From The Guardian

The effect the war in Iraq has had on motivating Muslims planning acts of violence in the UK is underlined to senior Scotland Yard officers in a private briefing document compiled by anti-terrorist specialists.

The document, marked “restricted”, says the conflict in Iraq has had a “huge impact”. It explains that British policy over Iraq and Palestine is used by terrorists to justify their violence, and early progress in reducing the threat to the UK is not expected.

After the London bombings, British counter-terrorism officials intensified their efforts to understand why some Muslims turned to violence. The document, which has been seen by the Guardian, is the product of that work, and was completed within the past three months before being distributed to senior officers across London. The document says in a headline introducing one section: “Foreign policy and Iraq; Iraq HAS [its emphasis] had a huge impact.”

It continues: “Iraq is cited many times in interviews with detained extremists but it is over-simplistic to describe terrorism as the result of foreign policy. What western foreign policy does provide is justification for violence …”

It says changing jihadist attitudes is a long term issue: “Whatever preventative measures are taken or discussed around the world, none are comprehensive and early results are not expected. Many jihadists do not feel that ‘winning’ is important because God will see to that eventually – what is important is ‘taking part’.”

The report says the removal of grievances the jihadists use to justify violence will take time: “What will change them – gradually – is argument, the removal of justifying causes (Palestine, Iraq), the erosion of perverted beliefs and day-to-day frustrations.”

In a speech weeks after London was attacked, Tony Blair said it was not the Iraq war but an evil ideology that was to blame for attacks on Britain: “If it is Iraq that motivates [the bombers], why is the same ideology killing Iraqis by terror in defiance of an elected Iraqi government? What was September 11 2001 the reprisal for?”

The police document says terrorist anger at UK foreign policy “masks” other motives, which are “insecurity and fear, loss of identity through encroaching secularism and a sense of cultural failure, past and present … Hatred of the west may be characterised as transferred self-blame and self-hatred.

“All that said, though, it is still important to a) continue to explain foreign policy, b) accept failings and disappointing results, and c) remember that a few seconds of film footage showing ill-disciplined behaviour by allied troops has more impact than thousands of well-argued words.”

The last point is believed to be a reference to allegations of UK and US troops ill treating and even killing Iraqi civilians, and to the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

There has been debate among counter-terrorism experts about the extent to which Britain’s foreign policy has made it a terrorist target. One counter-terrorism source said: “We should not slavishly follow the government line. It damages our ability to do our job.”

To: The British Government

We, the British Public, call for a fully comprehensive Public Inquiry into the July 7th 2005 London Bombings.

Only this can provide us with the information we need as to what actually happened, how it happened and why it happened so that we will be better prepared to prevent such a tragedy happening again.

We, the Public were attacked. We, the Public have questions. We, the Public want our questions answered, independently, transparently and honestly.

Sincerely…

To sign the petition go here

To read more from one of the survivors go here

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the UK parliament has published their latest report which confirms, yet again, the tragically obvious. The invasion of Iraq has provided a tremendous boost to Al Qaeda and violent extremism, the west is losing the propaganda war, Guantanamo Bay is a fabulous recruiting symbol (for terrorism), and people in the UK are at a significantly greater threat now due to the policies adopted by Tony Blair.

The report also calls for the UK and US to stop interferring in Iraqi politics, for the UK government to set out the circumstances under which it would withdraw its troops, and for the regulation of mercenaries in Iraq and elsewhere.

“The Committee concludes that al-Qaeda continues to pose an extremely serious and brutal threat to the United Kingdom and its interests, and that it will become more difficult to tackle the threat of international terrorism. The Committee also says that the situation in Iraq has provided both a powerful source of propaganda and a crucial training ground for international terrorists. Progress towards resolving key international conflicts would go some way towards removing the widespread feelings of injustice in the Muslim world that feed into causes of and support for terrorism. (Paragraphs 15, 21, 30)

The continuing deterioration of the security situation in Iraq is extremely worrying, as are the deepening sectarian and ethnic conflicts. Relying on Kurdish and Shia communities to build up the Iraqi Security Forces has contributed to the development of sectarian forces, and the Committee recommends that the Government must continue to work with its international partners to address this problem. Similarly, the Government should do all it can to facilitate the UN’s role in Iraq. The Committee reiterates its predecessor’s conclusion that the international community, particularly the US and UK, must refrain from interfering in Iraqi politics. (Paragraph 232, 238, 261)

