Brown and the "ghost prisoners"
Aamer Anwar
The British government has come under increasing pressure over the last year as details of the routine use of US-sanctioned torture came to light through the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” – kidnapping suspects and shipping them out to secret prisons abroad for torture and interrogation.
Under US laws brought in after 9/11, those suspected of terrorism offences can be transferred to military custody on the orders of US President George Bush. They can then be detained indefinitely, tried by military commission with no right of appeal, and even subjected to the death penalty.
Military detainees need not be held on US soil, and there is a deliberate policy of not doing so. They are shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, or face secret torture camps in Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. According to reports in the New York Times, the CIA has transferred hundreds of terror suspects to foreign prisons since 9/11, of which some of the flights have landed for refueling at Glasgow Prestwick Airport.
These “high-value detainees” are true ghost prisoners, undeclared to the Red Cross, and held, in some cases, for years without any outside communication, even with their families. People considered to be a threat have been quite literally kidnapped off the streets.
At a press conference last year, Tony Blair denied all knowledge of CIA rendition flights passing through British airspace, but this was a lie. A recent report from the Council of Europe named Britain among 14 complicit European countries and identified covert CIA detention centres in Poland, Romania, and the British-controlled island of Diego Garcia.
“We have sufficient grounds to declare that the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA’s illegal activities on their territories,” said the report, which includes testimonies from many serving and former US and European intelligence agents. “What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven: large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where it is known that torture is common practice.”
The report gave a shocking depiction of the conditions in which prisoners were held: “Detainees went through months of solitary confinement and extreme sensory deprivation in cramped cells, shackled and handcuffed at all times.” Prisoners were subjected to “a constant hum of white noise from loudspeakers”, punctuated by “cackling laughter, and the screams of women and children.”
Using the 9/11 attacks as moral justification for these disgraceful actions, the CIA operates with the full support of our government. Yet this is an organization that has, in its time, collaborated with Saddam Hussein, providing him with lists of socialists and trade unionists to be eliminated. It also worked with what was to become the Al-Qaeda network, when it fought the Russians in Afghanistan.
This dreadful history is hardly secret, although it is rarely discussed. There are members of the New Labour government – Gordon Brown included – who certainly know the CIA’s record. Today they turn a convenient blind eye to CIA rendition and torture. Now they see these tactics as necessary to safeguard the “New World Order” that they have bought into.
Aamer Anwar, a past winner of The Firm’s Criminal Lawyer of the Year award, is among Scotland’s most prominent human rights lawyers.
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3 comments on Brown and the "ghost prisoners"
Alec Macpherson 11 months ago
There is much about rendition and detainment of foreign "combatants" which is objectionable. I personally feel that pre-2001, the legislation existed to have treated them as pirates or brigands - attacking foreign shipping, setting up statelets. Yet, Aamer Anwar’s article is redolent with truisms: unfalsifiable statements which, to disagree with the way in which they have worded, would paint one as reactionary and autocratic.
Arguably false, however, is the claim that Western spooks worked what became al-Qaida in funding opposition to the Soviet occupation. This was created by the independently wealthy scion of a Saudi oil-baron, Osama bin Laden and his ideological fellows. Final moral responsibility lies there.
I suspect Aamer’s choice of involvement, i.e. working, is a piece of deft footwork. Unless a nation takes a strict isolationalist position, it will find itself “working” with a great number of groups which have conflicting views and policies on certain matter. In the case of Soviet-era Afghanistan, this could simply have been not opposing them.
Primary “help” or “assistance” from Western spooks were directed at the Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, whereas the southern Pashtun dominated groups which became the Taleban received principle funding from Arab agencies – principally Saudi intelligence – and Pakistani ISI. Thus, the wards of Western agencies were those which were forced out by the Taleban following the Soviet withdrawal.
Don’t take my word for it. Cast your minds back to every report coming out of Afghanistan during the 1990s. The claim that Western agencies had any involvement with funding or condoning al-Qaida or the Taleban is gross cynicism bordering on plain nihilism.
marcus plowright 10 months ago
To write off our government's invovlement in turning a blind eye to CIA operations, or indeed being involved somehow with rendition flights is the easy road out. Why not confront the issues?
-->Arguably false, however, is the claim that Western spooks worked what became al-Qaida in funding opposition to the Soviet occupation. This was created by the independently wealthy scion of a Saudi oil-baron, Osama bin Laden and his ideological fellows. Final moral responsibility lies there.
Does wording really make a difference? Is this not a truism? What ever the evidence, there is enough to base an argument for both sides, but neither is sufficient in falsifying the other. Our focus should be on finding the evidence to solve the crime, and if we choose to disregard all possibilities then we're kicking ourselves in the foot. But being open to possibilities, no matter how far fetched and lucid, is a plus.
Now all we've got to do is start a commision in rendition flights and the UKs involvment is breaking international law. Any takers? It won't be easy...
Alec Macpherson 10 months ago
Marcus, yes, the wording does matter. It is, j’accuse, an effort to present a patent lie in sufficient layers of doubt of confusement in the hope that we don’t notice. Aawar used plausible deniability to suggest Western spooks created the Taleban. They didn’t. The only comment he didn’t make was “think of the puppies!”.
I like the concept of “international law” and certainly believe it’s an ideal worth pursuing. As I hoped I made clear in my original post, I do get excited about the ex jure system over Gitmo and do think international - not to mention, domestic - agreements have been disregarded.
What if it were judged that the USA was entitled to try all Gitmo inmates according to US law and, subsequently, convicted every remaining prisoner? Would you accept this judgement? If so, what would have been your objection to the status quo ante? International law is only a few decades old and fraught with national conflicts and riven with partisan preferences. If you believe a matter is immoral or beyond the pale, you should be able to make your case without appeals to [its] authority. If your case is based simply on a dull legalistic opinion it becomes, I am afraid, morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Of the released inmates at Gitmo, some have been seen to have been entirely blameless - hence my animation at the suspension of rule of law - whilst others have been subsequently seen to have been connected to the charges and, even, killed in armed-conflict. Commonly held up in the Yu Kay as an example of gross injustice, Ruhal Ahmed of the “Tipton Three” (the Michael Winterbottom film) recently, with a giggle, admitted on national television to having not… well… having done what he was claimed he had been. That is, being an innocent merely attending a wedding or going off with a Red Cross mission.. In fact, he said he had actively sought paramilitary training.
Thus, his other unsubstantiated claims about mistreatment become suspect in my mind. I do actually see little reasons to doubt the tales of portacabins being lined with firewood and turned into furnaces by, I assume, forces in Northern Alliance. So, if, as he says, he willingly chose to fight in a war against such a foe, he should count himself fortunate he was not killed. And, yes, in many cases, I would say the same about British soldiers.
Furthermore, Aamer is in danger of being hoisted by his own petard, in my rarely sought after opinion. He uses the wonderfully anodyne comment “using the 9/11 attacks for these disgraceful actions”. Very well. This mass-slaughter claimed the lives of some 3,000 innocent individuals. So, in the game of Atrocity Olympics - your one was worse than the other, na-na-ni-na-na! - I suggest he is segueing into, 11/9 trumps the similar number who have passed through Gitmo and (barring, I think, those three suicides) not been killed. Trumps it every single time.
See the problem?
As for the accusation that inmates have been farmed out to torturing nations; waterboarding is, I firmly believe, practiced by US personnel and I absolutely condemn this as torture. I assume you also believe this takes place. So, can you not see the problem with, then, accusing the US of permitting third parties to commit torture which you (and I) believe takes place already?