions also promoting the Uzbek propaganda account of the non-existent bombings:

Mr. Dismore To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Allairs what assessment he has made of the statement by the authorities in Uzbekistan that terrorist attacks in late March were linked to Hizb-ut-Tahrir; and if he will make a statement

.

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/written_answers/2004/apr/19/uzbekistan#S6CV0420P2_20040419_CWA_1729

Next we have Dismore actually admitting that he is raising an issue at the behest of the Uzbek government:

I certainly do not hold up Uzbekistan as a example of liberal democracy?”far from it; it has a pretty nasty regime?”but it believes quite strongly that it faces a serious terrorist threat organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir. I have no way of knowing whether that it right, but it has certainly raised that issue with me.

The fact that the Uzbek regime is “pretty nasty” is of course so blatantly obvious that no politician in the UK could speak on its behalf without a false disclaimer, before going on to put the Karimov regime’s viewpoint. Again, as explained at length in Murder in Samarkand, there were plenty of examples of the Uzbek government concocting evidence of Hizb Ut Tehrir involvement in violence, (Like the H-u-T activist dragged out of bed in his underpants, and found to be concealing ammunition when searched at the police station). But in two years careful study of dissidence and terrorism, looking at facts and interviewing people all over Uzbekistan, I concluded H-u-T were indeed an organisation with some aims I certainly do not share, but committed to non-violence.

But the important point here is that Dismore admits in Parliament that the Karimov regime is “raising concerns” with Dismore. Why does Dismore have a line to the Karimov regime, and by precisely what mechanism? Does it work as my commenter alleges through hospitality and contacts at the Uzbek Embassy? Dismore then undeniably passes on those entirely faked Karimov concerns in our parliament. This strongly inclines me to believe that my commenter has genuine inside knowledge of Dismore’s contacts with the Uzbek Embassy; it indeed seems probable that he lobbied on their behalf for me to be sacked.

I may get more detail from my Uzbek informant, or others may know more. If indeed Dismore did discuss my dismissal with the Uzbek government or Embassy as alleged, then it is a disgrace he was chairing my evidence session, and he should resign as Chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee. How anyone in that Chair can even attend functions at the Uzbek Embassy is beyond me.

There is, on the face of it, another in a series of very good articles by Ian Cobain in The Guardian, on complicity by the British security services in torture abroad. Sixteen MI5 and MI6 personnel are under investigationby the Metropolitan Police for their involvement in torture.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/26/mi5-new-torture-allegations

The home secretary Jacqui Smith faces legal action over allegations that MI5 agents colluded in the torture of a British former civil servant by Bangladeshi intelligence officers.

Lawyers for the British man, Jamil Rahman, are to file a damages claim alleging that Smith was complicit in assault, unlawful arrest, false imprisonment and breaches of human rights legislation over his alleged ill-treatment while detained in Bangladesh.

The claims bring to three the number of countries in which British intelligence agents have been accused of colluding in the torture of UK nationals. Rahman says that he was the victim of repeated beatings over a period of more than two years at the hands of Bangladeshi intelligence officers, and he claims that a pair of MI5 officers were blatantly involved in his ordeal.

The two men would leave the room where he was being interrogated whenever he refused to answer their questions, he says, and he would be severely beaten. They would then return to the room to resume the interrogation.

Last month I gave evidence to a parliamentary select committee that I had direct first hand experience as a British Ambassador that the UK had a policy, set by Jack Straw as Foreign Secretary, of obtaining torture from intelligence abroad.

I was summoned back to a meeting which was held in the FCO on 7 or 8 March 2003. Present were Linda Duffield, Director Wider Europe; Matthew Kydd, Head Permanent Under Secretary’s Department; Sir Michael Wood, Legal Adviser.

At the start of the meeting Linda Duffield told me that Sir Michael Jay, Permanent Under Secretary, wished me to know that my telegrams were unwise and that these sensitive questions were best not discussed on paper.

In the meeting, Sir Michael Wood told me that it was not illegal for us to obtain intelligence from torture, provided someone else did the torture. He added “I make no comment on the moral aspect” and appeared to me to be signalling disapproval.

Matthew Kydd told me that the Security Services considered the material from the CIA in Tashkent useful. He also argued that, as the final intelligence report issued by the security services excludes the name of the detainee interrogated, it is not possible to prove that torture was involved in any particular piece of intelligence.

Linda Duffield told me that Jack Straw had discussed this question with Sir Richard Dearlove and the policy was that, in the War on Terror, we should not question such intelligence.