The Committee recommends that the Government should set out in its response to the report the circumstances under which it would withdraw British Forces from Iraq, and sets out several other issues it would also like the Government to address in the response, including the level of detentions by coalition forces, where it recommends that wherever and whenever possible detainees should be handed over to the Iraqi government for trial; that the government should set out the number detained and the basis for their detention; and the slow progress towards resolving the issue of how to regulate private military and security companies, which are increasingly being used in Iraq and elsewhere.(Paragraphs 245, 247, 253)”

Riding pillion in the US ‘war on terror’ and the invasion of Iraq was predictable strategic folly. Yet despite overwhelming evidence of the disastrous effects on national security, our parliamentary system continues to show a stunning inability to self-correct its failed trajectory. For example, as of this post, the monitoring of EDM 1088 still shows only 157 signatures. Its just one indicator of the inertia and ostrich-like behaviour that besets the bulk of New Labour, and New Tory.

By Simon Jenkins in Times Online

Thank God for lawyers. When elected legislators fail in their duty to check executive power, judges must step forward or democrats will rely on soldiers or mobs.

In both Britain and America this past week, judges have begun to curb injustices invoked in the name of counter-terrorism by the Blair and Bush administrations in the years since 9/11. The British High Court’s ruling on ‘control orders’ and the US Supreme Court’s judgment on Guantanamo have demanded human and judicial rights against governments overreacting to Islamic violence. The calls have been modest, but they have begun.

In Britain, ministers had assured critics that orders for house arrest of suspects would be subject to judicial oversight. Now that oversight has occurred they are furious and will appeal (and doubtless change the law if they do not get their way). A heavy duty rests on the law lords.

Five years after 9/11 and one year after 7/7, the so-called ‘war on terror’ is acquiring a narrative. It started with an outrage and moved swiftly to belligerent retaliation, including the killing of thousands of non-participants. This led to a burst of repressive authoritarianism as embarrassed leaders sought to reassure the public while enhancing their power as ‘commanders in chief’. The narrative has now matured into trench warfare between that power and constitutional roadblocks meant to limit it.

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This exchenge of letters between Henry Porter to Tony Blair were published in The Observer earlier this year.

From: Henry Porter To: Tony Blair Re: Liberty

Dear Prime Minister,

Nine years ago, as I watched you arrive at the South Bank on the night when you became Prime Minister, I would never have imagined that I’d come to view you as a serious threat to British democracy. But regrettably I have. Either by accident or design, your ‘modernising’ Labour government has steadily attacked our rights and freedoms, eroding the Rule of Law and profoundly altering the relationship between authority and the people.

Successive laws passed by New Labour have pared down our liberty at an astonishing rate. The right to trial by jury, the right to silence, the right not to be punished until a court has decided that the law has been broken, the right to demonstrate and protest, the presumption of innocence, the right to private communication, the right to travel without surveillance and the details of that journey being retained – all have been curtailed by your legislation.

While hearsay has become admissible in court, free speech is being patrolled by officious use of public order laws. In Parliament Square we now see people parading with blank placards to make the point that they are not allowed to demonstrate within one kilometre of the Square under the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA). And this in the land once called the Mother of Parliaments.

For a democrat, this is all profoundly troubling. I hope that you believe you are acting in good faith; that you are simply motivated by the need to respond to the threats of terrorism and organised crime and the nuisance of anti-social behaviour, but I wonder if you have any idea of the cumulative effect of the 15 or so bills which have incrementally removed or compromised our liberties.

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From The Independent

In another example of the Government’s draconian stance on political protest, Steven Jago, 36, a management accountant, yesterday became the latest person to be charged under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act.

On 18 June, Mr Jago carried a placard in Whitehall bearing the George Orwell quote: “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In his possession, he had several copies of an article in the American magazine Vanity Fair headlined “Blair’s Big Brother Legacy”, which were confiscated by the police. “The implication that I read from this statement at the time was that I was being accused of handing out subversive material,” said Mr Jago. Yesterday, the author, Henry Porter, the magazine’s London editor, wrote to Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, expressing concern that the freedom of the press would be severely curtailed if such articles were used in evidence under the Act.

Mr Porter said: “The police told Mr Jago this was ‘politically motivated’ material, and suggested it was evidence of his desire to break the law. I therefore seek your assurance that possession of Vanity Fair within a designated area is not regarded as ‘politically motivated’ and evidence of conscious law-breaking.”

Scotland Yard has declined to comment.

Enemies of the state?

Maya Evans 25

The chef was arrested at the Cenotaph in Whitehall reading out the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. She was the first person to be convicted under section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which requires protesters to obtain police permission before demonstrating within one kilometre of Parliament.

Helen John 68, and Sylvia Boyes 62

The Greenham Common veterans were arrested in April by Ministry of Defence police after walking 15ft across the sentry line at the US military base at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire. Protesters who breach any one of 10 military bases across Britain can be jailed for a year or fined ‘5,000.

