Amnesty International has made a fresh call on the United States government to make known the whereabouts of people subjected to its secret detention operation in the ‘war on terror’.

The call came as Amnesty International released a detailed 48-page report on the case of a Yemeni man held in total isolation by his US captors, including information on how he was allegedly severely tortured – with a battery of physical and psychological methods – and how he was moved from prison to prison in three different countries (including to a secret ‘black site’ detention facility) over a period of nearly three years.

The report also includes an account of how British ‘Special Forces’ personnel in Iraq were involved in investigating the detained man (though not in his interrogation or torture) and how these apparently did nothing to raise the alarm about the his torture at the hands of American interrogators.

Read more…

In late February, Ben Griffin, former member of the SAS, released a statement on the attempts by the UK government to suppress his testimony on British involvement in rendition and torture during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“As of 1940hrs 29/02/08 I have been placed under an injunction preventing me from speaking publicly and publishing material gained as a result of my service in UKSF (SAS).

I will be continuing to collect evidence and opinion on British Involvement in extraordinary rendition, torture, secret detentions, extra judicial detention, use of evidence gained through torture, breaches of the Geneva Conventions, breaches of International Law and failure to abide by our obligations as per UN Convention Against Torture. I am carrying on regardless “

Meanwhile, the non-debate, being held in the US on the definitions of torture and ill treatment were placed in context by an ex-prisioner of the Japanese during world war II , Eric Lomax (The Railway Man). Having survived waterboarding he is left in no doubt as to what this means and its legal status.

The American Civil Liberties Union comment on the moves by George Bush to retain torture for legal use by the US:

In a brazen move signaling a callous disregard for human rights, President Bush today vetoed the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act largely due to a provision that would have applied the Army Field Manual (AFM) on Interrogations to all government agencies, including the CIA.

From Amnesty International

Further inquiries into allegations of rendition flights announced by the UK government should not be a substitute for a full, independent investigation into any other UK involvement in renditions, Amnesty international said following the admission by the US and UK governments that two rendition flights had landed in Diego Garcia in 2002.

“As recognized by the UK government, the revelation that US planes, involved in the transfers of detainees, landed in Diego Garcia directly contradicts its own repeated assurances and public denials to the contrary. It highlights the need for full investigations into the USA’s detention and rendition practices and any involvement or complicity of European countries,” Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International said today.

“European governments must now recognize that reliance on US assurances about renditions has been an inadequate response to an unlawful practice. The Diego Garcia admission must spur into action all European countries by initiating thorough, independent investigations. Governments must heed the calls by the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe and the European Parliament. They must also take immediate steps to ensure that the practice of rendition is not allowed to happen again.”

From BBC Online

US national intelligence chief Mike McConnell has said the interrogation technique of water-boarding “would be torture” if he were subjected to it. Mr McConnell said it would also be torture if water-boarding, which involves simulated drowning, resulted in water entering a detainee’s lungs.

He told the New Yorker there would be a “huge penalty” for anyone using it if it was ever determined to be torture.

However…

The US attorney-general has declined to rule on whether the method is torture.

And…

In July 2007, President Bush signed a controversial executive order on the treatment of suspects detained by the CIA which did not outlaw the agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as water-boarding.

Tomorrow, 11th January 2008, it will be six years since the US authorities first transported ‘war on terror’ detainees to the military prison at the naval camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Amnesty International are marking the 6th anniversary by assembling as many people as possible dressed in Guantanamo-style orange boiler suits at the Ameriacan embassy in London.

For details go of this and other protest events marking the day go here

From BBC online

The US justice department is to launch a criminal investigation into the CIA’s erasing of videotapes of interrogations of two al-Qaeda suspects.

It follows last month’s preliminary joint inquiry with the CIA into whether a full investigation was necessary.

Critics have accused the CIA of a cover-up to hide evidence of possible torture and abuse of detainees.

In an extremely critical report, Martin Scheinin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the protection of human rights while countering terrorism, documents findings from his mission to the US in May.