…It was agreed that Sir Michael Wood’s view that it was not illegal to receive intelligence from torture would be put in writing. I attach a copy of his letter of 13 March 2003.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf

This meeting was minuted. I have seen the minute, which is classified Top Secret. On the top copy is a manuscript note giving Jack Straw’s views. It is entirely plain from this note that this torture policy was under his personal direction.

The New Labour chairman, Andrew Dismore, appeared not keen to include in his summary of my testimony the fact I had been directly instructed that this was a minsterially set policy, and I had both been told that Jack Straw had approved it and I had seen Straw’s own subsequent marginalia on the minutes of the meeting. All that had been clearly set out in my written memorandum of evidence to the committee, and I was determined not to let Dismore wriggle away from the fact that these MI5 officers were following ministerial policy: as in this passage.

Q77 Chairman: To summarise where we are, we were not directly involved in torturing anybody in Uzbekistan, but effectively there was a chain that ended up with you in Tashkent via the CIA and MI6 in London. It is not like the allegations we have received regarding Pakistan, for example, where basically we are in the prison cell asking the questions and somebody may have been tortured. This is a much more remote chain of circumstances. Your argument is that because Uzbekistan is a country where torture is almost a way of life in that country evidence was being obtained by the CIA indirectly from the Uzbeks and then supplied to MI6 and the sum totality must have been known to ministers. Although we were not directly involved through that chain that is sufficient in your view to create an allegation of complicity by the UK in torture in Uzbekistan?

Mr Murray: I would agree with that.

Q78 Chairman: That is a summary of your case?

Mr Murray: I would add one point. My case is that because as an ambassador I was fortunately a member of the senior civil service and I was arguing against this I was able to be given high-level policy direction and be told that ministers had decided we would get intelligence from torture. The fact that ministers made that decision was the background to what was happening in Pakistan, for example. It is not that MI5 operatives were acting independently; they were pursuing a policy framework set ministerially

.

Q79 Chairman: So, ministers specifically used the words “torture”, “evidence from the CIA” and “no questions: turn a blind eye”?

Mr Murray: Ministers certainly had before them and read my telegrams which said that this was torture and detailed the type of torture involved.

Q80 Chairman: What you just said was that ministers said it was okay to use torture?

Mr Murray: No; I think I said that ministers said it was okay to use intelligence from torture.

Q81 Chairman: Therefore, the inference is that it is not just turning a blind eye or “ask no questions, tell no lies”; it is specific knowledge?

Mr Murray: Nobody argued to me once that the Uzbek intelligence we were discussing did not come from torture; everyone accepted that it came from torture and the question was whether or not we accepted it. Nobody said that it was not actually torture.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/worse_than_expe.html

You can watch my evidence here:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=craig+murray&aq=f

Now as Rahman is going to sue the British government over his torture, my evidence that MI5 were following ministerial policy could hardly be more relevant. But The Guardian doesn’t even mention it in this article. Yet the reporter Iain Cobain actually attended the Select Committee and sat taking notes through my whole evidence session.

Even though the Today programme thought it was worth four minutes on arguably Britain’s most influential broadcast news, Ian Cobain has not reported it or referred to it once. This despite the fact that I am sure you will agree if you look at the videos, it is pretty startling stuff, delivered in a punctiliously accurate manner as I could and backed by documentation.

Why can this be? One possibility is that Cobain just doesn’t believe me – as some of the Committee members were also obviously desperate to think up some reason not to believe me. But what I said was the truth, delivered in full knowledge that there are severe penalties for misleading a select committee. The telegrams I referred to exist in the FCO, and the minutes of the meetings I detail also exist in the FCO. If I were lying, the FCO could simply release the documents and prove it. And I do have some very key FCO documents which strongly support my account and which I gave to the committee.

I very much hope I may testify in Court under oath in the Rahman case, and perhaps the Court will order the minutes and telegrams to be produced by the FCO.

The other reason that The Guardian may be suppressing my evidence from their story – and I believe this is almost certainly the true reason – is that Jack Straw is the Minister who approved the use of torture material. Straw is as thick as thieves with Guardian Deputy Editor Michael White, Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger and Guardian Media Group Chairman, also New Labour City Minister, Lord Myners. That lot are not going to finger their good mate Jack as a promoter of torture.

CP Scott has caused several minor earthquakes by the speed of his revolutions. Aside from cleaning up Parliament, when are we going to get these New Labour war criminals out of The Guardian?

