Guantanamo Detainee's Fate Now Down To Politics Not Justice

The fate of the last British resident to be held in Guantanamo Bay is in the hands of political powerbrokers in London and Washington ahead of crucial elections, and has little to do with national security and justice, his lawyer has claimed. With a General Election in the UK now widely expected on May 6, and mid-term elections in the US in November, the potential release of Shaker Aamer, who has now been held in the notorious Cuban prison camp for more than eight years without charge, could be politically explosive.

Mr Aamer has accused British Secret Service agents of being complicit in his torture, which, coupled with his intimate knowledge of events at Guantanamo, means he has the capacity to be a political embarrassment to both governments.

As political and legal rows over his detention deepens, politicians on both sides of the Atlantic have blamed eachother for delays in the case - leading his family, solicitors and MPs to question diplomatic efforts, the “special relationship”.

Mr Aamer, 42, was captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, has been held in Guantanamo since 2002 on suspicion of helping the Taliban, but, despite being cleared for release by a US review board in 2007, he remains under lock and key.

Last week at a meeting Mr Aamer’s family, Foreign Office (FO) Minister Ivan Lewis blamed delays on American politics. His comments were revealed at a press conference following the meeting. Mr Lewis said: “There is no doubt there is a slowdown in the US for domestic reasons. We are doing everything we can.” He said it “appeared to be related to American politics” adding the slowdown in the closure of Guantanamo Bay had not helped.

But Brent Mickum, who represents Mr Aamer - a Saudi born father-of-four who had indefinite leave to remain in the UK - in the US, said: “All the noises I am getting from US officials is that the Brits are not pressing hard enough.” Mr Mickum recently saw confidential FO files he believes reinforce claims Mr Aamer is innocent and had been tortured. He was only granted access to them after a lengthy court case in the UK, and cannot reveal their contents. But, he said: “I can say this. His detention is purely political. It has nothing to do with justice and what he has done. It is more to do with what has been done to him. That is the basis for his detention.”
Mr Aamer’s release before a General Election in the UK would allow the Government to gain the trust of liberal and swing voters and the Muslim community. One Government source said: “There are about 2m Muslim voters in the country so if there is any movement it would obviously help, but it is very sensitive.”

But US politics could play its part too. America is in the middle of a slow economic recovery, with about 10 per cent unemployment, and November’s elections are set to be tight - evidenced by the Democrat’s losing the apparently safe seat of Massachusetts in January. “What this is, is a PR problem for both of them” Mr Mickum said.

Battersea MP Martin Linton said Mr Aamer was being denied basic rights. “It is detention not only without trial but without explanation,” he said, “If it wasn’t America he would have been brought back long ago or we would have intervened.”

Gareth Peirce, Mr Aamer’s solicitor in the UK, said following the meeting gave an insight into the “special relationship”. “After eight years of Shaker being in unlawful captivity it is frustrating in the extreme to meet a minister who is saying essentially that everything that can be done is being done and they are at a loss to think of anything else.

“It defies belief that we can’t influence our oldest ally to release someone held one of our own in unlawful captivity. “There is no explanation for the extreme delays in his case and nothing suggests an urgent attempt to get him back.”

Mr Aamer’s wife, Zinnira Aamer, left the meeting despondent. She said: “I think it is not enough to say it is a political issue. If it is then they should know what to do to get him back. He [Ivan Lewis] was asking me what I wanted him to do.”

Johina Aamer, who at 12 is the oldest of Mr Aamer’s four children, also met Mr Lewis. She said: “I want my dad back because I haven’t seen him in eight years. My smallest brother has never met his dad.”

Lawyers maintain the secret FO files prove Mr Aamer is innocent and show he was tortured. “Generally speaking, and without revealing any detail from the documents, my overall impression of the documents is that they are exculpatory in nature, period,” he said. “The documents are helpful to Shaker's defence, in so far as they describe the general allegations against Shaker, which we are in a position to refute almost unequivocally, and they show that he was tortured. “What I have seen confirms my position that there is no legitimate evidence against him and confirms my continuing belief that he is being held by the Americans to cover up my government's wrongdoing.”

Source: www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/local/wandsworthnews/5057152.Guantanamo_detainee_s_fate_now_down_to_politics/

What & When MI5 Knew About Torture

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5 throughout most of the years of the so-called war on terror, insisted yesterday she had not known that Khalid Shiekh Mohammed was being waterboarded.

In a response to the appeal court's judgment that MI5 officers had a "dubious record" on torture, she sought to blame the US and maintained that only after she retired in 2007 did she discover that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks had been waterboarded 160 times. "The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," she said. Critics, though, said it was stretching credulity to claim surprise.

10 January 2002 An MI6 officer, in one of the first British interrogations in Afghanistan after 9/11, tells London the suspect had been mistreated by Americans before questioning began. This is reported by the Intelligence and Security committee (ISC), the MPs and peers supposed to oversee MI5 and MI6.

11 January 2002 Every MI6 and MI5 officer in Afghanistan gets legal advice they are under no obligation to intervene to prevent torture, as long as victim is not in UK "custody or control", but "cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it". Critics say this advice failed to meet MI5's obligations under international law, and was subsequently used to facilitate torture. That month, the Pentagon releases pictures of hooded and shackled detainees dragged around at the new detention centre at Guantánamo Bay.

April 2002 The CIA hands MI5 more than 50 classified documents detailing mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident detained in Pakistan on 10 April. A judicial summary (released by the appeal court last month after an 18-month battle with the government) shows MI5 knew Mohamed was "continuously deprived of sleep", threatened with being "disappeared", and that this was "causing him significant mental stress and suffering". Manningham-Buller was then deputy director general of MI5. Having learned of Mohamed's mistreatment, MI5 sends an officer, known as Witness B, to Karachi to question him. The high court later concludes: "The probability is that Witness B read the reports either before he left for Karachi or before he conducted the interview ... a briefing document was prepared for sending to him." Witness B is now the subject of a Scotland Yard investigation.

September 2002 MI5 knows Mohamed is no longer in Pakistan, "rendered" elsewhere, but, the high court later finds, it continues to supply "information as well as questions which they [MI5] knew were to be used in interview of [Mohamed] from the time of his arrest whilst he was held incommunicado".

October 2002 Eliza Manningham-Buller is appointed director general of the Security Service.

4 April 2004 Salahuddin Amin, suspect from Luton,questioned by MI5 11 times after surrendering to a Pakistani agency whose use of torture is documented. Old Bailey judge later says it was "oppressive" and unlawful, but short of torture. Pakistani officers told Human Rights Watch (HRW) last year Amin's account of torture before being questioned by MI5 was "essentially accurate", and British and US officials "perfectly aware we were using all means possible … and grateful".