Brian Haw 56

Mr Haw has become a fixture in Parliament Square with placards berating Tony Blair and President Bush. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 was designed mainly with his vigil in mind. After being arrested, he refused to enter a plea. However, Bow Street magistrates’ court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf in May.

Walter Wolfgang 82

The octogenarian heckled Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, during his speech to the Labour Party conference. He shouted “That’s a lie” as Mr Straw justified keeping British troops in Iraq. He was manhandled by stewards and ejected from the Brighton Centre. He was briefly detained under Section 44 of the 2000 Terrorism Act.

As the two UK by-election results last night demonstrate, Blair cannot hold on to power for much longer – but just what will his legacy be?

By HENRY PORTER in Vanity Fair

In the guise of fighting terrorism and maintaining public order, Tony Blair’s government has quietly and systematically taken power from Parliament and from the British people. The author charts a nine-year assault on civil liberties that reveals the danger of trading freedom for security’and must have Churchill spinning in his grave.

In the shadow of Winston Churchill’s statue opposite the House of Commons, a rather odd ritual has developed on Sunday afternoons. A small group of people’mostly young and dressed outlandishly’hold a tea party on the grass of Parliament Square. A woman looking very much like Mary Poppins passes plates of frosted cakes and cookies, while other members of the party flourish blank placards or, as they did on the afternoon I was there, attempt a game of cricket.

Sometimes the police move in and arrest the picnickers, but on this occasion the officers stood at a distance, presumably consulting on the question of whether this was a demonstration or a non-demonstration. It is all rather silly and yet in Blair’s Britain there is a kind of nobility in the amateurishness and persistence of the gesture. This collection of oddballs, looking for all the world as if they had stepped out of the Michelangelo Antonioni film Blow-Up, are challenging a new law which says that no one may demonstrate within a kilometer, or a little more than half a mile, of Parliament Square if they have not first acquired written permission from the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. This effectively places the entire center of British government, Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, off-limits to the protesters and marchers who have traditionally brought their grievances to those in power without ever having to ask a policeman’s permission.

The non-demo demo, or tea party, is a legalistic response to the law. If anything is written on the placards, or if someone makes a speech, then he or she is immediately deemed to be in breach of the law and is arrested. The device doesn’t always work. After drinking tea in the square, a man named Mark Barrett was recently convicted of demonstrating. Two other protesters, Milan Rai and Maya Evans, were charged after reading out the names of dead Iraqi civilians at the Cenotaph, Britain’s national war memorial, in Whitehall, a few hundred yards away.

On that dank spring afternoon I looked up at Churchill and reflected that he almost certainly would have approved of these people insisting on their right to demonstrate in front of his beloved Parliament. “If you will not fight for the right,” he once growled, “when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

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Judge quashes anti-terror orders

From BBC Online

A key plank of the government’s anti-terrorism laws has been dealt a blow by the High Court. A senior judge said control orders made against six men break European human rights laws. Ministers say they will appeal against the ruling.

The orders are imposed on people suspected of terrorism but where there is not enough evidence to go to court. They mean suspects can be tagged, confined to their homes, and banned from communicating with others.

Home secretary

In his ruling, Mr Justice Sullivan said control orders were incompatible with Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which outlaws indefinite detention without trial.

The home secretary had no power to make the orders and they must therefore all be quashed, he said.

Under the control orders restrictions, the suspects have to stay indoors for 18 hours a day, between 4pm and 10am and are not allowed to use mobile phones or the internet. And there are limits on who they can meet.

The judge said the restrictions were “the antithesis of liberty and equivalent to imprisonment”.

“Their liberty to live a normal life within their residences is so curtailed as to be non-existent for all practical purposes,” he said.

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Having spent so much energy denying all knowledge of the procession of CIA torture flights passing through UK airports, it was perhaps only natural that the UK government would also seek to deny the existence of the protests against such flights. What’s more surprising is that the BBC seems to be faithfully toeing the party line.

“‘No show’ for rendition protests”, declares today’s BBC headline, claiming that “Demonstrations at Edinburgh and Prestwick failed to materialise.”

“Evidently I hallucinated the whole thing”, says Craig Murray, who joined yesterday’s demonstration at Edinburgh airport. As this report from Indymedia shows, the protest was highly visible, and the Police were well aware that it was going on.

UPDATE – by the magic of the memory hole, the BBC has now corrected its story, but the original has been helpfully archived here.

From The Guardian

The government will today come under pressure to disclose all it knows about how Benyam Mohammed, a British resident held in Guant?namo Bay, was seized in Pakistan in 2002, and the likelihood that he would be tortured when he was moved to American custody.

