Jihadi payoff row
GRINNING from ear to ear, the Islamic state suicide bomber looks relaxed – joyful even – as he prepares to drive a truck packed with explosives into an Iraqi army base.
Video footage of the final moments of terrorist Ronald Fiddler – a 50-year-old British father- of-five who was raised in Manchester to devout churchgoing parents – makes horrific viewing.
But behind it lies another story that is as shameful as it is astonishing.
For the money that paid for Fiddler’s fateful journey to syria – and, for all we know, the components used for his bloody final mission – came from British taxpayers.
A former Guantanamo Bay inmate, Fiddler – also known as Jamal Al-Harith – is thought to have been handed close to £1million in compensation by the British government in 2010. He was one of 16 suspected terrorists who shared a £20million payday in the long and painful shadow of the Tony Blair years.
To this day, a disturbing questions remain unanswered about the complicity of our intelligence agents in torture and illegal rendition of terror suspects by America – and precisely what the ex-prime minister knew about it.
In order to understand how a man like Fiddler ended up with a huge payout, it is necessary to look back to one of the darkest periods in our recent history – the years after 9/11 and the start of George Bush’s war on terror.
It was on that day that Mr Blair promised to stand ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the Us in defeating terrorism. This promise, of course, would lead us into the disastrous war in Iraq – a conflict that cost countless lives including those of 179 UK service personnel.
But it also sealed our involvement in a shadowy programme of extraordinary rendition and detention led by America’s Central Intelligence Agency. Under this murky programme, individuals suspected of involvement in terror were secretly subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques – torture in all but name – at so-called ‘dark’ sites around the world.
More than 100 people were subjected to waterboarding, forced feeding and beatings or other forms of ill-treatment. The most notorious prison of all was Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where – away from domestic legal constraints – much of the worst ill-treatment took place. DOCUMENTS show that Mr Blair was aware of allegations of torture at Guantanamo as early as 2002. But for the next two years, the British security services and the Blair government continued to be fed information by the CIA which resulted from the interrogations at Guantanamo.
Indeed, detainees claim British spies also gave information to the Americans that was used in the interrogations, and that they must have known about their ill treatment – but did nothing to stop it. others even claim they were present at the time.
one detainee, Binyam Mohamed, who alleges he was tortured at secret prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan – including being beaten, scalded and having his genitals slashed with a scalpel – says he realised during his questioning that some of the questions and materials were coming from British intelligence.
And in 2014, a former security minister, Admiral Lord West, said British spies may even have been present at some CIA torture sessions. Whatever the truth, Guantanamo was a sickening, dehumanising place – and its existence served as a recruiting sergeant for Islamist terrorists.
Widely viewed as a stain on the conscience of the West, the demands for its closure – including from this newspaper – were overwhelming. And as time went on, the questions grew about exactly what Mr Blair and his colleagues had known, and when.
Take former home secretary Jack straw. In 2005, he had told a Parliamentary committee that the idea Britain was involved in rendition was a ‘conspiracy theory’.
But evidence suggesting Mr straw had known of just such a rendition programme emerged later, in the form of a classified telegram he sent in January 2002.
In the message – sent to embassies in Washington and the Middle East – Mr straw had told officials no objection should be raised to the transfer of British nationals to Guantanamo, as this was ‘the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objectives.’ Mr Blair was certainly aware of allegations of torture within months of 9/11, according to a previously secret memo sent to No10 by the Foreign office on January 18, 2002 relating to the treatment of Britons in Guantanamo.
on it he scrawled: ‘The key is to find out how they are being treated. Though I was initially sceptical about claims of torture, we must make it clear to the Us that any such action would be totally unacceptable and very quickly establish it isn’t happening.’
Further damning evidence against the Blair administration came following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya. Documents found in the bombed out headquarters of his torture chief indicated direct Mi6 involvement in a rendition operation.
In the same month as Mr Blair’s notorious ‘deal in the desert’ with the Libyan despot in 2004, a Libyan dissident, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, and his pregnant wife Fatima were handed over to the tyrant’s henchmen. Belhadj claims he was subsequently tortured for six years.
Chilling faxes show then MI6 terror chief sir Mark Allen wrote to his Libyan counterpart to say that delivering Mr Belhadj had been ‘the least we could do for you’.