27 April 2004 Pictures of US troops abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib broadcast.

13 May 2004 New York Times reports Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. It says the FBI warned officers not to be involved, after its director, Robert Mueller, was advised they could face prosecution. The paper adds: "Techniques were authorised by a set of secret rules for the interrogation of high-level Qaeda prisoners, none known to be housed in Iraq, endorsed by the Justice Department and the CIA."

24 May 2004 In apparent response to Abu Ghraib pictures, Tony Blair writes to the ISC to tell it of changes to the UK interrogation policy passed to MI5 officers and MI6 officers in January 2002. Officers are told to inform London whenever they see US counterparts mistreat inmates, and must not return to question detainees who complain of torture. In practice, according to victims, UK officers hand over to US interrogators after hearing a complaint. Other changes remain secret. David Miliband, the foreign secretary, says that to do otherwise could "give succour".

22 June 2004 White House and the Pentagon set out the legal advice justifying use of abusive interrogation at Guantánamo.

15 May 2005 Zeeshan Siddiqui, a suspect from London, arrested in Pakistan, tortured, and questioned by British officers. Pakistani officers later tell HRW these were MI6 officers, aware he was "processed in the traditional way".

20 August 2005 A London student is held in building opposite British offices in Karachi and tortured, for two months, before questioning by British officers. Pakistani agents later tell HRW that British across the road knew he was mistreated and "breathing down our necks for information". He is later released without charge.

20 August 2006 An MI6 officer suggests to Pakistani officers they might want to detain a British suspect, Rangzieb Ahmed, after police let him leave UK. According to statements in the Commons, Manchester crown court (sitting in secret) learned UK officers knew those Pakistani officials tortured suspects. MI5 and Manchester police gaver questions to be put to Ahmed, who has fingernails removed with pliers. When deported to the UK for trial, on evidence largely gathered before he flew to Pakistan, prosecutors attempt to claim his nails were removed before he went to Pakistan. The crown's pathologist says this is impossible. Judge rules UK complicity in Ahmed's torture is not so great his trial cannot go ahead; his full ruling is secret, at the request of the Crown Prosecution Service, following representations by MI5 and police. Ahmed is now to appeal.

23 November 2006 Manningham-Buller tells ISC she regrets not asking the CIA for more about the whereabouts of Binyam Mohamed after he was rendered from Pakistan to Morocco in July 2002. In a report in July 2007, the committee concludes: "Whilst no assurances were sought, this is understandable given the lack of knowledge, at the time, of any possible consequences of US custody of detainees." However, almost five years before she gave evidence to the ISC, MI5 gave officers legal advice that facilitated questioning of suspects being tortured. The ISC had been told of this advice, and why it was issued, in September 2004, almost three years before it reported that a "lack of knowledge" was "understandable".

27 October 2006 Dick Cheney confirms Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded; it was a "no-brainer".

21 April 2007 Manningham-Buller resigns.

15 October 2009 Her successor, Jonathan Evans, defends MI5's co-operation with agencies known to torture: "In my view we would have been derelict in our duty if we had not worked, circumspectly, with overseas liaisons."

Source: www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/10/mi5-mi6-torture-intelligence-timeline

Ottawa Knew Of Alternative Prison Transfer Rroposal

The Harper government has always insisted it heard no warnings of torture risks facing Afghan detainees in 2006, but documents show that in the same year it was carefully following a NATO campaign to take responsibility for captured prisoners away from the country's notorious intelligence service.

A memo obtained by The Globe and Mail shows that in 2006 the federal government was briefed on a lobbying campaign by NATO allies aimed at getting the Kabul government to create stronger safeguards for detainees after prisoner abuses elsewhere.

"London, The Hague and Canberra [Australia] are deeply concerned about the absence of solid legal protections for detainees, which - in the age of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib - imperils domestic support for the Afghanistan mission," said the memo of Dec. 4, 2006, written by diplomat Richard Colvin.

The memo was written after consultation with Catherine Bloodworth, a Foreign Affairs colleague, as well as the military attaché in Canada's Kabul embassy. It was approved by David Sproule - then Canada's ambassador to Afghanistan - and was e-mailed to dozens of officials at Foreign Affairs, the Privy Council Office and National Defence.

The question of whether Canadian soldiers knowingly handed Afghan captives over to torture in 2006 and 2007 will soon dominate Parliament Hill as two separate hearings resume in coming weeks. The long-simmering issue flared up last fall when Mr. Colvin accused Ottawa of turning a blind eye to warnings of torture risks facing detainees. The 2006 NATO campaign to create a separate prison system for its captives envisioned the more respected Afghan Army assuming responsibility for prisoners. It ultimately failed in the face of intransigence from the Afghan government.

"Despite intense international lobbying - including personal interventions ... by President Bush and the Dutch PM - the detainee policy has gone nowhere," the memo said. But the NATO proposal was of "intense interest" to coalition partners including the British and Dutch, which were bound by a European human rights convention to keep track of detainees after transfer.

Existing detainee arrangements, the memo said, were "deeply problematic" because prisoners "are handed within 96 hours to the National Directorate of Security," the intelligence service, "and then typically vanish from sight."

It is unclear, the memo said, whether detainees are subsequently "tortured, held beyond legal limits or (all too frequently) released back to the battlefield." Canada was not party to the lobbying effort, sources say, but took a keen interest in the idea, which called for a new legal class of detainees in Afghanistan and, effectively, a duplicate jail system for them.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, a rights monitor, had even reviewed the NATO proposal early in its drafting. "They determined that, while imperfect, it meets the minimum standards of international humanitarian law," the memo said. "In addition to making it easier to monitor the location and condition of detainees, the ... [proposal] also promised to bring detainee policy within international law," it said. "Detainees, currently classified as 'enemies of Afghanistan' have no solid legal status."

This new prison system was opposed by General Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan's defence minister, despite pressure from the U.S., which was interested in transferring captives there from Guantanamo Bay. Gen. Wardak, the memo said, had no interest in drawing down valuable resources to be a jailer.

The Canadian military, determined to avoid a repeat of the Somalia affair, in which a captive died at the hands of Canadian soldiers, was only too keen to hand off all prisoners rounded up during military operations in Afghanistan.

In 2005, the former Liberal government signed a deal to hand captives to the Afghan government rather than see them transferred to the U.S. military in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.

Source: www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ottawa-knew-of-alternative-prison-transfer-proposal/article1498217/

Lawyers For Guantanamo Six Contest Secret Evidence Plan

Six former Guantanamo detainees are appealing against a ruling that secret evidence can be used by the government to defend their claim for damages. The UK citizens and residents are suing intelligence agencies and ministers for alleged complicity in their abuse.