The full report (pdf) can be downloaded from:

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/6session/A.HRC.6.17.Add.3AEVnew.pdf

It provides a comprehensive critique of the US administration and its failure to tackle terrorism within existing and adequate legal frameworks. Some of the key findings and recommendations are highlighted below:

– The UN Special Rapporteur concludes that the international fight against terrorism is not a “war” in the true sense of the word, and reminds the United States that even during an armed conflict triggering the application of international humanitarian law, international human rights law continues to apply.

– concludes that the categorization of detainees as “unlawful enemy combatants” is a term of convenience without legal effect. He expresses grave concern about the inability of detainees to seek full judicial review of determinations and loss of habeas corpus rights

– urges continued and determined action towards the expressed wish of the United States to move towards closure of Guantanamo Bay

– notes that the Government’s justification for military commissions is incorrect as a matter of fact because ordinary courts martial have had the jurisdiction to try violations of the laws of armed conflict

– the report addresses the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects, and their detention in “classified locations”, and the accountability of those responsible for conducting interrogation by techniques amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment

– urges the United States to ensure that all its officials and agencies comply with international standards, including article 7 of ICCPR, the Convention against Torture and, in the context of an armed conflict, common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

– urges the Government to take transparent steps to ensure that the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” is completely discontinued and is not conducted in the future, and that CIA interrogation techniques are regulated in line with the position expressed above in respect of the Army Field Manual.

– urges the Government to restrict definitions of “international terrorism”, “domestic terrorism” and “material support to terrorist organizations” in a way that is precise

– urges all States not to act in a manner which might be seen as advocating the use of race and religion for the identification of persons as terrorists.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/12/bond-waterboarding-swimming/

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3115549.ece

http://legofesto.blogspot.com/

The US administration is pushing forward in its attempts to make torture acceptable. Yesterday, John Kiriakou, a retired CIA agent, received widespread coverage when admitting that water-boarding was probably torture, and then went on to defend its use.

This is of course only one of the unspecified torture techniques authorised in an executive order signed by President Bush in July 2007. The order stated that the CIA was allowed to conduct a special “program of detention and interrogation”.

However, the CIA is under some pressure, with its head, Gen Michael Hayden, testifying to two key congressional intelligence committees about the deliberate destruction of two video tapes of interrogations carried out in 2002. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union had this to say:

“The destruction of these tapes suggests an utter disregard for the rule of law. It was plainly a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence that could have been used to hold CIA agents accountable for the torture of prisoners. Both Congress and the courts have repeatedly demanded that this evidence be turned over, but apparently the CIA believes that its agents are above the law.”

The destruction of these tapes appears to be part of an extensive, long-term pattern of misusing executive authority to insulate individuals from criminal prosecution for torture and abuse, the American Civil Liberties Union said.

The ACLU is in the midst of a legal challenge calling for the release of three documents issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that are believed to have authorized the CIA to use extremely harsh interrogation methods. The memos, which were written in May of 2005, were not included in the government’s response to the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all documents pertaining to the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. The government also withheld the documents from key senators during a congressional inquiry.

Update: The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a motion asking a federal judge to hold the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in contempt, charging that the agency flouted a court order when it destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the harsh interrogation of prisoners in its custody.

CBS reported last week on allegations that U.S. authorities held terrorist suspects on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia as part of a secret prisons network. Diego Garcia, an island of great apparent beauty, is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory. What goes on there is the business of Westminster.

The UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select committee have received a report from the charity Reprieve that details the involvement of the British territory and British officials in illegal CIA activities on the island. Assurances received from the US government about these activities have received little credence from British MPs. Andrew Tyrie, a conservative who has led investigations looking at other British involvements said:

“These assurances come from the same government that invented the rendition program, authorized the use of techniques that all in the civilized world would call torture, and continues to hold hundreds in the moral and legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay,”

Meanwhile, in Italy the trial of CIA agents accused of kidnap continues in absentia.

And, Stephen Grey, author of Ghost Plane, has published an excellent article on rendition as experienced by refugees following the recent US military intervention in Somalia.

Update: Amnesty International are calling for other european governments to initiate independent investigations into their involvement in the US-led programme of renditions and secret detention. See Denmark: Authorities must come clean about renditions

From The Guardian

A British man who was held in Guant’namo Bay has begun a civil action against MI5 and MI6 over the tactics that they use to gather intelligence.