For me, Mr Eugenides is the best writer among bloggers. Sadly none of his writing in this posting, but still a must see:

http://mreugenides.blogspot.com/2009/05/quote-of-day.html

There is an extremely important article by Gareth Peirce in the London Review of Books. Gareth is our greatest human rights lawyer. She exposed some of the most famous human rights abuses in recent British history. In the film “In the Name of the Father”, Gareth was played by Emma Thompson. It was Gareth to whom I turned when the government was attempting to destroy me with false allegations. She advised me, as she very often does, pro bono. She manages at the same time to be one of our most famous lawyers, and one of our poorest.

At one stage, when the goon squad were entering and turning over my flat to try and put the frighteners on me, Gareth and her husband invited me to live with them for a while. I declined and toughed it out, but I tell the story as an example of her kindness and devotion to the cause of human rights.

I have been fighting New Labour’s use of torture more or less full time for five years now. This is the best and most important analysis I have read in that time. Anybody with the tiniest interest in British politics should read it.

Frankly, that will not happen. It will fall victim to the very stifling of debate and information which it analyses so brilliantly.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n09/peir01_.html

Here are some key extracts:

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been unprecedented worldwide monitoring of man’s propensity to torture, and yet its use has not abated but appears to be thriving. How has this come about? Monitoring of torture depends on two strategies: exposing it to public censure through careful documentation, and holding state agents responsible for torture conducted on their watch. The first has encouraged torturers to adopt techniques that are less visible and hence harder to document. The second has encouraged politicians to seek acceptance of their methods from a public that condemns those who are soft on terrorism. In this country, in fact, the government hardly needs such acceptance, because of the additional and crucial factor that the public is unlikely to be given sufficient information to trigger its revulsion. (My emphasis).

Whether we will in this country ever properly know the extent of British participation in criminal acts of the utmost seriousness should be a burning issue. We should not take for granted that court cases or a judicial inquiry will tell us what we need to know about the complicity of our government in crimes against humanity. The Baha Mousa inquiry into the activities of the British military in Iraq will not touch on the interaction of the British state with the US or the intelligence services, or with any torturing foreign state. Instead, the government will claim, as it does with ever greater frequency, that any issue relating to the intelligence services, or to the conduct of diplomatic relationships, should be confined entirely to special courts, or the evidence heard in large part in secret. The use of these procedures expands daily.

…Once we have arrived at a position where acquiescence in crimes against humanity by our government may well have occurred, the state can no longer demand that we acknowledge it as our protector and assert that in consequence the nation’s security is at stake if secrets are revealed. This after all is the thesis on which the claim for secrecy is built. For years the government has sidestepped report after report on these issues by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Justice and Liberty, and has considered the interventions of those organisations as interventions of which they need take no note whatsoever. And for the past seven years the United Kingdom has also shown disturbing indifference to the criticism of international organisations. The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture conducted repeated checks on those interned indefinitely without trial between December 2001 and March 2005. Their observation that those being detained on secret evidence were being driven to madness were ignored; so too was the stinging critique of the European Commissioner for Human Rights. The government carried on with the detentions to the bitter end, months after the House of Lords had declared the legislation to be in violation of the fundamental provisions of the Human Rights Act. Similarly, the concerns the special rapporteur expressed in his report this year appear to have remained unread. Is arrogance the reason that criticisms can never correctly apply to the UK? Are they only for others?

…Staggeringly, not only do we therefore know nothing of what the intelligence services have actually witnessed in Afghanistan, but in each of the committee’s inquiries into their involvement or otherwise in torture, the government’s witnesses and the committee in turn appeared to miss entirely the wider legal and moral point. Instead, they focused on individual errors of judgment, even though members of the intelligence services were present during unlawful transfer and confinement: that is, in situations comprehensively meeting the definition of internationally prohibited crimes against humanity.

Equally disturbingly is that later in 2002, some months after MI6 sent its advice, the recently arrived British ambassador to Uzbekistan inquired urgently of the Foreign Office what its legal justification was for receiving information from Islamic dissidents who had been boiled alive to produce it. Craig Murray records his astonishment on being recalled to London to be told that the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, had decided that in the ‘War on Terror’ we should, as a matter of policy, use intelligence obtained through torture by foreign intelligence services. A follow-up memo from a Foreign Office legal adviser in March 2003 explained that it was not an offence to do so. How sound was this advice legally? Morally, there is no question. But what of the encouragement to torture resulting from our enthusiastic receipt of information?

There have been no resignations over any of this. The government on whose watch it has occurred may be vulnerable for other reasons, but at present it seems not for possible complicity in grave crimes. From where does it derive its confidence? Control of information is a powerful tool: the answer must undoubtedly lie in the extent to which the secret state believes it has consolidated and can control any mechanism that might allow discovery and challenge, so that it can rely on its citizens never knowing properly, or often at all.