Dinah Rose QC, representing five of the six, told the Court of Appeal the "closed material procedure" was never intended for use in civil actions. The government denies the claims made in the case at the High Court.

The men - Binyam Mohamed, Bisher Al Rawi, Jamil El Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes and Martin Mubanga - claim they were mistreated in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere.

They were held on suspicion of terrorism but deny any involvement.

'Fundamental Change'

The Appeal Court decision will be made by Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, Lord Justice Maurice Kay and Lord Justice Sullivan.

The men say they suffered torture and inhuman and degrading treatment while in custody. They allege MI5 and MI6 aided and abetted their unlawful imprisonment and extraordinary rendition to various locations around the world.

Mr Justice Silber ruled in the High Court in November that there was no reason why the court could not allow the closed material procedure in the civil case.

It would mean information could be withheld from the claimants' lawyers if the government felt releasing it would damage national security, international relations, or the detection and prevention of crime. Instead, the information would be released to specially vetted barristers with security clearance.

Ms Rose told three of Britain's most senior judges at the Court of Appeal that no court had the power to allow secret evidence by the government in a damages claim.

She said it would represent a "fundamental change" in law which had "constitutional implications" and could only be sanctioned by clear new legislation. "One of the great dangers of the special advocate system is that in some circumstances it serves as a fig leaf for fundamental unfairness," she said. "The hearing looks and sounds like a normal trial but it is not a trial at all, it is something completely different."

'Open Trial'

She said: "This is incompatible with the basic concepts of the civil trial."

Human rights groups Justice and Liberty and a number of media organisations, including the BBC, the Times, the Guardian, the Sunday Times, and the Observer, are also contesting the plan. They say the secrecy proposals breach the right to a fair and open trial.

Last month, the Court of Appeal rejected a separate plea by Foreign Secretary David Miliband for six paragraphs of a judgment on a case involving Binyam Mohamed to be kept secret.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8556350.stm

What is the Costa of Life?

What is the price of a tall coffee these days?

It is surprising as its actually the same as the cost of sponsoring, a new team of support workers at HHUGS. No jokes, no jiggery pokery, that’s the truth. If you can afford to buy a coffee at your local station, great news, you can afford to recruit a new team at HHUGS and help them keep families together and provide the most vulnerable people in our society a lifeline they currently cannot even think off.

Helping Households Under Great Distress is a registered UK charity seeking to help the victims of the UKs Anti Terror laws, which have imprisoned hundreds of innocent people in British prisons. People never charged with any crime, yet torn away from their families, friends, communities and lives. These are people HHUGS reaches out to, and in an effort to better support the families our volunteers are currently struggling to support and reach out to others, we have launched a campaign to encourage you to spare simply the cost of a coffee once per week for us.

HHUGS is looking for 1000 people to reach out with faith to their brothers and sisters who are in dire need with simply £2 p/w. Therefore if you can spare the cost of less than a single coffee once per week, please sign up a standing order today for £2 p/w, and link a child to its father, a husband to his wife, a Muslim to his Ummah. The Standing Order form is available for download at the bottom of this page.Your choice.

Click here to donate: www.hhugs.org.uk/uploads/artfile0-1.pdf

About HHUGS

Since 9/11, over 1000 Muslims have been arrested on terrorism charges. Most have been released, a few have been charged and are currently awaiting trial, while only a handful have actually been convicted of any terrorism offenses. Many foreign nationals have been placed under 'control orders' while others have been deported back to their home countries along with their wives and children.

For every arrest and detention, a home has been raided and ravaged and a family has suffered the loss of a loved one, a bread winner, a dear husband. a much loved son. These are homes where life will never be the same.

For many of these families, daily tasks have become difficult, they are struggling to make ends meet and transport to visit their loved ones is infrequent. On top of this, their friends have disowned them, their Mosques have abandoned them, and their communities have shunned them. They are lonely, vulnerable, and desperately in need of help.

Hhugs, Helping Households Under Great Stress, is a registered charity that was setup in September 2004 in response to the increasing number of 'anti-terror' arrests across the country.

Hhugs provides practical support and advice to households devastated by the arrest of a family member under UK anti-terror legislation.

www.hhugs.org.uk/

U.S. Looks For Way To Return Khadr

Officials in the Obama administration are quietly seeking a way to repatriate Canadian-born terror suspect Omar Khadr, an authority in a position to know has confided to Canwest News Service. "They don't have the stomach to try a child for war crimes," said the source, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of such a U.S. bid.

Mr. Khadr's age of 15 at the time of the alleged offences is playing on the minds of certain administration officials -- especially those with backgrounds in the type of activism that has clashed with some of the more controversial U.S. anti-terror efforts, the source said.

Samantha Power, Michael Posner and Harold Koh are among administration officials with the strongest backgrounds in human-rights study and activism. For example, Mr. Posner, the assistant secretary of state, was founding executive director of Human Rights First, which has advocated Mr. Khadr's repatriation as one alternative to his continued prosecution in the military system established at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But even those seeking to return Mr. Khadr to Canada don't feel the United States can make the first move. They want Ottawa to ask for the return of Mr. Khadr so that the Obama administration has "political cover" to dodge any domestic backlash resulting from the release of an accused terrorist from the U.S. justice system. "There are political repercussions," the source said. So administration officials are "looking for a Canadian [outreach]."

The officials' determination to explore what "we can do" is nevertheless there, the source said. The United States "would like to send him back."

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the issue. "Omar Khadr has been referred for [a] military commission prosecution," said Dean Boyd, spokesman in the department's National Security Division. "I have no comment for you on whether or not there are any discussions between the United States or Canada regarding Omar Khadr's case."

The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has long publicly maintained it will not seek Mr. Khadr's return, saying he faces serious charges in the United States that need to be addressed.

After rejecting at least two repatriation and rehabilitation plans proposed by Mr. Khadr's Canadian lawyers, the government also won key Canadian Supreme Court backing in January for maintaining its refusal to ask Washington to give him up.

Mr. Khadr faces five war crimes charges before the military commission system created under the presidency of George W. Bush. Among them is murder in the death of Delta Force Sergeant Chris Speer, who was fatally wounded by a hand grenade that Mr. Khadr allegedly tossed during a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan.

U.S. military prosecutors, who have said they will not seek the death penalty in the event Mr. Khadr is convicted, have insisted his age at the time of the firefight is relevant only as a mitigating factor at a sentencing hearing.

Insiders say the prosecutors have signalled they'd seek a "decent number" of years of imprisonment that would well exceed the current time served -- but would be short of the maximum life sentence he could face if found guilty. Sgt. Speer's widow, Tabitha, is also expected to testify at any sentencing hearing. His death left her alone to raise their two young children.