In the same year a second man, sami al-saadi, his wife and four children were lured to Hong Kong, abducted by the CIA, and flown to Tripoli. A CIA fax found in the ruins of Libya’s infamous security chief, Musa Kusa, read: ‘We are ... aware your service had been cooperating with the British to effect (al saadi’s) removal to Tripoli.’ LAST month, the supreme Court gave the go-ahead for Mr Belhadj to sue Mi6 and Jack straw, who – alongside Mr Blair – has the most serious questions to answer about this period. Mr Al saadi settled his case with the Government, who paid him £2.2million.
For years, senior Labour figures either obfuscated or denied British involvement. only in 2008 did foreign secretary David Miliband finally apologise after admitting that twice in 2002 CIA planes carrying detainees landed to refuel at the overseas British territory of Diego Garcia. But there are also claims this is only the tip of the iceberg – and that the base may have been used as a secret prison.
Which brings us back to Fiddler’s huge compensation cheque. After the Guantanamo Bay detainees began to be released, they secured lawyers who – using Mr Blair’s own Human Rights Act – launched claims against the government demanding compensation for British complicity in their torture.
Without ever being held properly to account for what may or may not have happened, the Labour government Mr Blair had once led was swept from power in May 2010 – while Mr Blair himself got rich by cosying up to despots. It was left to the new Cameron-led Coalition to clean up the mess.
In November 2010 then-justice secretary Ken Clarke announced that – in the interests of national security – a deal had been done with the Guantanamo detainees – describing the whole sordid affair a ‘legacy issue’ from the New Labour years.
Ministers argued they could not allow the cases to go to court for fear that details of secret intelligence material would be revealed. They later announced that in future such claims would be heard in secret courts – another baleful legacy of the Blair era. Truly, the choice which Mr Clarke, Mr Cameron and then home secretary Theresa May faced was appalling: give up top secret intelligence sources in open court – putting countless lives at risk – or reach for the cheque book.
Heaven only knows where all the money is now. Among the beneficiaries was Moazzam Begg, a 41year-old captured in 2002 by the CIA who say he was an Al Qaeda recruiter – an allegation he denies. He is now one of the main players in the charity Cage Prisoners, which its critics say promotes radical Islamist propaganda.
What’s worse is that because of the effective ending of anti-terror control orders used to monitor terrorist suspects in the UK, the job of MI5 in keeping track of such individuals – some of whom may well be dangerous – has been made much harder.
In a series of court challenges made under – you guessed it – the Human Rights Act – these orders were watered down to the point of becoming almost meaningless, before Nick Clegg – in the early days of the Coalition – put the final nail in the coffin. THEY were replaced by an even weaker regime which allowed one suspect to disappear dressed in a burka. Throughout this period the Mail argued for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, declaring it a stain on the West and that whatever the allegations against those held there, detention without trial for years on end was indefensible.
In particular, we campaigned for the release of British resident shaker Aamer, the 42-year-old British resident who claimed UK intelligence officers were present while he was tortured – and who was finally released in october 2015.
Mr straw has insisted he was ‘never in any way complicit in the unlawful rendition or detention of individuals by the United states or any other state’. Mr Blair has never commented on what he knew.
But Whitehall officials have insisted the prime minister was given regular briefings about the CIA programmes and knew what was going on ‘ every step of the way’. sources have also suggested the actions of Mi6 in Libya were signed off by Mr straw.
Yesterday a typically shameless Mr Blair attempted to divert attention from his involvement in the Guantanamo payouts by pointing out the settlement was announced by the Coalition government.
Never mind the fact the Coalition had Hobson’s choice or that, had Gordon Brown won the 2010 election, Labour would probably have implemented the same plan – indeed it was already working on just such a scheme. In the Us, the full gory details of what happened in the decade post 9/ 11 were revealed in a damning senate intelligence committee report in 2014.
But to its shame, and despite promises from David Cameron, there has still been no proper investigation into what Mr Blair and Mr straw knew.
A high court judge, sir Peter Gibson, was appointed to lead a judgeled inquiry, but following the Libya revelations it was scrapped. officially, the sorry issue was handed over to the Intelligence and security Committee – a body with none of the powers of its senate equivalent. All of which creates the worrying impression we may never know what Mr Blair knew and when, what he approved about a sickening period in our history.
The picture of Fiddler is yet another reminder that the damage Mr Blair inflicted upon Britain, the Middle East and the world is by no means over.