John Humphrys asks: is there a cover-up concerning British treatment of terrorist suspects?
There have long been allegations that during the so-called ‘War on Terror’ following the 9/11 atrocities, Britain was in some ways complicit in the mistreatment and torture of terrorist suspects. An early act of the coalition government was to set up an inquiry, headed by a retired judge, to investigate the claims. The inquiry reported this week. But its investigation is only half complete and the rest of the job has been handed over to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. Critics of the decision fear the committee will be less rigorous and that too much of what may have gone on will remain secret. Is this a cover-up in the making?
The US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 introduced a new piece of euphemistic jargon into the vocabulary of the world of security and intelligence – rendition. The term describes a policy openly conducted by the American government of abducting terrorist suspects and flying them, prior to interrogation, to compliant foreign countries where the treatment of prisoners was far less scrupulous than in western countries. In short, the kidnapped prisoners would be tortured before being handed over to American and other intelligence officers for questioning.
It has long been claimed that the British government and its intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6, were complicit in the policy of rendition even though Tony Blair had told the House of Commons in January 2002 that Britain and its allies should abide by the Geneva conventions in the treatment of terrorist detainees. His government subsequently consistently denied charge of being involved with rendition.
But the allegations persisted. So in 2010 David Cameron set up an inquiry under Sir Peter Gibson, a retired appeal court judge, and Dame Janet Paraskeva, a government official. Although their inquiry was not of the sort that could take independent evidence, they were given access to 20,000 top secret documents involving the cases of around two hundred detainees.
Sir Peter completed his work eighteen months ago but publication was delayed because, it’s believed, he was resisting government attempts to censor certain elements in it. It has now been published with, it’s thought, only a few changes to the original text.
Sir Peter says that there is no evidence of any direct British responsibility for the mistreatment of detainees. But he goes on: “It does appear from the documents that the UK may have been inappropriately involved in some renditions. That is a very serious matter.”
In particular, he finds that British officers in the field may have been encouraged to turn a blind eye to mistreatment carried out by our allies and to feel under no obligation to report any instances of such mistreatment. He says that “intelligence officers were aware of a range of treatment issues that gave rise to potential concern” and cites the case of a British field operative at the Bagram airbase in Afghanistan being told by his bosses, just a week before Tony Blair’s statement in the House of Commons in January 2002, to turn a blind eye to such abuses. Among the types of mistreatment involved, Sir Peter lists the use of hoods, stress positions, sleep deprivation, physical assaults and substandard detention facilities.
Sir Peter also refers to possible British involvement in the rendition in 2004 of two Libyan nationals to Tripoli where they were subsequently tortured. Tony Blair has been accused of cosying up to the Gaddafi regime following its abandonment of its chemical weapons programme and of being willing to ignore the Libyan regime’s notoriously bad human rights record after the rapprochement. The case of the two Libyans nationals who were subject to rendition is currently going through the British courts.
After the publication of the Gibson report this week, Jack Straw, the Labour foreign secretary at the time of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, repeated that neither he nor the then government was “in any way complicit” in the policy of rendition.
For the government, Ken Clarke, the former Justice Secretary and now cabinet minister without portfolio, told the House of Commons that guidance to field officers after 9/11 had been “inadequate” and that the intelligence services were “not prepared for the extreme demands suddenly placed on them”.
The publication of the report is not the end of the matter, however. That’s because the report itself lists twenty-seven questions that still need to be answered. These include whether or not there were other instances when British intelligence officers turned a blind eye to “specific inappropriate techniques or threats”; whether there was some sort of agreed policy between British officers and overseas intelligence officers; and whether there was a “willingness at some level within the agencies to condone, encourage or take advantage of a rendition operation.”
But Sir Peter is not being allowed to inquire into these questions himself. The job has been handed over to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. This is despite the fact that back in 2010 David Cameron had said: “I do not think for a moment the ISC should be doing this piece of work”, adding that public confidence required it to be done by a body independent of parliament and political parties.
Critics of the decision argue that the ISC has gained a reputation for being far too soft in its handling of the intelligence services for it to be able to satisfy the public that it will do a robust enough job. It is pointed out, however, that since 2010 the ISC has been given increased powers to conduct inquiries into the behaviour of the security services. Nonetheless, the senior Conservative backbencher, Andrew Tyrie, said: “It is deeply shocking that Britain facilitated kidnap and torture. The decision to abandon this judge-led inquiry will come to be seen as a mistake.”
Some will say, however, that the British government has already shown itself to be more than scrupulous in its handling of the allegations by devoting so much effort to the inquiries. They will say too that, in any case, if some terrorist suspects were roughed up a bit before interrogation - that is justified because of the potentially vital information they might have been able to provide in order to prevent any further terrorist atrocities.
But that is a defence adopted neither by the government nor its predecessors. British policy is clear: we are opposed to torture, period. The policy of rendition evidently involved techniques that amount to torture and the Gibson Report finds that Britain may have been involved ‘inappropriately’ with it. If we are to claim to practise what we preach, we need to be able to demonstrate it, critics will say. Will the ISC inquiry be able to do that, or are we in the process of covering up what went on?
What’s your view about British involvement in rendition and torture and on the way the government is going about investigating it?
Let us know.