Source: www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2652827

UK Involved In My Torture, Says Suspect

Britain may have colluded with America in the rendition of terror suspects that involved "torture flights" from UK territory, judges were told yesterday.

The claim was made by Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni, 28, a former Guantanamo Bay inmate who was returned to Pakistan in August 2009 after seven years in custody. Mr Madni alleges he was detained in Indonesia on 9 January 2002 and sent to Egypt, where he endured three months of torture. He alleges he was beaten, electrocuted, denied medical treatment and hung from metal hooks attached to the ceiling.

His lawyers, the legal charity Reprieve, say that there is "considerable circumstantial evidence" that the plane carrying Madni from Indonesia to Egypt passed through the British territory of the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Yesterday they asked the High Court in London to force the British Government to hand over all the information it might have about the flight, including the names of the US personnel Reprieve claims were aboard. They contend that documents held by the British Government could provide evidence that the UK authorities knew of the rendition flight and "turned a blind eye".

Lord Justice Toulson said it was also Mr Madni's case that "someone with an English accent" whom he suspected might have been "some kind of UK official" even though he said he was a member of the US national security service, was involved in his questioning, and was therefore complicit in his ill-treatment.

Nathalie Lieven QC, appearing for Mr Madni, said there was potential for Mr Madni to take legal action in the UK over the alleged complicity. In 2008 the Government was forced to make an embarrassing admission after the US admitted it had used Diego Garcia for rendition flights.

The court directed Mr Madni to apply for permission to seek judicial review of the Government's refusal to release documents his legal team say could support his case. It is understood that Mr Madni was detained at the request of the CIA after they claimed to have discovered a link to Richard Reid, the so-called British "shoe bomber". Mr Madni has persistently denied any connection with Reid. Diego Garcia is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory and has been made available to the US for defence purposes since 1967.

In June 2004, former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "The United States have repeatedly assured us that no detainees have at any time passed through Diego Garcia or its territorial waters or have disembarked there and that the allegations to that effect are totally without foundation. The Government is satisfied that their assurances are correct."

But in February 2008, Foreign Secretary David Miliband was forced to admit that on two separate occasions "a plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility in Diego Garcia". Reprieve has identified one of these detainees as Mr Madni.

Last night a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: "We do not render people in breach of our legal obligations and unreservedly condemn any practice of "extraordinary rendition" to torture.

"The Government's clear policy is not to participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment for any purpose. We did not give our permission for the two US rendition flights through Diego Garcia in 2002 and have very little information on the two individuals involved."

Source: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uk-involved-in-my-torture-says-suspect-1916510.html

True Love Never Witnessed Before

When my husband got arrested in 2006 a whole new world was opened up to me, because I was thrown into a world which beforehand I was oblivious to. For a long time my husband was the one who paid all the bills, did the shopping, I hardly went anywhere!

So when he got arrested it was a big culture shock for me, even though I had a feeling this was coming (because it was happening to everyone!) the thought that I was going to have to do these things myself I had never contemplated!

HHUGS helped my family so much and were generally concerned for our well being; not only did they help us financially, and with shopping, they always tried their utmost best to find us someone to take us to the prison and if that failed even in the early morning I remember them sending a cab round to take us to the prison and they paid for it! And I believe Allah put barakah in their efforts because I remember one time the cab driver was a Muslim and didn’t ask for all the money, al-hamdulillah. One volunteer even donated a car to us.

If that wasn’t enough most importantly they offered us their FRIENDSHIP! They invited us to their homes and showed us true love which I had never witnessed before in the ummah here in London. Their striving to help those distressed inspired me and at times saddens me that I'm not as active as they are.

And even up to this day they still check up on us to see if we are ok!

May Allah bless and increase this organization in all good, and give all their workers al Firdaws!

Ameen thumma ameen

Wife of a detainee

Source: www.hhugs.org.uk/index.php?state=2&article=217

UK Government Cannot Ignore Torture Accusations Anymore

In UK a scandal is raging after it was reveled that the British Secret services were torturing one of its citizens at Guantanamo Bay, but despite persistent calls the government declined to run a full inquiry. This story shows that not only a third world dictatorship can torture one of its own citizens. Allegedly it is happening in the UK as well, and not as a one-time occurrence, but as a persistent policy of the British government

Binyam Mohammed has accused MI5 officers of torturing him in Guantanamo Bay. A British court found that the accusations true, but the government then unsuccessfully tried to suppress the most damning statements about the involvement of the security services.

The case has led parliament’s own human rights watchdog to call for a full inquiry into the government’s role in torture. They are not the first to demand it, either. British peer Lord Hodgson has looked into extraordinary rendition, and says an investigation is essential.

“Transparency and openness and honesty are very important and if we don’t get it open and transparent, then we are the best recruiting sergeant for terrorists there can be,” concluded Lord Hodgson, Treasurer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition.

Craig Murray is no stranger to this debate. He was sacked as UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan for alleging that the UK government had decided to use information obtained through torture. He says it was a decision made at the highest level. “I know for certain that there was a policy of using intelligence from torture as part of the war on terror, a deliberate and considered policy,” said the Former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan. “I know for certain that Jack Straw as Foreign Secretary took that policy decision because when I was a British ambassador I was formally told that at a meeting in London discussing this specific issue,” Murray said.

The Home Office has responded to allegations of collusion in torture by releasing a variety of catch-all statements whole-heartedly refuting the allegations. A spokesman said that “The Government rejects in the strongest possible terms the suggestion that a policy of complicity in torture has been in place. We have taken a leading role in international efforts to eradicate torture. There is no truth in the more serious suggestion that it is our policy to collude in, solicit, or even directly participate in abuses of prisoners. Nor is it true that alleged wrongdoing is covered up.”

Murray begs to differ. When he first made his controversial allegations in 2002, no one believed him. Now, he feels vindicated. “At that time, the idea that the government systematically lied to parliament and the people was a proposition that most people wouldn’t believe was possible,” Murray said. “Sadly we’re now in a situation where people are completely cynical about it. Today if you say to the ordinary person on the street the government is lying, people will say yes, of course the government is lying, we all know that.”

Human rights groups say any kind of collusion in torture is bad enough, let alone attempting to cover it up. And as evidence piles up, public demand for an inquiry could be galvanized.

Source: http://rt.com/Politics/2010-03-03/uk-torture-citixens-guantanamo.html

US Is Asked To Free Last British Prisoner At Guantanamo Bay

Fresh demands were made today for the release of Guantanamo Bay's last British detainee.Shaker Aamer has been at the camp for eight years even though he has never been charged with a crime.The 42-year-old, whose wife and four children live in Wandsworth, has long been cleared for release but continues to suffer isolation and alleged abuse.

