HOW MIRED IN TORTURE WAS BRITAIN?
As it emerges UK made 24 bids to suppress evidence...
DEMANDS were growing last night for a judge-led inquiry into Britain’s complicity in torture after a day of drama at Westminster. Three days after a US Senate report revealed details of the CIA’s barbaric interrogation techniques, MPs demanded answers to disturbing questions about the UK’s role.
Senior figures from all major parties said the full truth must be known about the role played by British agents – and what the Blair Government knew about it. In a significant development, Nick Clegg broke ranks to say a full judicial inquiry may be needed.
It was also revealed that Home Secretary Theresa May secretly met with the Senate intelligence committee amid claims t he Government frantically ‘lobbied’ to keep Britain out of the damning report.
On a day of fast-moving devel- opments, it emerged that:
Ministers and diplomats held 24 meetings with the Senate committee before the report’s publication;
Those ‘lobbying’ the committee included Mrs May and ex-Labour security minister Lord West;
Ed Miliband had to make an extraordinary defence of his brother David’s time as Foreign Secretary;
No 10 said it was ‘urgently’ seeking the release of Shaker Aamer, the British resident who has spent 13 years in Guantanamo Bay;
CIA director John Brennan admitted the agency’s methods were ‘abhorrent’, but claimed they helped to find Osama bin Laden.
Pressure has been mounting since Tuesday for Britain to hold its own inquiry to uncover the unvarnished truth about its role in the so-called ‘war on terror’.
The Senate committee revealed the most gruesome details about the CIA’s torture programme, but
all references to the role played by America’s allies – including Britain – were redacted, despite them being passed information gleaned from the inhumane treatment.
The explosive 499-page report did not contain a single reference to MI5, MI6 or Diego Garcia – the British base from which rendition flights are known to have taken place. In advance of its publication, there were meetings between the Senate committee and the UK’s ambassador to Washington. It has now emerged Mrs May, who has oversight of MI5, also met with the committee.
Crucially, Lord West – who was the security minister in the last Labour Government – also held talks. The spotlight is particularly intense on Labour, which was in power during the duration of the CIA ‘enhanced interrogation’ programme between 001 and 007.
There are huge questions over not only what Mr Blair personally knew, but also the roles played by ex-Foreign Secretaries Jack Straw and David Miliband.
Yesterday, Ed Miliband – who still has a strained relationship with his elder brother after beating him to the Labour leadership – said David would ‘never’ have knowingly allowed British agents to become involved in rendition and torture programmes run by the CIA.
Asked whether his brother had questions to answer, Mr Miliband said: ‘He answered questions about this in the House of Commons while he was in government.
‘He is never somebody who would ever countenance the British state getting engaged in this kind of activity.’ Significantly, however, he described the Senate report as ‘deeply troubling’ – and declined to defend Mr Blair.
Mr Miliband stopped short of backing calls for a judge-led inquiry – which could be hugely embarrassing for his brother – but last night MPs on all sides said only a full investigation could get to the truth.
David Cameron originally supported a judge-led inquiry and appointed Sir Peter Gibson to take charge. However, amid huge controversy, the inquiry was scrapped last year before completion. Instead, Parlia-
‘Serious questions to be answered’
ment’s Intelligence and Security Committee has been tasked with the investigation – sparking fears of a whitewash.
Labour MP Paul Flynn, a member of the home affairs select committee, said: ‘It’s essential that we have a full judge-led inquiry independent of political input. There are serious questions to be answered by Tony Blair and David Miliband and others.’
SNP MP Angus MacNeil said the CIA torture methods were ‘stomach-churning’, adding: ‘There are huge question marks for Tony Blair and his ministers.’ He said he wouldn’t trust the Intelligence and Security Committee ‘to run a bath, much less an inquiry’.
Ex-Tory shadow home secretary David Davis – who has accused Britain of time and again ‘turning a blind eye’ to US torture – said a judge-led inquiry should be reinstated, as Mr Cameron originally promised. The demand is backed by a string of human rights groups, including Reprieve, Liberty and Redress.
Mr Clegg said during his weekly LBC radio phone-in: ‘Once the police investigations are done, once the report from the Intelligence and Security Committee is done, we should keep an open mind, if we need to, about moving to a full judicial inquiry if there are any outstanding questions.’
Mr Brennan said the CIA was ‘not prepared’ to run the controversial programme and it ‘failed to live up to the standards we set ourselves’.
But in a rare press conference, he refused to call the treatment of terror suspects torture and at no point said he would consider stepping down.
Mr Brennan said he wanted to remind the world that after the 9/11 attacks, America’s ‘hearts were ripped open’ and that the US ‘ached, it cried in pain’.
He said: ‘There were no easy answers and whatever your views are... this agency did a lot of things right.’
LAUNCHING his party’s much-vaunted ‘ethical foreign policy’ in 1997, the late Robin Cook told Parliament: ‘The Labour government must support the demands of other peoples for the democratic rights on which we insist for ourselves. [We] will put human rights at the heart of our foreign policy.’
As evidence mounts of British complicity in the CIA’s secret incarceration and torture of Islamist terror suspects, how chillingly hollow those words sound today.
Could there be anything less ethical than subjecting a fellow human to days of abuse, then leaving him to freeze to death, naked and in chains on a concrete floor?
We don’t yet know the full extent of British involvement in this blood-curdling and deeply shaming affair, because all reference to MI5 and MI6 has been blacked out of the devastating report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee.
This followed intense lobbying by senior British politicians and diplomats – including ex-Labour security minister Lord West, t wo ambassadors to Washington, Home Secretary Theresa May and Foreign Secretary William Hague – who met Senate members 24 times. Inevitably, t he most disturbing questions centre on the role played by the mendacious warmonger Tony Blair.
Given that he was inseparable from US President George Bush in every aspect of the ‘war on terror’, is it credible he knew nothing of the network of prison camps and barbaric interrogation methods?
And would the Americans have dared to use British airports and territories for ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights (in which suspects were transported to the torture camps) without his express permission?
Then what of David Miliband, arguably Blair’s most ardent disciple? As Foreign Secretary in 2008 he did admit that British territory had been used for extraordinary rendition – but implausibly claimed it happened on just two occasions and that the CIA did it without telling Mr Blair or anyone else in his government.
A year later Mr Miliband was involved again in trying to cover up Britain’s collusion with the CIA, when he tried unsuccessfully to suppress court details of the torture of Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohammed.
He said it was to protect American i ntelligence sources, but when the documents were made public, it was revealed that MI5 and MI6 had fed questions to Binyam’s CIA torturers. Yet Mr Miliband – now head of a US-based charity dedicated to international aid – has the gall to travel the world lecturing others on their humanitarian obligations. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
There is also the role of the British security services. Were they party to interrogations? Did they witness torture? Did they try to stop it and who did they tell? These questions cry out for an answer.
The Americans should hang their heads in shame over the CIA’s brutality. But at least they have had the courage and integrity to unflinchingly publish this report into their shortcomings.
What a contrast with Britain, which is even now desperately trying to cover up its involvement. And how telling that, five years after it was commissioned, we are still waiting for the Chilcot report into the Iraq war to be published. It won’t do.
The Government must fully investigate Britain’s involvement in torture. Nothing l ess than a j udicial i nquiry – with witnesses compelled to appear and testify under oath – will now suffice.
The Prime Minister was quick enough to order a judicial inquiry into celebrity phone hacking. Isn’t maintaining Britain’s reputation as a beacon of liberty and liberal values more important than the activities of a handful of tabloid hacks whose misdemeanours were disgraceful but footling compared to those who endorse and indulge in torture?