The suit has been brought by Tarek Dergoul, 29, who claims he was repeatedly tortured while he was held by the US, and that British agents who had also questioned him were aware of the mistreatment.

He wants a high court ruling that will ban the security services from “benefiting” from the abuse of prisoners being held in detention outside the UK.

If Mr Dergoul wins, it would mean that MI5 and MI6 could not interrogate British nationals while they are being held and tortured abroad.

A British citizen, he has been awarded legal aid for the case, and papers will be lodged at the high court today. They were drafted by the Rabinder Singh, QC, a leading human rights barrister from the Matrix Chambers.

According to court documents seen by the Guardian, Mr Dergoul alleges that agents from MI5 and MI6 repeatedly interrogated him while he was held and tortured in Afghanistan and then Guant’namo, and were thus complicit in his treatment. In the 13-page document to be lodged at court, he says he suffered beatings, sexual humiliation, insults to his religion, and was subjected to extremes of cold. He was released back to Britain in 2004 without charge.

Britain says it does not carry out or condone torture, but it stands accused of benefiting from inhumane treatment meted out by other countries.

Mr Dergoul is seeking damages for “misfeasance in public office” by the security services and the Foreign Office.

The court papers state: “The British government and its officials knew that the claimant was being subjected to mistreatment amounting to torture and inhumane and degrading treatment because he told them so…Accordingly the British government and its officials unlawfully sought to benefit from mistreatment of the claimant. It is averred that either the British officials knowingly unlawfully interrogated the claimant or they acted with reckless indifference to its illegality.”

(more…)

One of my repeated arguments with the FCO was that torture is not just immoral. but fouls up the intelligence stream with highly dubious material. In my Ambassadorial telegram to then Secretary of State Jack Straw of 22 July 2004, I made the following points:

We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror…

In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of this practice…

I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN Convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the then CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think that there is any doubt about the fact…

..this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, and they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

I do urge you to read the full telegram if you have not already done so:

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/documents/Telegram.pdf

I think my next point about the Butler inquiry showing the intelligence services prefer their material sensational, was a particularly good blow.

The New Yorker has pioneered in reporting on extraordinary rendition, and the latest effort by Jane Mayer refers to Khalil Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to every crime that he or his CIA torturers had ever heard of, including the murder of Daniel Pearl:

A surprising number of people close to the case are dubious of Mohammed’s confession. A longtime friend of Pearl’s, the former Journal reporter Asra Nomani, said, ‘The release of the confession came right in the midst of the U.S. Attorney scandal. There was a drumbeat for Gonzales’s resignation. It seemed like a calculated strategy to change the subject. Why now? They’d had the confession for years.’ Mariane and Daniel Pearl were staying in Nomani’s Karachi house at the time of his murder, and Nomani has followed the case meticulously; this fall, she plans to teach a course on the topic at Georgetown University. She said, ‘I don’t think this confession resolves the case. You can’t have justice from one person’s confession, especially under such unusual circumstances. To me, it’s not convincing.’ She added, ‘I called all the investigators. They weren’t just skeptical’they didn’t believe it.’

Special Agent Randall Bennett, the head of security for the U.S. consulate in Karachi when Pearl was killed’and whose lead role investigating the murder was featured in the recent film ‘A Mighty Heart”said that he has interviewed all the convicted accomplices who are now in custody in Pakistan, and that none of them named Mohammed as playing a role. ‘K.S.M.’s name never came up,’ he said. Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer, said, ‘My old colleagues say with one-hundred-per-cent certainty that it was not K.S.M. who killed Pearl.’

http://www.newyorker.com:80/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer

Meanwhile, the rats are deserting the sinking ship. Now that Iraq is such a disaster that nobody now argues that life for ordinary Iraqis is better than it was five years ago, everyone is anxious to pretend that they were against the war all the time, really, honest. Even the security services are now sending out weasel signals through their pet journalists.

Security Correspondents are amongst the worst denizens of the media, because they are so dependent on the security services feeding them tidbits to retail that they are terrified of offending them. Frank Gardner of the BBC is an especially bad example. His “This is a mock-up what a terrorist chemical weapon vest at Forest Gate might look like” was possibly the worst bit of journalism I have ever seen.