Today human rights group Reprieve, which is representing him, reiterated calls for his freedom.A spokeswoman for Reprieve said: “We are still trying to get him out. The British Government need to put more pressure on the US government.”

The appeal comes as Scotland Yard is investigating allegations that MI5 was complicit in the torture of Mr Aamer.Officers have applied to the high court for the release of classified documents relating to the case. Mr Aamer has accused British intelligence officers of being aware of his torture in US custody at Bagram airport in Afghanistan.

Police are already investigating claims of MI5 complicity in the ill-treatment of British resident Binyam Mohamed while being held by the US. Mr Aamer is a witness in Mr Mohamed's case.

Mr Aamer, his wife Zin Ahmad and their three children left London in 2001 to work for a charity in Afghanistan. But Mr Aamer, a Saudi Arabian who came to the UK in 1996, was captured in December 2001 by American forces who claim he was with the Taliban.

Reprieve maintains he was sold by villagers to local authorities, who in turn sold him to the Americans. His wife was pregnant at the time. He was transferred to Bagram airbase before being flown to Guantanamo Bay.

For more than four years, he has been in solitary confinement as guards believe he has too much influence over other detainees.

Source: www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23811588-us-is-asked-to-free-last-british-prisoner-at-guantanamo-bay.do

'Rules of the Game' by Asim Qureshi

Abstract

Following the 2005 bombing of London's transport infrastructure, Tony Blair declared that "the rules of the game have changed." Few anticipated the extent to which global counterterrorism would circumvent cherished laws, but profiling, incommunicado detention, rendition, and torture have become the accepted protocols of national security. In this book, Asim Qureshi travels to East Africa, Sudan, Pakistan, Bosnia, and the United States to record the testimonies of victims caught in counterterrorism's new game.

Qureshi's exhaustive efforts reveal the larger phenomenon that has changed the way governments view justice. He focuses on the profiling of Muslims by security services and concurrent mass arrests; detaining individuals without filing charges; domestic detention policies in North America; and the effect of Guantánamo on global perceptions of law and imprisonment.

Asim Qureshi is the senior researcher for Cageprisoners and with his team has published numerous reports on the use of unlawful detention, rendition, and torture in the "War on Terror."

To purchase the book, click here: www.amazon.co.uk/Rules-Game-Detention-Deportation-Disappearance/dp/1850659680/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256401042&sr=8-1

Please visit the official website for further information: www.rulesofthegame.info

SIAC Hearing For Mouloud Sihali – Show Your Support

When: Monday March 1st 2010, 10am until Friday March 5th, 2010
Where: Field House, 15 Breams Building, London EC4A 1D7 (Nearest Station: Chancery Lane)

“I don't know what will happen to me if I go back to Algeria. Will I be prosecuted? Will I be persecuted? That's what I fear. I want to clear my name before I even try to go, or think of going, back to my country. I can't go back now; you are accusing me of suspicion of being involved in some kind of terrorism. Do you think my country will let me go? I don't think so."

Mouloud Sihali was one of the original defendants in the ‘ricin’ plot. Acquitted after years in prison, his life was shattered once again two months later when his door was broken down and he was arrested under the vague accusation that he was ‘considered a threat to national security ’ and detained pending deportation to Algeria. After four months, Mouloud was released under extremely stringent bail conditions, akin to a control order, effectively placing him under house arrest. In May 2007, he won his hearing against deportation in SIAC after the judge ruled he was not a security threat.

However, this week Mouloud returns to SIAC, to pursue his asylum case, fighting deportation to Algeria on the basis of secret evidence. The Algerian authorities have threatened to withhold further intelligence from the British if the secret evidence is revealed in an open session in an immigration court. As a result the Home Office has agreed for the case to return to SIAC.

HHUGS encourages all who are able to attend the hearing on Monday to show their support. Mouloud will be present in court.

Please check the SIAC website to confirm the details of the hearing: www.facebook.com/l/876e2;www.siac.tribunals.gov.uk/

Guantanamo Four Arrive In Europe

Four inmates freed from the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have arrived in Europe, officials say. A Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan were sent to Albania, while a Palestinian was sent to Spain. The Palestinian is the first of five inmates that Spain has agreed to take. Albania has taken eight detainees.

US President Barack Obama has said he wants to close the Guantanamo camp this year, after setting and missing a deadline of 22 January 2010.

The US justice department said on Wednesday that there were now 188 inmates left at the prison camp.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8535392.stm

Poland Admits Role In CIA Rendition Programme

The Polish authorities have for the first time admitted their involvement in the CIA's secret programme for the rendition of high-level terrorist suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today. After years of stonewalling, Warsaw's air control service confirmed that at least six CIA flights had landed at a disused military air base in northern Poland in 2003.

"It is time for the authorities to provide a full accounting of Poland's role in rendition," Adam Bodnar, of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said. "These flight records reinforce the troubling findings of official European inquiries and global human rights groups, showing complicity with CIA abuse across Europe."

For years, European and human rights investigators have believed Poland played a key role in the secret renditions programme, which became a human rights scandal for the George Bush administration.

An extensive Council of Europe investigation in 2007 found that "especially sensitive high-value detainees" were held at a prison facility, rented by the CIA from the Poles, near the Szymany airfield in northern Poland.

The Polish authorities told the investigators they were not aware of flight data that would reveal the traffic in kidnapping.

But following a freedom of information campaign from the Helsinki Foundation and the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency released flight data showing that at least two of the aircraft used in the CIA operations flew from Kabul and Rabat, in Morocco, to Szymany at least six times between February and September 2003.

"We know that CIA detainees were held in those two locations in the period in question," the campaigners said. The two aircraft, a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream V, were US-registered and previously known to be part of the CIA operation. "In the past, the Polish government denied its involvement in rendition. It failed to provide any of these flight records to previous investigations," the campaigners said.

Analysis of the flight logs also indicated an attempted joint coverup by the CIA and the Polish authorities, with the aviation authorities being told that several of the flights were destined not for Szymany but for Warsaw.

"The CIA filed 'dummy' and false flight plans, or no flight plans at all, for the incoming and outgoing flights of N379P," the campaigners added. "[The Polish aviation authority] collaborated with the CIA by accepting the task of navigating these disguised flights into and out of Szymany airport without adhering to the requirements of international flight planning regulations.

"The most remarkable aspect is that the Polish government, which maintained for more than four years that no such records existed – or that, if they did, they were untraceable – has now provided an apparently comprehensive list of these landings, compiled and presented in an orderly and coherent fashion."