It is horrible for me to read this against the background of my own despair at the virtual media blackout of my evidence last week to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. I thought that my evidence of ministerial collusion in torture was so shocking that the mainstream media would have to carry it. I realise reading Gareth that even now I am still naive. I also understand better now the Committee’s extraordinary dispassion.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/nobody_can_hear.html#comments

Iain Dale has offered much needed assistance to Charles Crawford, as Charles struggles to promote the New Labour doctrine that “Torture is Good”.

Condoleeza Rice – The Mask Slips

I think Iain ought perhaps to have checked with William Hague for the line on this one, but we’ll let that go. Anyway, Iain has given Charles a link on “The Daley Dozen” with the plug “Charles Crawford is not an FCO lickspittle, whatever Craig Murray might say.”

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6214838&postID=7467638102883273883

So to what does Iain Dale link to prove that Charles Crawford is not an FCO lickspittle? To a bold criticism by Charles of British foreign policy? An attack by Charles on Milliband’s lack of effort on human rights, or on supine British policy over the Israeli attack on Gaza?

No, those don’t exist. Iain links, to “prove” that Charles is no lickspittle, to Charles’ attack on me to further the FCO position of supporting torture. Iain thus shoots both himself and Charles in the foot with one bullet.

I have increased respect for Iain Dale since he recently joined the long list of Tories coming out against Trident 2. I don’t choose friends by their political views. Charles Crawford is a perfectly nice bloke as well. That is the problem when governments do things like institute torture policy. The public servants who go along with it are not monsters but ordinary people.

Charles had attacked me about a dozen times on his blog, if you include his feeble series of “reviews” of Murder in Samarkand, and is acting in a thin-skinned way when I mentioned him for the first time, in the context of his support for the government’s torture policy.

But Charles Crawford’s huffing and puffing cannot disguise his failure to answer the question I put to him. When he was British Ambassador to Poland, did he know about the CIA secret prison near Sczytno Szymany, about torture in it and about the extraordinary rendition flights through that airport? Until he answers those questions, there is nothing else to discuss with him.

Since being outed as the person who approved waterboarding, Condoleeza Rice has been unable to maintain that veneer of manicured niceness. She has a hunted, vicious look in this video from the brilliant Marjorie Cohn.

http://marjoriecohn.com/

This line of steaming bullshit from Rice shows just how very rattled she is:

“By definition, if it was authorized by the President, it didn’t violate our obligations under the Convention against Torture.”

Now I have had time to consider my appearance to give evidence to parliament last Tuesday, my overwhelming impression remains the lack of compassion displayed by the MPs. They seemed to have no particular concern about men, women and children screaming in agony under torture. They were solely concerned with whether the government’s collusion with it could be justified by legal sophistry. It may be that they are genuinely motivated by humanitarian concern, but the Earl of Onslow was the only one who really gave me that feeling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

I do understand that, in their very British way, they were sticking like limpets to their remit. But that opens another very interesting question. This committee is tasked by parliament to monitor British compliance with its international human rights obligations. But Foreign Office ministers are refusing to cooperate with, or appear before, this enquiry into our complicity with torture. What does that say about the weakness of our parliament?

I have decided that my next move will be to send copies of my evidence to the UN Committee on Torture, together with the information that the UK government has refused to appear before the parliamentary committee to answer these allegations.

On the positive side, my evidence and that of Phillippe Sands strips away any pretence by the government that they do not obtain a great deal of intelligence by torture. There was no serious attempt by the committee to query that.

The Foreign Office has started to shift its ground towards the Cheney argument that “Torture works”.

FCO Finally Admits To Receiving Intelligence From Torture

The leading FCO sock-puppet on the internet is Charles Crawford. Charles on his “Blogoir” (Pretentious? Moi?) had managed to write a nine part review rubbishing Murder in Samarkand without once even mentioning the word torture, thus forwarding the FCO myth that torture was not the subject of my dispute with them.

More recently he ridiculed me on his blogoir for my contention from that it is not normal to enter No 10 to give secret briefings by the front door, and assured us (falsely) that there was good intelligence behind the recent fake Manchester Bomb Plot scare, whipped up by the government.

This week he has moved on to aggressive promotion of the “Torture works” neo-con school.

www.charlescrawford.biz – Torture – See It All?

Coincidental timing by the FCO sock-puppet? I think not.

There is an interesting link between Charles and I on torture. The Dick Marty official European report into extraordinary rendition revealed ten CIA rendition flights to Uzbekistan from Europe (and many more from Baghram).