Richard Norton-Taylor of the Guardian is another such. When I was astonished to wake up one day and see that the British government had published a totally fake map of the Iran/Iraq border, in relation to the sailors captured by the Iranians, and that the media were buying the fake map, I phoned Richard Norton-Taylor. I was offering a major scoop, free. He didn’t want to know.

So I published on this blog – and had 60,000 hits, and the entry repeated all over the web.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/03/captured_marine.html

The Mail then published an expanded version, and got a great reaction. I genuinely believe that making it public knowledge that our map was fake, helped to put Tony Blair back in his box and allowed diplomacy to get the captives released.

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/07/british_map_in.html

All of which was ignored by Norton-Taylor because he preferred to side with his security service contacts. It is worth noting that every time I was brought on the the BBC to say the map was a fake, the government put up against me “Sir” Alan West, who told a load of patent lies about the boundary on the government’s behalf, including the extraordinary lie that the Iran/Iraq maritime boundary had been settled by an agreement beyween the UK and Iran. I am quite sure that a number of questions about that impossible assertion occur to you reading that now. Not one of those questions occurred to any BBC “Journalist” interviewing Sir Alan.

At the time, Sir Alan was presented as a retired Admiral and independent expert. Just a few weeks later he now re-emerges as a much higher paid liar as our Minister for Locking Up Bearded Men Without Trial. I may have got the offical title a bit wrong, but the appointment of an unelected military man as a minister in charge of “Domestic security” is a development so sinister I cannot believe the lack of concern shown by the media. But then of course, it is the fiefdom of their security correspondents.

Which brings me back to Norton Taylor. MI6 are now using him to claim that they were against the Iraq war all the time, and were overruled by that awful Bush and Blair:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2141372,00.html

I have no doubt they were against the war, in the sense that they would rather we hadn’t done it. But did they refuse to compile the dossier on Weapons of Mass Destruction, which they knew full well was untrue? No, and John Scarlett who actually compiled it is now head of MI6. They threw themselves wholeheartedly into the disastrous “War on Terror”, embraced torture and the other new techniques, and lapped up the extra funding and prestige it gave them. Did MI6 ever give plainly worded advice to the Cabinet that they were against the war? No – in fact they permitted the Cabinet to be fed the opposite impression. Has a single member of MI6 resigned over the War? No.

I am not unhappy to see rats leave a sinking ship. But to try to pretend they were never on board…

From ACLU

Two additional victims of the United States government’s unlawful ‘extraordinary rendition’ program joined a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Company. The ACLU charges in its amended complaint that Jeppesen knowingly provided direct flight services to the CIA enabling the clandestine transportation of Bisher al-Rawi and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah to secret overseas locations where they were subjected to torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Full press statement can be found here

From Amnesty International

On 30 July 2007 the Court of Appeal of England and Wales gave judgment in an important test case concerning the appeals of three Algerian men against their deportation to Algeria on “national security” grounds. The judgment is in two parts: an open judgment, and a closed, i.e. secret, judgment not disclosed to the appellants, their lawyers of choice or the public.

In each of the three cases the Court of Appeal ruled that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) should reconsider them. In two of the three, the Court of Appeal reached this conclusion on grounds that are secret. Amnesty International considers that it is doubly disturbing that these two men not only were not told the UK authorities’ case against them, but will not now be told the grounds on which the SIAC is to reconsider that very case. The principle that justice should not only be done but be seen to be done seems to have been turned on its head.

For the full statement go here

From the Globe and Mail

WASHINGTON — Facing sharp criticism at home and abroad, President George W. Bush signed an executive order giving interrogators new rules on the treatment of suspected terrorists in the U.S. detention program, but the measures failed to quell criticism that the White House condones torture.

The order, which the White House said is in compliance with the Geneva Conventions, was criticized by human-rights groups as vague. And the guidelines, which will continue to allow harsh, if unspecified interrogation techniques, may breathe new life into the interrogation program by removing the uncertainty that has hung over it since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year cast doubt on its legality.

The new rules set out conditions that interrogators are not allowed to impose on detainees held at U.S. Central Intelligence Agency prisons and other locations, including the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It includes prohibitions against sexual humiliation, religious denigrations, and deprivation of basic necessities.