Source: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/22/poland-cia-rendition-flights

Reprieve: Tell Us The Truth About Torture

Human rights group Reprieve has launched a legal challenge aimed at forcing the government to publish its guidance to MI5 and MI6 agents on interrogation practices. Reprieve and Leigh Day & Co solicitors announced they are seeking a judicial review of the code of practice used by British intelligence services at a press conference in London.

The application states that there is "compelling evidence" demonstrating that, since at least 2002, "UK intelligence personnel have been engaged in activities amounting to complicity in torture" and that "the inevitable inference is that such activities have been in conformity with unlawful promulgated policies and guidance."

As well as the case of Binyam Mohamed, Reprieve cites that of Khaled al-Makhtari from Yemen, who was allegedly driven around Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by British personnel and interrogated using sleep deprivation and shackling. Another allegation involved Kenyan Salim Awadh, who claimed he was interrogated by a team of agents, including British personnel, while detained in Ethiopia in 2007.

The agents allegedly witnessed interrogators threatening to rape him, give him electric shocks and feed him with chemicals.

Last year Gordon Brown pledged to publish the most recent 2009 guidelines, a promise he has so far failed to live up to.

Partially disclosed guidance from 2002 states that agents were not required to "intervene" if they were aware of torture taking place. This was allegedly amended in 2004 but the updated guidance has not been published.

Leigh Day & Co partner Richard Stein said: "The case is to challenge the legality of the policy that currently exists in relation to the way that British agents should relate to other states and other states' agents when they are involved in interrogating, torturing, rendering people around the world, as we know happens.

"The worrying thing about the way that circumstances are unfolding, about what's been happening over the last eight years or so, is that what's happened is British authorities have been involved in colluding with others who are involved in torture." He added: "The torturer is inside the room torturing the person and the British agents are outside passing bits of information and questions under the door."

A Cabinet Office spokesman said the Prime Minister's "unprecedented commitment" to publish the new 2009 guidance was "the exception to the rule." He said the new guidance would be published as soon as possible but that there was "no intention" to publish the previous guidelines.

Reprieve legal director for secret prisons and rendition Cori Crider said: "This is a massively significant issue. This is not merely about what happened in 2002-3 but it is a question of whether such illegal action is still happening today and whether the state is continuing to encourage it.

"More and more cases keep emerging. While we continue to hear of cases where it would appear British intelligence services were uncomfortably close to being involved in torture, it remains a clear issue."

Source: www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/87210

Rights Groups Confirm CIA Extraordinary Rendition Planes Landed In Poland

Two human rights groups released documents, Monday confirming that planes associated with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) extraordinary rendition program landed in Poland on six occasions in 2003. The Open Society Justice Initiative and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights released flight records obtained through a freedom of information act request to the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (PANSA. Those records confirm at least six plane landings linked to the CIA at the Szczytno-Szymany airport in northern Poland between February and September 2003. The flights' origins included Kabul, Afghanistan, and Morocco. The official records confirm for the first time Poland's association with the CIA's secret detainee program:

There are new and important details contained in the documents, which provide - at the very least - confirmation of findings made in the June 2007 report of Council of Europe. These details are especially significant because they emanate from a Polish state authority and represent the first time that any agency of the Polish Government has provided public confirmation on the official record that aircraft associated with the CIA landed, repeatedly, at Szymany Airport.

In a statement, the executive director of the Justice Initiative used the report to demand accountability [press release] by the US on this issue, saying, "We are finding out the truth in Poland, and it is time for the US to come clean."

Poland has been investigating the CIA's extraordinary rendition program since 2008. Under that program, terrorism suspects were seized and flown to secret locations outside the US for interrogation and imprisonment. Poland allegedly housed the largest CIA detention facility in Europe, but has previously denied any connection to the program. In addition to Poland, Romania and Lithuania are alleged to have housed secret CIA facilities. On his third day in office in 2009, US President Barack Obama ordered the closure of all CIA secret prisons. In February 2007, the European Parliament condemned more than a dozen European states for their roles in the program. Then-president George W. Bush acknowledged the existence of the secret facilities in September 2006 but provided no details on their locations or operation.

Source: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2010/02/rights-groups-confirm-cia-extraordinary.php

Outside The Law - Stories From Guantanamo Tour

Focuses on prisoners whose torture allegations have been exposed by UK courts and are being investigated by police.

Former prisoner Omar Deghayes and journalist Andy Worthington will be speaking at screenings across the country.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a new documentary film, directed by filmmaker Polly Nash and journalist Andy Worthington (author of The Guantánamo Files). The film focuses on the stories of three particular prisoners – Shaker Aamer (who is still held), Binyam Mohamed (released in 2009) and Omar Deghayes (released in 2007) – and the tour coincides with a mounting scandal involving British complicity in torture, which focuses on Shaker Aamer and Binyam Mohamed.

On 10 February, the UK Court of Appeal ordered the release of a summary of documents revealing that US agents had tortured Binyam Mohamed while he was held in Pakistan in 2002, and that the British government knew about it. Foreign secretary David Miliband had tried to suppress this summary for 18 months. MI5’s involvement in Mohamed’s case is now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police, and on 19 February it was revealed that the Met is now investigating claims that Shaker Aamer was tortured in US custody in Afghanistan, while British agents were present.

Saturday February 27: National Film Theatre, South Bank (organised by the BFI)
Monday March 1: LSE, London
Thursday March 4: Roehampton University
Friday March 5: Oxford Brookes University
Tuesday March 9: Bradford Playhouse
Wednesday March 10: Norwich
Thursday March 11: Sheffield Hallam University
Tuesday March 16: SOAS, London
Wednesday March 17: UCL, London
Thursday March 18: The University of Kent, Canterbury
Monday March 22: The University of Dundee
Tuesday March 23: The University of Aberdeen
Wednesday March 24: Edinburgh
Thursday March 25: Glasgow
Further dates to follow.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” tells the story of Guantánamo, and includes sections on “extraordinary rendition” and secret prisons, explaining how the Bush administration turned its back on domestic and international laws, how prisoners were rounded up in Afghanistan and Pakistan without adequate screening (and often for bounty payments), and why some of these men may have been in Afghanistan or Pakistan for reasons unconnected with militancy or terrorism (as missionaries or humanitarian aid workers, for example).

The film is based around interviews with former prisoners (Moazzam Begg and, in his first major interview, Omar Deghayes, who was released in December 2007), lawyers for the prisoners (Clive Stafford Smith in the UK and Tom Wilner in the US), and journalist and author Andy Worthington, and also includes appearances from Guantánamo’s former Muslim chaplain James Yee, Shakeel Begg, a London-based Imam, and the British human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” provides a powerful rebuke to those who believe that Guantánamo holds “the worst of the worst” and that the Bush administration was justified in responding to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 by holding men neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects with habeas corpus rights, but as “illegal enemy combatants” with no rights whatsoever.