All the CIA rendition flights to Uzbekistan came from Szczytno-Szymany in Poland. We now know that the CIA had both use of that airbase and a secret torture prison nearby.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,621450,00.html

I was Ambassador in Uzbekistan, and Charles Crawford was Ambassador in Poland, at the time this torture traffic was happening. In Tashkent I uncovered it meticulously, reported it and protested against it. In Poland Charles made no protest. Either he did not know it was happening – in which case he was a lousy Ambassador – or he did not care – in which case he is complicit in the torture.

Charles may wish to let us know which it was – haplessly ignorant, or complicit?

Given his recent post on torture, plainly complicity would not have given him moral qualms.

Part 1 of my evidence session seems to have stopped working on youtube. I get a black screen, followed after five minutes by an error message. Anyone else have this problem?

Just before I gave my evidence to Parliament yesterday, my sister Celia telephoned me to say that I would be speaking not for myself but for all those thousands who had suffered unspeakable torture around the World in the War on Terror, whose screams and sometimes death rattles were heard only by their torturers. She told me I was speaking for those who could not speak.

She put me into a calm place, and I tried to give my evidence very coolly and professionally, but I believe I did manage once or twice to break through the twisted legalese in which the committee have mummified themselves, to bring home the human cost of torture to them.

You can see my evidence here:

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/VideoPlayer.aspx?meetingId=3978

If that disappears, Tony has kindly put it onto YouTube which you can find here:

http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/craig-murrays-evidence-on-youtube/

But I am completely astonished, and horribly depressed, that there has been almost no mainstream media of this quite sensational information. There has been not one word in any newspaper or on TV. The Today programme on Radio 4 ran a story on it at 6.45am, but did not repeat it. A piece went up immediately on the BBC website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8023111.stm

but it is very difficult to find it there without the url.

I really cannot understand why no newspaper or TV channel has covered what is quite a startling development in a prominent continuing story on the use of torture in the War on Terror.

I had hoped that my evidence yesterday would be a significant step in ending the policy of obtaining intelligence from torture, and of bringing to account the ministers who approved it. But without any sign of public or media interest, the politicians will feel they can safely ignore the truth I told.

I was trying to speak up for those who have no voice. I feel very strongly that I have let them down.

Only their torturers heard their screams, and hardly anybody else heard my voice either.

If I pretended I wasn’t nervous about my appearance before the parliamentary committee today I would be lying. Little patches of moisture appear briefly on the keys as I hit them, then evaporate.

I am nervous not for myself, but in case I fluff this real opportunity to redeem something of the honour of our country, and to end this barbarous collusion with torture. If I had the chance to speak uninterrupted for ten minutes, I am sure I could make an impact. But I am limited to short answers to questions from the committee.

You will be able to see this on live webcast here at 1.45 BST today.

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/VideoPlayer.aspx?meetingId=3978

If anyone knows how to capture this for podcast or youtube or anything…

I am very busy now preparing for my appearance before the Parliamentary Joint Human Rights Committee. This will be at 1.45pm this Tuesday 28 April, in the Thatcher Room (!), Portcullis House. It is a public hearing and moral support would be welcome.

I have prepared the following press release:

ORIGINAL DOWNING ST SMEARS VICTIM

RETURNS TO HAUNT NEW LABOUR

Thatcher Room

Portcullis House

Tuesday 28 April 1.45pm

Formal Evidence Session on UK Complicity in Torture

Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights

Witness: Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan

(currently Rector of the University of Dundee).

In 2004, Craig Murray told us that:

– The British Government was complicit in the most vicious forms of torture

– He had been the victim of a lurid smear campaign initiated by New Labour

– The government was lying about all this

In 2004, much of the public and media was not willing to accept that the government would cooperate with torture or with false allegations against an innocent man. Many still had trust in the basic honesty and decency of government.

The evidence that Craig Murray was telling the truth about torture has now become overwhelming, including from the case of Binyam Mohammed. The UK “benefited” continually from intelligence passed on from the CIA waterboarding programme and from torture in countries including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Egypt.

Craig Murray suffered the most high profile sacking of any British Ambassador for a century. But in 2005 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee refused to hear him in evidence, despite allowing Jack Straw to appear and attack him.

Astonishingly, this is the first time Craig Murray will ever have been allowed to give formal evidence in the UK on his grave allegations, and be questioned on the truth of his testimony.

As the Scotland Yard investigation proceeds into MI5 and MI6 collusion in 16 cases of torture, Craig Murray will argue that it is not the security service operatives, but the Ministers who set the policy ?” and specifically Jack Straw ?” who should be facing criminal charges.

