Lies, torture and the fight for Iraq truth

FOR more than 13 years – ever since our shocking front page showing prisoners bound and kneeling in orange jumpsuits – The Mail on Sunday has led the way in campaigning against Guantanamo.

We are particularly proud that this unrelenting pressure has finally led to the release of Shaker Aamer, who has languished in the camp throughout that time without charge or trial – and now graciously thanks this newspaper in the first account of his experience.

Today we learn just how significant a victory this has been – and why powerful people could have had a vested interest in keeping him behind the razor wire.

Mr Aamer has provided compelling new evidence that Britain did not just wage war on a false pretext, but on one which was knowingly secured through the use of torture.

Mr Aamer says two British intelligence officers were present at a US prison in Afghanistan when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered in a coffin to the detention centre in Egypt where he was locked in a small cage for more than 80 hours and severely beaten.

Mr Al-Libi then appears to have told his interrogators what they wanted to hear: that Saddam Hussein had supplied weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda.

Tony Blair parroted this argument to justify a war which claimed more than 100,000 lives. And US Secretary of State Colin Powell relied specifically on Al-Libi’s claims when he begged the UN Security Council to back the invasion of Iraq in February 2003.

But this link between the tyrant and the terrorist organisation was completely bogus. Although Saddam and Al Qaeda separately posed grave threats to international security, they never acted in concert.

The fight for truth and justice will not end when Mr Aamer touches back down in the UK later this month.

Despite being cleared for freedom back in 2007, Mr Aamer was mysteriously kept in Guantanamo for a further eight years.

Sir John Chilcot’s long-awaited investigation into the war should include a detailed scrutiny of Mr Aamer’s evidence – and whether his liberty was sacrificed at the behest of the guilty men.

Mr Blair will not be sleeping easily tonight.