Mr Mohammed, 27, is accused of planning al-Qaida attacks. Following his arrest in Pakistan he was flown on a CIA rendition flight to Morocco, where he was allegedly tortured.

The Council of Europe highlighted his case in a report this month in which the UK is accused not only of allowing the use of British airspace and airports, but of providing information used during his torture. Today, the all-party group on extraordinary rendition will hear there is strong prima facie evidence of British involvement in Mr Mohammed’s seizure in Pakistan in 2002 and his subsequent secret transportation to Morocco and Afghanistan before been flown to the US camp in Cuba.

The former foreign secretary Jack Straw, told the Commons foreign affairs committee last year that while in jail in Karachi, Mr Mohammed was interviewed by a member of MI5. Mr Straw said MI5 had no role in his capture or in his transfer from Pakistan. He denied that the officer had noticed any evidence of torture, and said Mr Mohammed had not complained of ill-treatment. However, MPs say the Foreign Office has refused to cooperate with their requests for further information, according to Andrew Tyrie, Tory chairman of the group.

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The UK Governments position on torture was made clear again earlier this week in a case concerning Britons detained and tortured in Saudi Arabia.

From The Guardian

Four men who were arrested and subjected to “severe torture” in Saudi Arabia today lost their bid to sue those responsible for their treatment. Five law lords unanimously overturned a court of appeal ruling from October 2004 that cleared the way for Sandy Mitchell, Les Walker, Bill Sampson and Ron Jones to claim damages from the Saudi government and its officials.

The Saudi government, supported by the British government, argued its agents were protected by the State Immunity Act 1978 from proceedings in Britain

The four men today said they were “devastated” by the ruling and vowed to take the case to the European court of human rights.

Solicitor Tamsin Allen, who represents Mr Mitchell, Mr Sampson and Mr Walker, said: “The House of Lords have chosen to support the rights of states, including those who torture, over the rights of torture victims.

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By Duncan McFarlane

Some of the same British military intelligence units and officers involved in collusion with terrorist death squads in the killing of civil rights lawyer Patrick Finucane and other innocent people in Northern Ireland were also involved in the killing of Jean Charles De Menezes. The same people are also involved in ‘counter-terrorism’ in Iraq.

‘Patrick Finucane was a prominent criminal defence and civil rights lawyer; his was one of the leading law firms in the 1980s in Northern Ireland acting in defence of those detained or charged under emergency legislation. He was instrumental in raising fair trial issues in the courts, arguing against practices which were in violation of international human rights standards. He was shot dead by two masked men on 12 February 1989 in front of his wife and his three children at their home in Belfast, Northern Ireland.’

Amnesty International ‘Patrick Finucane’s killing: Official collusion and cover-up'(1)

The murder of civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989 was the result of collusion between the Ulster Defence Association ‘ a loyalist terrorist organisation ‘ and a British military intelligence unit ‘ the Forces Research Unit or FRU which was headed by one Gordon Kerr from 1987 to 1991. The FRU included the intelligence ‘handler’ of UDA man Brian Nelson who was involved in the Finucane murder. The FRU were also involved in the murder by the UDA of at least 14 other people ‘ mostly innocent of any connection to the IRA. Some like Finucane acted as defence lawyers for people suspected by the FRU of being in the IRA ‘ and on that basis the FRU passed their lawyers’ names to the UDA death squads. Several people have also testified that they were employed as FRU double agents in the IRA during the 1980s and in the Real IRA cell which carried out the Omagh bombing which killed 29 people in 1998 (After 1991 the FRU was renamed the ‘Joint Services Group’). They claim the FRU allowed bombings to go ahead rather than risk blowing their agents’ cover ‘ bringing in to question what the FRU’s real motives were if they weren’t to prevent terrorist attacks.

(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9)

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From The Observer

The Crown Prosecution Service is considering legal charges against Britain’s most senior police officer over the fatal shooting of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, mistakenly taken to be a terrorist. The Observer can reveal that the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, and two senior commanders in control of the operation that culminated in de Menezes’s death are the focus of the final legal analysis of the shooting by Crown prosecutors.

If the CPS goes ahead with the dramatic move, the decision would pile further pressure on the already beleaguered head of Scotland Yard.

Legal sources close to the CPS case have revealed that, following a four-month review of a report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, prosecutors are considering whether the command team are ultimately responsible, a decision that could give rise to a charge of gross negligence manslaughter against Blair and two other senior figures.