Contact: Craig Murray on 07979 691085 or [email protected]

Transcript of Craig Murray’s formal evidence statement is at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html

I need help to get this out to the mainstream media. Can you spare half an hour on Sunday or Monday to do that? Things you might do are:

– Find email addresses or fax numbers for newsrooms at newspapers, press and broadcast media and news agencies

– Send them a copy of the press release, and then telephone to make sure that somebody reads it

– Research on the internet reporters who have covered torture and extraordinary rendition, and send copies to them

– Speak with any journalist you have any contact with, alert them to the story and get them to pass it on to a suitable colleague

– Do not forget the Scottish media, political magazines and journals, specialist broadcasters, regional media and international correspondents in London

– Send copies to relevant NGOs – again following up with a phone call

– Rope in anyone with media experience and contacts you know to help

– Spread the news on the internet

Do not worry too much about duplication – it may be helpful, and there is much greater danger of too little being done than too much. I am sorry I am always asking you for help, but there is only one of me!

The parliamentary TV service is filming the hearing, so there will be footage and pictures available. It will also be webcast by parliament, though whether live or not I do not know.

You can cut and paste the press release, or it should be available in word and pdf here.

Download file

Download file

Not everybody went along with the US torture programme. Read the tale of Alyssa Peterson.

Did she kill herself in horror at what she had witnessed her own country do, or was she murdered in case she made her experience public?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1102-05.htm

Thanks to George.

It emerges that Condoleeza Rice gave the go-ahead for waterboarding as National Security Adviser.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090423/ts_alt_afp/usattacksmilitaryjusticecongresszubaydah

This blog brought you information on the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed over two years ago.

CIA Torture and Khalid Sheik Mohammed

The man was waterboarded – which causes excruciating pain and suffocation – over 180 times. That is about once every three days over the period in question. There are few examples in history of anybody ever being tortured so severely over such an extended period. Can you imagine the permanent mental anguish, of waiting for the next physical anguish to begin?

Plainly the “Ticking bomb” argument used by Cheney and the pro-torture lobby is a myth, when torture extends over years.

As a result of this extreme and prolonged torture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to pretty well every terrorist atrocity you can name or planned terrorist atrocity you can imagine. In the UK alone, under torture he “confessed” to plans to blow up Heathrow, Canary Wharf, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. There are similar lists for pretty well every other Western country.

When I wrote the following back in 2007 this blog got 500 visitors a day: now it gets 5,000 let me repeat it:

Secret Confessions and Torture

Mohammed Sheikh Khalid has now, voluntarily and of his own free will, admitted he masterminded every significant event from the Norman Invasion through the bubonic plague, fall of Constantinople, and Great Fire of London, to the Battle of Little Big Horn, assassination of JFK and the Oklahoma bombing.

Or he might as well have. The extraordinarily comprehensive list of terrorist outrages for which he claims responsibility would be beyond the capacity of any but the most brilliant and inspired mortal; Khalid, I fear, is a more run of the mill thug.

But in truth, we have absolutely no idea what, if anything, he has confessed at all. The BBC brazenly reported all of yesterday that while Khalid did allege he had been tortured during his four years of secret detention by the CIA in various locations around the globe, he is now freely confessing under no duress and does not retract any of his confession.

Who says? The proceedings being held in Guantanamo Bay, and which the BBC report so uncritically, are held behind barbed wire, machine guns, gun emplacements, reinforced steel and concrete and combination locks, before an exclusively military panel. Khalid does not even have a lawyer present. For all we know, his confession could be an entire fabrication. The blandness of the BBC reporting in these circumstances is one of the worst examples of the appalling desertion of the principles of that once worthwhile institution.

The readiness of the rest of the media to push the “instil fear” button on behalf of the Orwellian government is predictable. They report as fact that Khalid also planned to blow up Heathrow, Canary Wharf, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and any other British building the Pentagon had heard of.

If Khalid really is freely and openly confessing all of this stuff, then what possible reason can there be to deny him a lawyer, and not allow public and media access to his trial? The atrocities he allegedly confesses – the Twin Towers, Madrid, Bali – left thousands of bereaved families. They have a right to see justice done, rather than this elaborate propaganda set-up, with its total lack of proper legal process or intellectual credibility.

Did Khalid really do all of this? Two facts must be considered. He has been through years of vicious torture and of solitary confinement. If the experience of others who survived extraordinary rendition is typical, he has been kept in total isolation, in darkness, beaten, cut, suffocated and drowned, suffered white noise and sensory deprivation. He will have been moved around, often not even knowing which country he is in. One good contact has told me that the CIA gave the Uzbek torturers their turn with him. I do not know that for certain, but who can contradict me?