The move comes 10 months after Mr. Bush, who has repeatedly denied that the United States practises torture, was forced to suspend its secret-prison system. This decision came after a Supreme Court ruling in June of 2006 that undermined the legality of the program.

In response to the executive order, Christopher Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office said:

“The order takes some steps in the right direction, particularly where it explicitly bans CIA practices such as induced hypothermia and prohibits specific acts of humiliation. It also includes broader bans on torture and cruel and inhuman treatment, as defined in the War Crimes Act. But of course, the Executive Order is only as good as the people applying it. If any of the recent past presidents, Republican or Democrat, were applying this order, we wouldn’t have any doubt that it means an end to torture and abuse by the CIA. However, with President Bush’s record of playing word games with anti-torture laws, we do not have the same confidence that the torture and abuse has stopped and will not start up again.”

As I have explained before, the effect of public outcry over extraordinary rendition has been to switch it to US military bases in the UK rather than our civilian airports. There is an excellent article in the Mail:

The picture that proves ‘torture flights’ are STILL landing in the UK

By GLEN OWEN

The row over CIA ‘torture flights’ using British airports has deepened following fresh evidence that a plane repeatedly linked to the controversial programme landed in the UK just days ago.

The plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk last weekend, and watching aviation experts said the aircraft, piloted by crew clad in desert fatigues, was immediately surrounded on the runway by armed American security forces.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=461024&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

Here is another one, by gambling millionaire Stuart Wheeler:

You might have thought torture happened only in the barbaric Middle Ages. But as renditions expert Stephen Grey and human rights organisation Amnesty have recently pointed out, it is happening right now with the full approval of a supposedly civilised nation: the United States.

The US has also sanctioned the shackling of prisoners’ limbs, the threat of dog attacks and the prolonged maintenance of stress positions or repetitive exercises while attacking China, Eritrea, Burma, Iran and Libya for carrying out those same abuses.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_article_id=461016&in_page_id=1787

Both of which illustrate a vital point. The most important rift in British politics today is not between left and right, it is between authoritarians and libertarians, between those who support human and civil rights, and those who prefer “Strong government”. This fault line coincides closely with those who support, and those who oppose, the Iraq war, largely because both issues depend on the prior question “Is might always right?”.

I therefore have much more in common with the Mail and Mr Wheeler, with Ken Clarke, Malcolm Rifkind, Peter Hitchens and Michael Ancram than I do with John Reid, Gordon Brown, or Michael White. This question of liberty is a prior question – without liberty, you’re not allowed to disagree over economics. That is what poor, deluded Polly Toynbee has failed to grasp in her view that we should support Blair, no matter how many countries he invades or people he kills, because of his allegedly good child poverty policies.

Our parties are still structured around an economic fault, so now that authoritarianism has become the more crucial dividing line, they are all split. New Labour less so, because it has become a career vehicle of those attracted simply to personal power and wealth. It is fascinating how the old hard left of different varieties of communist – John Reid, Christopher Hitchens, David Aaronovitch, Melanie Phillips and their like – have taken so avidly to the new order. Of course, they never believed in liberty anyway. The Tories are – as Wheeler notes in his article – perhaps the most split. Every instinct of Ming Campbell is with the authoritarians; strangely that is true of most Lib Dem MPs, but few of their activists.

Meantime, a must see documentary from the great Stephen Grey on Channel 4 Dispatches on Monday evening at 8pm:

Dispatches: Kidnapped To Order

Dispatches exposes a new phase in America’s war on al Qaeda: the rendition and detention of women and children. Last year, President Bush confirmed the existence of a CIA secret detention programme but he refused to give details and said it was over.

Dispatches reveals new evidence confirming fiercely-denied reports that many of the CIA captives were held and interrogated in Europe. Those prisons may now be closed but the programme is by no means over, it’s just changed. A new front has opened up in the Horn of Africa and America has outsourced its renditions to its allies.

Reporter Stephen Grey (author of Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Programme) investigates America’s global sweep for prisoners ‘ obtaining exclusive interviews with former detainees who claim they have been kidnapped and flown halfway across the world to face torture by America’s allies.

