Security and intelligence - new material (14)
01 April 2010
Torture: the paper trail, Ian Cobain and Owen Bowcott. The Guardian 15.7.10. This article reports on documents, disclosed as a result of civil proceedings brought by six former-Guantanamo Bay prisoners against MI5 and MI6, the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Attorney general’s office, which show “the true extent of the Labour government’s involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens.” The government has identified 500,000 documents that might be relevant, but has failed to hand over many of them to the men’s lawyers, missing a “deadline imposed by the high court for the disclosure of the secret interrogation policy that governed MI5 and MI6 between 2004 and earlier this year.”
The Prisoner: Guantanamo’s last British detainee, Robert Verkaik. Independent Life 3.3.10, pp. 1-5. Salutary piece on the fate of Shaker Aamer who has been held without charge at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, by the USA for eight years, three of the last four of them in solitary confinement. Verkaik examines his experiences and the role of MI5.
Bin Laden, the Taleban, Zawahiri: Britain’s done business with them all, Adam Curtis. The Guardian 6.7.10. Curtis discusses “the connection between 7/7 and British foreign policy” describing the terrorist threat to Britain as “partly “blowback, resulting from a web of British covert operations with militant Islamic groups stretching back decades. And while terrorism is held up as the country’s biggest security challenge, Whitehall’s collusion with radical Islam is continuing.” He examines historical and contemporary examples of this collusion, expressing concern “that the wards of state pledging to protect us have neither accounted for “blowback” nor stopped contributing to it. Government guided by morals would have different priorities and would discontinue policies based on interest that endanger us and much of the world.”
“No Questions Asked”: Intelligence Cooperation with Countries that Torture. Human Rights Watch, 2010, pp. 62. The report analyzes the ongoing cooperation by the governments of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom with foreign intelligence services in countries that routinely use torture. “The three governments use the resulting foreign torture information for intelligence and policing purposes. Torture is prohibited under international law, with no exceptions allowed.” See:
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/06/28/no-questions-asked-0