After years of this, a person can be so psychologically damaged that they believe the narrative of their torturers to be the truth. It is perfectly possible that he now in fact believes he did all that stuff on the list, when he did not.

Alternatively, he may have decided to exaggerate his own role and achievements for the personal glory it brings. We can get the appalling situation where both the sides which benefit from and wish to promote the War on Terror – Al Qaida and the CIA – indulge in what becomes a grim mutual cooperation in exaggeration as each seeks to glorify their role. Thus do those on both sides who actually desire a “Clash of Civilisations”, promote one.

What is happening now in Guanatanamo Bay is a disgrace. We cannot in present circumstances accept anything that comes out of it as other than a completely unsubstantiated claim by the Pentagon. Some of it is quite possibly true. But this is no way to make the case.

Secret Confessions and Torture

The UK is complicit in this torture. Every bit of “intelligence” from the CIA torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the thousands of other victims of torture by the CIA or their foreign liason intelligence agencies, has been shared with MI6 by the CIA. Jack Straw took the positive decision that the UK should accept intelligence from torture. That is the main point of the evidence I shall give to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights on Tuesday 28 April.

Bill Wilson MSP has put down the following motion in the Scottish Parliament:

Short Title: UK Government’s Admission of Complicity in Torture

S3M-03949 Bill Wilson (West of Scotland) (SNP): That the Parliament

considers the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s recent report on human rights in which the UK Government tacitly admits to using “intelligence possibly derived through torture”; further notes Craig Murray’s statement that the names of sources are omitted from intelligence reports so that it cannot be proven that torture was used in producing that intelligence; believes that the report therefore negates the UK Government’s supposed condemnation of torture and that when it uses evidence obtain from practices such as immersing victims in boiling water, as used in Uzbekistan, or taking them to the point of drowning , as extensively practised by the United States of America under the euphemism of waterboarding, then it is as guilty as the government or agency that carries out the torture, and is of the opinion that torture does not protect lives but simply ensures that the victim provides whatever “evidence” is required by the torturer and that the use of torture can only increase hatred and violence, not reduce it

His office have put out the following press release:

UK Government’s admission of complicity in torture highlighted in Scottish Parliament

Dr Bill Wilson, an SNP MSP for the West of Scotland, today lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament highlighting a recent human rights report by the Foreign and Commonwealth office that contains a tacit admission the UK Government uses evidence obtained through torture.

Dr Wilson commented: “The UK has a long and appalling record when it comes to human rights. The latest revelation is of a piece with its support for Indonesia’s genocidal Suharto regime, its treatment of the inhabitants of Diego Garcia, its earlier support for sanctions against Iraq and its later invasion of that country, and its support for Israel, despite the latter’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory and its brazen flouting of the human rights of Palestinians and various opponents of its brutal policies (not least the brave Jewish Israeli youngsters thrown into prison for refusing to serve in the Israeli Defence Force!).

“The UK Government’s weasel words cannot disguise its effective support for torture. As my motion makes clear, this undermines any pretence the UK might have to higher ethical ground. How can the UK effectively combat terrorism when it condones atrocities committed by its so-called friends and allies? The bitterness and hatred stoked by this hypocrisy is surely considerable.

“Furthermore, it’s nonsense to suggest that tortured people will say anything other than what they think their interrogators want to hear. If you are taken to the point of drowning and believe that the only way you can save yourself is to say that X, Y and Z are members of Al Qaeda, then you would likely do so, regardless of the truth.

“Perhaps the worst aspect of torture, however, is that those who have taken part in it are driven to justify what they have done. Of course they want to believe that the cruelty they have been guilty of produced useful information, and so they are likely to go to great lengths to deceive both themselves and others in this regard. Having justified it, then, they will persist in practising it.

“Torture is always wrong in my opinion, and the ‘ticking bomb’ argument a dangerous myth. The criminals complicit in torture, who can be found at the highest levels of the UK Government, must be held accountable. ”

My analysis of the FCO’s stunning admission to receiving intelligence from torture is found here:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/fco_finally_adm.html

I have just sent this email to the clerk to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights:

Mark –

Do we have a venue yet?