The film opens with an examination of the most notorious rendition story to date ‘ the kidnap of Egyptian cleric Abu Omar. This month in Italy the trial opens of twenty-five CIA officers accused of snatching Omar from the streets of Milan in broad daylight and flying him to Cairo four years ago. Grey travels to Egypt to secure an exclusive interview with Omar who defies the warnings of his interrogators not to speak publicly about his treatment. He details the torture that was inflicted upon him in his fourteen-month detention and the number of other ‘ghost detainees’ he encountered – people who are being held in secret, without charge.

This coincides with the BBC documentary on the BAE bribes, so check your recorder is working now. And if you read only one book this year make it Grey’s Ghost Plane.

Our highly politicised police have issued a statement claiming there is “No evidence” of extraordinary rendition flights using the UK while transporting prisoners. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/09/nflight109.xml This parrots the exact phraseology used by Jack Straw http://www.channel4.com/more4/news/news-opinion-feature.jsp?id=80 and Tony Blair http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1716238,00.html.

This careful coincidence of wording, together with the timing of the Association of Chief Polce Officers’ statement to coincide with the Council of Europe’s detailed and damning report on extraordinary rendition, shows just how NuLab has politicised the police.

The Council of Europe report is careful, detailed and stunning. http://assembly.coe.int:80/CommitteeDocs/2007/EMarty_20070608_NoEmbargo.pdf The author, Dick Marty, is a senior Swiss judge who has conducted important terrorism trials. He knows evidence when he sees it. I was a witness before his committee.

It is worth reporting his conclusions:

It is my sincere hope that my report this year will catalyse a renewed appreciation of the moral quagnire into which we have collectively sunk as a result of the US-led “War on Terror”. Almost six years in, we appear no closer to pulling ourselves out of this quagmire, partly because of the lack of factual clarity – perpetuated by secrecy, cover-up and dishonesty – about the exact practices in which the US and its allies have engaged, and partly because of a lack of urgency and political will on both sides of the Atlantic to unite around consensus solutions.

By clarifying some of the unspoked truths that have previously held us back in this exercise, I hope I have spurred right-minder Americans and Europeans alike into realising that our common values, in tandem with our common security, depend on our uniting to end the abusive practices inherent in US policies like the “High-Value Detainee” programme.

In the UK we are still stuck in

secrecy, cover-up and dishonesty

as witness the fact that the terse denial by ACPO got more, and more favourable, media coverage in the UK than the Swiss judge’s 368 paragraphs of carefully weighed evidence.

Of course, the reason the British police have “No evidence” is that they have steadfastly refused to look for any. When the CIA flights have landed for refuelling at British airports they were registered as normal civilian flights. On board sometimes were prisoners: held under no lawful authority, shackled, blindfold, beaten , drugged and tortured. Even when there were no prisoners, on board were shackles, weapons, drugs and other illegal equipment. The police had every lawful authority to search while these planes were on the ground in the UK (I used to be the number 2 in the FCO’s Aviation and Maritime Department).

Not only that, but on numerous occasions the police had the aircraft actually pointed out to them by protestors. Of the hundreds of documented occasions when the CIA torture flights came through the UK, not once – NOT ONCE – did a British police officer go on board to look. And now they say they have no evidence! It makes me sick.

I was a witness before the Council of Europe inquiry. I should have happily been a witness for the SOCPA enquiries, only of course they didn’t really make any.

From COE

Dick Marty presents his second report on secret detentions in Europe

Strasbourg, 04.06.2007 ‘ Following several months of additional investigation, Dick Marty (Switzerland, ALDE), rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), is due to present his second report on ‘Alleged secret detentions and illegal inter-state transfers involving Council of Europe member states’ to the Assembly’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in Paris on Friday 8 June 2007.

The meeting is closed to the press, but if the report is approved by the committee, it will be made public on this occasion. Mr Marty will also give a press conference at 2 p.m.

Commenting on the draft, Mr Marty said: ‘My first report focused mainly on illegal inter-state transfers and extraordinary renditions. This second report will focus mainly on the other part of my mandate ‘ secret detentions.’

The report, if approved, is scheduled for debate by the 318-member Assembly, bringing together parliamentarians from all 47 Council of Europe member states, on Wednesday 27 June 2007, during its June plenary session in Strasbourg.