For further information, or to arrange interviews and/or screenings, please contact: Andy Worthington on 020 8691 9316 / email: andy@andyworthington.co.uk / Polly Nash on 07976 316266 or email: p.nash@lcc.arts.ac.uk.

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” is a Spectacle Production. The tour is arranged by Spectacle, the Guantánamo Justice Centre and Andy Worthington:
Spectacle: www.spectacle.co.uk/projects_page.php?id=140.
Guantánamo Justice Centre: www.guantanamojusticecentre.com/.
Andy Worthington: www.andyworthington.co.uk/.

For full tour details see: www.andyworthington.co.uk/out...ur-dates-2010/.

DVDs are available to buy from Spectacle: www.spectacle.co.uk/catalogue...ion.php?id=538.

Larijani Says Human Rights Used As Political Tool

Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said Saturday that the issue of human rights is being used as political leverage by world powers.

In a meeting with the Congolese Parliament speaker, Larijani said outrageous actions by the United States Army personnel in Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons have never been condemned by human rights organizations. The remarks came after the powers, in a recent meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, accused Iran of human rights abuse in the country.

Mohammad Javad Larijani, the secretary general of Iran's High Council for Human Rights, told the council that the country is an open democracy where free speech and justice are guaranteed. "Iran is becoming one of the prominent democratic states in the region," he said.

Source: www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=119087§ionid=351020101

Why Britain Turns A Blind Eye To Torture

The torture debate is once again raising the ugliest of heads. Following the revelations of MI5's knowledge of torture in the Binyam Mohamed case, ministers have been hot in denial of any collusion in torture with the US or other allies.

Jonathan Evans, head of MI5, told us that Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger's assessment of the culture of suppression in MI5 was “the opposite of the truth”. That constitutes an extraordinary attack on our second-most-senior judge by the head of MI5. At the same time, Alan Johnson and David Miliband joined forces to proclaim that the allegation that our security forces collude in torture is “disgraceful, and untrue”.

Not everybody is convinced. Lord Goldsmith has called for a public inquiry, and so has the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights. I am particularly unconvinced, because I was sacked as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan more than five years ago for pointing out our complicity in torture.

That story is going to be told in a David Hare dramatisation of my memoir, Murder in Samarkand, tomorrow on Radio 4. More than five years on, the story remains depressingly topical, and a reflection of a shameful, sordid part of our history to which ministers will still not admit.

I have seen how the system works. To the best of my knowledge, neither MI5 nor MI6 officers personally participated in torture. The vast bulk of our torture material in recent years has come to us through the CIA. The basic tenet of the UK/US intelligence-sharing agreement is that all intelligence is shared.

So when you hear of a prisoner being waterboarded or otherwise tortured by the CIA or their proxies anywhere in the world, the UK ought certainly to have received any intelligence report that resulted from that torture — just as we received “intelligence” from the torture of Binyam Mohamed.

This is how it worked in Tashkent.

I did not have an MI6 station in my embassy because MI6's health and safety people considered the country too dangerous (sorry, James Bond fans). But the Uzbek security services, perhaps the most brutal in the world, were considered “friendly”. They passed on intelligence material from “detainee interrogations” to the CIA. The CIA issued intelligence reports from this material, which they copied to MI6. MI6 released these reports around Whitehall to senior officials and ministers, and at the same time copied them to me in Tashkent.

So material which had originated in the Uzbek security service torture chambers a few miles away, and passed through the US Embassy just down the road, eventually got to me via Washington and London.

The key point — and one I cannot stress too much — is that the vast majority of this material was absolute rubbish. The Uzbek government was eager to convince the US it was fighting a massive Islamic militant threat, so that the US government would continue to give large subsidies to this appalling dictatorship, and particularly to its security services.

The Uzbek government therefore rounded up en masse dissidents, the religious and those who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and tortured them into admitting membership of al Qaeda or other allied terror organisations, and into denouncing long lists of other “terrorists”.

The tortured were given the lists to sign up to, exactly as done by Stalin's secret police, the direct institutional ancestor of the Uzbek security service. The mundane truth is that torture in the “War on Terror” does not bring Hollywood-style information about ticking bombs in shopping malls.

It brings piles of rubbish that clog up our intelligence analysis. Torture gives not the truth but what the torturer wants to hear to make the torture stop. And given the destinations on the extraordinary rendition circuit — like Egypt, Morocco, Afghanistan, Syria and Uzbekistan — the relationship between the torturers and the truth was often very distant indeed.

I can swear to you that none of the intelligence I saw from detainees in Uzbekistan was useful. Much of it was palpably untrue, such as referring to terror training camps in places where we knew they physically did not exist.

I was called back to London on 7 March 2003 and told directly that it was not illegal to obtain intelligence from torture and indeed it was policy to do so. Two months ago I obtained the minutes of that meeting, though redacted, under the Freedom of Information Act. There was a separate minute from Jack Straw's private secretary recording Straw's approval of what I had been told.

There was an additional refinement. The intelligence report as issued to me and to ministers did not give you the name of the detainee who was interrogated. This was so you could not prove a specific individual had been tortured to give that information. It was a deliberate double blind to enable ministers to say that they had never knowingly seen intelligence obtained by torture.

I should say for the sake of complete honesty that I did not understand at the time that I had stumbled on the extraordinary rendition programme while I was in Tashkent. I knew the CIA were flying in and handing over prisoners. I knew the CIA people who did it. But I wrongly assumed at the time that the prisoners were all Uzbeks.

But then when I raised these issues first with the Foreign Office in 2002 there was so much we did not know. Most of us did not know the phrase “extraordinary rendition”. We had not yet seen the photos of Abu Ghraib. We did not know about waterboarding.

It is hard to realise now, but when I was dismissed in 2004 and first blew the whistle that we were routinely complicit with torture, large sections of the media and public did not believe me. They simply could not imagine that Britain would do such a thing. Now I never meet anybody who disbelieves me. We desperately need that public inquiry.

Source: www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23807775-why-britain-turns-a-blind-eye-to-torture.do

Khadr’s Lawyers Challenge Ottawa’s Move To Block Evidence

Political opponents blasted Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision not to seek the repatriation of Omar Khadr, saying Canada’s move to simply block tainted evidence from use at his military trial is not enough. The criticism came as Khadr’s Canadian legal team said it would challenge the federal government’s failure to seek the young man’s return from Guantanamo Bay.