I will be assisted by Professor Douwe Korff, Professor of International Law

at London Metropolitan University and an acknowledged authority in this

area. While I was Ambassador in Tashkent he did work on torture there for

both the OSCE and the British government. Members of the committee may wish

to take advantage of Prof Korff’s presence to ask him questions including

about the interpretation of complicity in Article 4 of UNCAT, which concept

is at the heart of my evidence. If the committee do not wish to do this,

Prof Korff is content just to sit with and advise me.

I will also refer to the discussion of the use of torture intelligence on

page 15 of the FCO’s latest annual report on human rights, and to the four

legal memos on CIA torture techniques recently released on the instructions

of President Obama, in the context of the US/UK intelligence sharing

agreement. It may be helpful for members of the committee to have those

documents to hand.

Best wishes,

Craig

I feel sick. I have that sunk, painful feeling as though my stomach had emptied, and that shakiness though the central nervous system. I feel dirty, like I want to shower for ages.

I have just read all 124 pages of the Top Secret torture memos from Bush’s lawyers in the CIA and Department of Justice, which were obtained and released yesterday by the American Civil Liberties Union.

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_08012002_bybee.pdf

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05102005_bradbury46pg.pdf

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05102005_bradbury_20pg.pdf

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

These are just a small sample of the acres of casuistry devoted to justifying the return to medieval barbarity under the Bush regime. The ACLU is pressing for more. Please do read them, but do not be sucked into their crazy internal logic. Remember they are deliberately underdescribing and downplaying the pain and terror this torture causes.

As you look at their careful discussion of how to characterise different levels of pain inflicted on shackled and helpless captives, you are in the crazed world of Dr Mengele. It is obvious even to the most unqualified person that what they are discussing is, to any reasonable person in any normal definition, torture. And that their legal arguments are continually strained to breaking point. The acknowledgement that waterboarding induces “Fear of imminent death by drowning” but argument that this can be “contextualized”, would be laughably bad if it were not so appalling.

Compare the tortured logic of the Bush lawyers with the simple clarity of the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a party and which is the applicable international law.

“For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.”

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm

The UK is guilty. Every intelligence report released by the CIA as a result of these torture sessions was copied to MI6 under the UK/US intelligence sharing agreement. Jack Straw took a deliberate and informed decision that in the “War on Terror” the UK would obtain intelligence from torture, by the CIA, by Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and the various thug security services involved in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme.

To the best of my knowledge and belief, I was the only official in the entire British civil sevice who tried internally to oppose this use of torture intelligence. In consequence I was not only sacked but subjected to a sustained campaign of slurs and smears, orchestrated by 10 Downing St and the FCO, with the deliberate aim of destroying my reputation.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html

That is the evidence which I shall be giving to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights on 28 April. I will also be arguing that, as in the US, the Top Secret documents on the UK’s attitude to torture must now be released, including the telegrams and minutes of meetings to which I allude in my evidence.

Obama’s decision that none of the CIA operatives, bosses or lawyers who instituted this barbarity should be prosecuted, is a dreadful harbouring and encouragement of criminality. If Obama really is genuine about improving the image of the US in the world, that is a retrograde step.

The most important single step he could take now would be to sign the United States up to the International Criminal Court, as evidence of a genuine desire to be part of the community of nations.

The great “Easter Terror Campaign” scare launched by New Labour has been in desperate need of new impetus, given the failure to find any evidence of a terrorist operation. Fortunately police were able to stage an Army Bomb Squad raid on a flat in Liverpool yesterday to give the right wing press a chance to revive the story.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5149763/Manchester-terror-police-call-in-bomb-squad.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169625/BREAKING-NEWS-Bomb-disposal-squad-called-site-centre-Liverpool-terror-arrests.html

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/95018/Bomb-squad-join-terror-hunt

The peculiar thing is that the address raided had been under search and cordoned off for 120 hours before the bomb squad were called in. Indeed, last Wednesday 50 (yes, 50) policemen swooped on the flat and searched it for six hours. It is therefore remarkable that the “Bomb” wasn’t found for a further five days.

The official description of the Bomb Squad raid was “precautionary”.

That is “Precautionary” in the sense of “Publicity stunt”. What the mainstream media fail to report is that the bomb squad experts were able to tell the police that the suspicious substance was – table sugar. Whether cane or beet, doubtless intense forensic examination will tell us.

The United Kingdom is in breach of international law by refusing to allow the Pakistani High Commission consular access to check on the welfare of its nationals who are being held – and none of whom has been charged with any crime. They have even refused to give them a full list of names.

This kind of behaviour will backfire on British nationals who are arrested and held abroad. Our requests for access will be refused and our protestations – which I made in several cases – will be thrown back in our faces. New Labour’s participation in the continual erosion of the fabric of international law is the real story here.