UK attacked over terror flights

From BBC Online

Ministers are failing to meet their legal duties to investigate claims that the CIA is flying terror suspects through the UK, say MPs and peers. Parliament’s joint committee on human rights says the government should take “active steps” to find out more details about certain flights.

The appeal comes in a damning report which also accused the UK of trying to undermine the absolute ban on torture. The government insists there is no evidence of secret prisoner flights. But allegations about the so-called “renditions” have continued.

And the committee says it should require chartered civil aircraft to provide staff and passenger lists when they use UK airports or fly through British airspace.

Such steps are not only allowed under UK law but also needed to ensure the government complies with the convention on torture, it said.

Torture challenge

A committee spokesman said the report concluded that the “government has not adequately demonstrated that it has satisfied the obligation under domestic and international human rights law to investigate credible allegations of renditions”.

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From The Guardian

A Tory MP has today written to Labour chair, Hazel Blears, demanding an apology for the party’s “monumental lack of judgment” in raising funds by auctioning a copy of the Hutton report signed by Cherie Blair.

Stuart Jackson, Conservative MP for Peterborough, told Guardian Unlimited that he was writing to Ms Blears today to ask why the party had raised money through selling a signed copy of the official report into the events surrounding the suicide of the government scientist Dr David Kelly.

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The Committee on Standards in Public Life is embarking on an enquiry into the Electoral Commission and key issues such as voter registration, arrangements for postal voting and standards of propriety in financing political parties, issues that have been of interest on this weblog for some time.

As Blair stalls on appointing a Labour representative to the enquiry the chairman, Sir Alistair Graham, has gone to the media…

From The Scotsman

TONY Blair has made his government seem as sleazy as the previous Conservative administration because he “ignored” the importance of upholding of standards, Britain’s standards watchdog has warned.

Sir Alistair Graham, the chairman of the committee on standards in public life, accused the Prime Minister of not taking sufficient action to mitigate the string of scandals that has tarnished his government.

The Labour government was paying a heavy price, as public confidence in ministers plummeted, he said in an unprecedentedly robust attack.

“I think it’s a major error of judgment,” Sir Alistair said.

“Opinion polls [show] the public think this government is as sleazy as the last.

“He has paid a heavy price for ignoring standards. We would have preferred more positive support from the Prime Minister. We suspect he is pretty lukewarm to the work we do.”

The standards watchdog’s warning was underscored by a poll that showed that more than half of voters want the Prime Minister to face criminal charges over the loans-for-peerages scandal. An ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph showed that

53 per cent of the 1,004 voters surveyed wanted to see Mr Blair prosecuted, and 36 per cent feel he should not face charges.

Reports also surfaced that the Metropolitan Police investigation triggered by the SNP’s complaint was tightening its inquiry around senior Downing Street aides. Although Sir Alistair, a former head of the Police Complaints Commission, has criticised the government before, the severity of his latest attack is unprecedented.

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Until the extent of government manipulation in security issues is clear, we should mistrust Blair

By Philippe Sands in The Observer

The concept of extraordinary rendition does not have a clear meaning in international law. It is not referred to in any treaty or international instrument of which I am aware. It has come to be understood as referring to the practice of forcibly transporting a person, usually alleged to be involved in terrorism, from one country to another without relying on the normal legal processes for the purposes of subjecting them to interrogation and other forms of treatment that include torture or cruel and degrading treatment.

Both elements – the forcible transportation outside of due process, characterised by Lord Steyn as ‘kidnapping’ in his Attlee Foundation lecture, and the invasive forms of interrogation – raise the most serious issues under international law.

Earlier this year, there were reports of a leaked memo from the Foreign Office to Number 10, revealing concern that Britain may have approved requests from the United States to permit extraordinary renditions. This is the background against which to assess Tony Blair’s protestations of his commitment to fundamental rights and the rule of law, reflected in his email debate with Henry Porter in The Observer last month.

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A new report on Postal Voting and Electoral Fraud has been published by Isobel White of the Parliament and Constitution Centre. The report can be donloaded from the House of Commons library here

“There have been many allegations of electoral abuse since the introduction of postal voting on demand in 2001… The different election offences are outlined and the note explains the means of challenging an election result by election petition. A chronology of recent developments concerning postal voting including allegations of postal vote fraud at the local elections on 4 May 2006 is also given.”

“10 April 2005, The Sunday Times reported that there were fears that there would be voterigging in the constituency of Blackburn. Craig Murray, an Independent candidate, said he had been approached by several people in the Asian community ‘who are under huge pressure from Labour activists to apply for a postal vote’and then hand over their postal vote to the Labour party.’

Despite hard times the Prime Minister appears on track to enjoy the Roses of Future Sucess…

Click to play the movie