The decision by the Conservative government to merely ask American prosecutors to exclude tainted statements to Canadian investigators at his upcoming U.S. military trial fails to address the serious violation of Khadr’s constitutional rights that the Supreme Court of Canada identified, Khadr’s lawyers believe.

New Democrat leader Jack Layton called the Conservative announcement via press release when the country’s attention was turned to the Olympics “cynical.”

“It’s a disgraceful slap in the face to the Supreme Court and to the concept the Canadian government should be defending human rights pursuant to our Charter,” said Layton. “Our government has been the worst of all the various governments that had citizens in Guantanamo in terms of stepping forward and ensuring due justice is provided for an individual.”

You’ve shut down Parliament, you put out a press release rather than actually facing the media to answer some of the tough questions and defend yourself. And you do it at a time when everybody’s preoccupied with our national sport on the world stage at an Olympic games taking place in Canada.”

Liberal Opposition leader Michael Ignatieff told reporters Wednesday that the Conservatives “did the absolute minimum” in response to the high court ruling. “In our view,” said Ignatieff, “they should have added a crucial additional fact in a diplomatic note … that he was a child soldier.” “We think this is a test case in the indivisibility of Canadian citizenship. Many Canadians including myself take a very serious view of the accusations against Mr. Khadr,” said Ignatieff. “But he’s a Canadian citizen. And you don’t pick and choose here. You defend them all, otherwise no one’s citizenship is worth very much, right? That’s the key issue. And we’ve said for 18 months you should bring Mr. Khadr home and he should face whatever process needs to be faced here.”

Lawyer Nathan Whitling said in an email that Khadr’s team would file applications with the Federal Court which they hope will be heard on an expedited basis. The applications would seek to quash the federal move to simply block use of Khadr’s statements in evidence, as well as the government’s decision not to ask the U.S. Administration to return Khadr to Canada.

However, the federal Conservative government, in announcing its step on Tuesday, stressed its actions were backed up by the Supreme Court of Canada’s conclusion that it was up to cabinet to decide how to best act on sensitive matters of foreign policy-making.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced Ottawa had delivered a diplomatic note to the Obama Administration formally seeking “assurances that any evidence or statements shared with U.S. authorities as a result of the interviews of Mr. Khadr by Canadian agents and officials in 2003 and 2004 not be used against him by U.S. authorities in the context of proceedings before the Military Commission or elsewhere.”

The third Canadian interrogation of Khadr came after a Foreign Affairs agent was informed Khadr had been subjected to a three-week program of sleep deprivation, known as the “frequent flyer” program, to soften him up for questioning.

Canada’s top court declared Khadr’s Charter rights were violated by the Canadian officials’ actions. The ruling said the interrogation of a youth who had no access to legal counsel, knowing the result would be shared with his prosecutors “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”

But the judges stopped well short of forcing the federal Conservative government to seek his return.

Khadr, accused in the death of a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, remains in a Guantanamo Bay prison – the only Western detainee still held in the military jail complex. Other Western countries like the U.K. and Australia, have repatriated their nationals, either to face trial or release upon their return.

The Conservative government in Ottawa, however, has shown no appetite for interfering with the American military prosecution of Khadr, whom it calls an “accused terrorist.” The Obama administration is trying to close down Guantanamo Bay, but its efforts have slowed, even as the treatment of detainees in American custody is coming under increased international scrutiny.

A British court recently forced the U.K. to disclose details surrounding the treatment of an Ethiopian-born Briton who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, held in American custody.

The British government revealed Binyam Mohamed had been subjected to “continuous sleep deprivation,” was shackled during interrogations and was exposed to “threats and inducements” that included playing on his fears of being “removed from United States custody and ‘disappearing.’”

News reports said the documents revealed the British Foreign Office had concluded the treatment – if it had been at the hands of British officials—would have breached international treaties banning torture. Khadr’s lawyers allege he was exposed to similar treatment at the hands of his U.S. interrogators. He is slated to be tried by military commission in July. Pre-trial motions are scheduled to be heard in April.

Source: www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/766896--khadr-s-lawyers-challenge-ottawa-s-move-to-block-evidence

Save Shaker Aamer Campaign: Demonstration Outside David Miliband Meeting

Date: Friday 19 February
Time: 5.30pm
Venue: St Paul's Church, Hammersmith Broadway, W6

David Miliband has ignored our request for a SSAC deputation to meet with him, put to him on our behalf by Martin Linton MP. Martin has made a number of approaches to the Foreign Secretary since summer 2009. We have to press even more strongly for this meeting to take place. There should be no reason for the Foreign Secretary to avoid a meeting with us given the government's declared position that they have earlier called for Shaker's release. If you are able to attend the Hammersmith meeting please do your best to call for Shaker's release, for the government to do much more than it has done so far - to secure his release, raise the long term suffering of the family which is an extremely serious issue in itself, and of course the likely deteriorating medical condition of Shaker himself.

The meeting starts at 6.30pm. Local residents in W6 are strongly urged to attend to put questions to the Foreign Secretary about his failure to act in Mr. Aamer’s case. The meeting is organised by local MP Andy Slaughter. The church is near Hammersmith underground station.

Organised by the SSAC. Please contact the LGC for more details: london.gtmo@gmail.com

Spain Can Accept Five Guantanamo Detainees

Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said Monday his country was ready to take in five detainees from the US prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo, Cuba. "The Spanish government has volunteered to take in five Guantanamo detainees," Moratinos told a press conference in Madrid.

The foreign minister had announced last month that Spain was finalising procedures for taking in two Guantanamo detainees, a Palestinian and a Yemeni national. He did not indicate the nationalities of the other three.

"We are encouraging other European countries to do their utmost" on taking in former Guantanamo detainees, he added. "If we all agree (in the European Union) that Guantanamo was a horror, an unacceptable and morally reprehensible anachronism, then let us make the effort to close it down," he added.

Moratinos was speaking after a meeting with his Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorim and EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton held under the Spanish presidency of the EU. The El Pais daily said Monday that if Spain were to accept five Guantanamo detainees it would be one of the "more generous" countries given that most European nations have only agreed to take between one and three.

US President Barack Obama announced last year that he wanted to close the war-on-terror jail set up by his predecessor George W. Bush at a US base in Cuba in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

However, Obama's self-imposed January 22 deadline passed unmet.

Washington has asked third countries to help by taking in detainees cleared of any charges who cannot be sent back to their homelands, often because of fears they could be persecuted there. Moratinos recalled Monday that all 27 EU member states had previously said they would help President Obama, a commitment "which explicitly included the possibility of accepting Guantanamo detainees on European soil."

Source: www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jK6n11jMR7F_Rz91eCiPuBEkLF6g