Tony Blair, Guantanamo and the Daily Mail newspaper

TONY Blair yesterday attacked the Daily Mail over its coverage of the Guantanamo suicide bomber story.

The Labour former prime minister claimed it was hypocritical of this newspaper to be ‘outraged’ about Ronald Fiddler’s release from Guantanamo when it had campaigned for it.

The Mail responded by saying its coverage had been ‘utterly consistent’ – it had always condemned Guantanamo Bay, torture and locking people up without trial, while also making clear those detained might be very bad men.

The newspaper added that its sister website MailOnline, which is an autonomous operation with its own editor, apologised for a misleading headline, quickly corrected, which had mistakenly blamed Labour for the £1million payout to Fiddler, which happened in 2010 under the Coalition government.

In a lengthy statement describing ‘the utter hypocrisy with which this story is being covered’ Mr Blair referred to the MailOnline headline which had read: ‘Still Think He Wasn’t A Danger, Mr Blair? Fury at Labour government’s £1m compensation for innocent Brit’, erroneously attributing it to the Daily Mail newspaper.

Mr Blair said it was true Fiddler was released at the request of the British Government in 2004, adding: ‘This followed a massive media and parliamentary campaign, led by the Daily Mail, the very paper that is now supposedly so outraged at his release, and strongly supported by the then Conservative opposition.’

Last night, a spokesman for the Daily Mail said: ‘The Mail has been utterly consistent in its condemnation of Guantanamo Bay, arguing that extraordinary rendition, torture, and locking up people and holding them for years on end without trial was morally wrong. All of this happened under Tony Blair’s regime as did the release of Ronald Fiddler, with the then Home Secretary’s assurance that the detainee’s return would not “be a threat to the security of the British people”. At the same time, we have always made clear that those detained may have been very bad men.

‘When Fiddler returned to Britain our editorial – raising the spectre that he may be a hardened terrorist – declared: “This paper holds no torch for terrorists or their sympathisers. If a legitimate case can be proven against any of these men, they deserve everything they get.” That remains wholeheartedly our position.

‘The decision to pay Fiddler £1million was, as was accurately reported in the Mail newspaper, made in 2010 by the Coalition to avoid an embarrassing court battle which would have revealed the Blair government’s complicity in rendition and torture. The fact remains that the actions which led to this payment were all the responsibility of Tony Blair.’

THIS paper would not normally respond to mendacious allegations levelled against us by Tony Blair, who with Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell turned dissembling into an art form during their shameful years in power.

But when the increasingly delusional ex-prime minister accuses the Daily Mail of ‘utter hypocrisy’ in its coverage of Islamic State suicide bomber and former Guantanamo Bay inmate Ronald Fiddler, we cannot keep silent.

In fact – as Mr Blair must surely have been aware before his outburst yesterday – this paper has been wholly consistent in its approach to the agonising question of how to deal with terrorism suspects.

Yes, as he points out, the Daily Mail led the campaign to close Guantanamo, describing America’s brutal detention camp in Cuba as a recruiting sergeant for Islamist terrorism and a stain on the reputation of the West.

Indeed, to this day, nothing has shaken our view that the camp, where men have been held for up to 14 years without trial, is an affront to civilised values, dragging America down to the level of our enemies and inflaming anti-Western feeling.

Yet never once did we suggest, as Mr Blair monstrously claims we did, that Fiddler or any other British inmates of Guantanamo were ‘entirely innocent’.

On the contrary, the Daily Mail repeatedly warned that they could be highly dangerous, calling for them to face trial in Britain – where evidence against them could be tested.

Writing of two of the detainees in 2003, the year before Fiddler and others were released, this paper went as far as to observe: ‘If they are guilty of terrorism, the pair deserve everything they get. Indeed, few would cavil if they received the death penalty... Those who murder and maim in the name of hatred can have no expectation of sympathy.’

So, no, this paper never maintained we could be sure the detainees posed no threat. But someone who did make such a claim was Mr Blair’s Home Secretary at the time Fiddler and four other British prisoners arrived home in 2004.

‘No one who is returned,’ he said, ‘will actually pose a threat to the security of the British people.’

It was this assurance that prompted a headline which appeared briefly yesterday on the independently edited MailOnline website (not in this newspaper, as Mr Blair falsely claimed), before a mistake was noticed and quickly rectified.

The headline read: ‘Still think he wasn’t a threat, Mr Blair? Fury at Labour government’s £1million compensation for “innocent” Gitmo Briton who fled UK to blow himself up in Mosul.’

The mistake, of course, was that it was the Conservative-led Coalition, not the Labour government, which agreed to pay Fiddler and other former detainees – as was made crystal clear in yesterday’s Daily Mail newspaper.

But the reason for the payments is itself highly instructive, since it leads straight back to the appalling conduct of the Labour prime minister.

It was MI6 that persuaded the Coalition to offer compensation in 2010, because it wanted to avoid courtroom revelations about the security services’ complicity – backed by the Blair government – in ‘extraordinary rendition’ and torture.

Indeed, the Blair regime’s acquiescence in beatings, water- boarding, rectal feeding and hanging suspects on chains marked one of the most shameful episodes in Britain’s recent history.

Mr Blair lied, lied and lied again to take Britain to war in Iraq. His mendacious attempts to besmirch the good name of this paper show he can’t kick the habit.

He should stick to filling his boots with fat cheques from the despotic and evil regimes with which he is so fond of consorting.