Jan Klimkowski Wrote:For completeness, here is what it is accepted was done to Binyam Mohamed:

Quote:Paragraph 23:

The problem in this case is not that Mr Mohamed was tortured in the UK. He was, however, subjected to torture. In (US court case) Farhi Saeed Bin Mohamed v Barak Obama (Civil Action No 05-1347 (GK)), it is publicly recorded that "the Government does not challenge or deny the accuracy of Binyam Mohamed's story of brutal treatment (p58)…the account in Binyam Mohamed's diary bears several indicia of reliability (p61)." Note is taken of his "willingness to test the truth of his version of events in both the courts of law as well as the court of public opinion" (p62). Towards the end of its judgment two specific matters are recorded:

"(a)…[Mr Mohamed's] trauma lasted for 2 long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one foreign prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in various plots to imperil Americans. The Government does not dispute this evidence."(p64)

"(b) In this case, even though the identity of the individual interrogator changed (from nameless Pakistanis, to Moroccans, to Americans, and to special agent (the identity is redacted)), there is no question that throughout his ordeal Binyam Mohamed was being held at the behest of the United States (p68)…The court finds that [Mr Mohamed's] will was overborne by his lengthy prior torture, and therefore his confessions to special agent…do not represent reliable evidence to detain petitioner"

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/65.html

Quote:It is rare that the intelligence services comment in public, but some of the recent reporting on the supposed activities and culture of MI5 has been so far from the truth that it couldn’t be left unchallenged, particularly against the backdrop of the current severe terrorist threat to this country.

As head of the security service, I know that the reason the Government appealed against the Divisional Court judgment in the Binyam Mohammed case was not to cover up supposed British collusion in mistreatment, but in order to protect the vital intelligence relationship with America and, by extension, with other countries. We cannot protect the UK without the help and co-operation of other countries. The US, in particular, has been generous in sharing intelligence with us on terrorist threats; that has saved British lives and must be protected.

The “seven paragraphs” now published are, in fact, less politically explosive than some commentators had imagined. The Government would not have objected to their publication in themselves, despite the unacceptable actions they describe. But the appeal was necessary because the paragraphs were received on intelligence channels and provided on the basis that they would not be disclosed.

The United States does not have to share intelligence with us. Nor do other countries. The US government has expressed its deep disappointment at the publication of the paragraphs and has said that the judgment will be factored into its decision-making in future. We must hope, for our safety and security, that this does not make it less ready to share intelligence with us.

There have also been a series of allegations that MI5 has been trying to “cover up” its activities. That is the opposite of the truth. People who choose to work in the service do so because they want to protect the UK and its liberties. We are an accountable public organisation and take our legal and oversight responsibilities seriously. The material our critics are drawing on to attack us is taken from our own records, not prised from us by some external process but willingly provided by us to the court, in the normal way. No cover-up there.

Likewise, we co-operate willingly with the Intelligence and Security Committee so that it can fulfil its oversight role, which we support and which benefits the service. Sometimes the ISC draws attention in its reports to aspects of our work that it believes fall short of what it, and through it the public, might expect. That is right and proper in a democratic system. One shortfall it highlighted in 2005 and again in 2007 was that the British intelligence community was slow to detect the emerging pattern of US mistreatment of detainees after September 11, a criticism that I accept.

But there wasn’t any similar change of practice by the British intelligence agencies. We did not practise mistreatment or torture then and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf.

Meanwhile, some commentators have given the impression that there is a lack of accountability for the actions of the intelligence agencies when interviewing detainees after September 11. This again flies in the face of the facts. A string of civil cases has been brought against the Government and the agencies by former detainees who claim that their rights have been infringed.

The issues involved are serious and complex: it is right that they should be considered by the courts and we, with others on the Government side, are co-operating fully in the process. Inevitably this will take time, but all involved will get the chance to put their case.

Nor are only civil claims being pursued: an allegation has been made that one of my officers might have committed a criminal offence. That allegation (and it is no more than an allegation) is being investigated by the police. As the Government has said repeatedly, if serious allegations are made, they will be investigated appropriately. And these are not just fine words. It is happening. Both the Government and the Opposition in the House of Commons on Wednesday underlined how important it is that Britain lives up to its legal and moral responsibilities in countering terrorism. If we fail to do so, we are giving a propaganda weapon to our opponents. I fully agree with that judgment.

As a service, and working closely with partners here and abroad, we will do all that we can to keep the country safe from terrorist attack. We will use all the powers available to us under the law.

For their part, our enemies will also seek to use all tools at their disposal to attack us. That means not just bombs, bullets and aircraft but also propaganda and campaigns to undermine our will and ability to confront them. Their freedom to voice extremist views is part of the price we pay for living in a democracy, and it is a price worth paying because in the long term, our democracy underpins our security.

But we would do well to maintain a fair and balanced view of events as they unfold and avoid falling into conspiracy theory and caricature.

Quote:As head of the security service, I know that the reason the Government appealed against the Divisional Court judgment in the Binyam Mohammed case was not to cover up supposed British collusion in mistreatment, but in order to protect the vital intelligence relationship with America and, by extension, with other countries. We cannot protect the UK without the help and co-operation of other countries. The US, in particular, has been generous in sharing intelligence with us on terrorist threats; that has saved British lives and must be protected.

The “seven paragraphs” now published are, in fact, less politically explosive than some commentators had imagined. The Government would not have objected to their publication in themselves, despite the unacceptable actions they describe. But the appeal was necessary because the paragraphs were received on intelligence channels and provided on the basis that they would not be disclosed.

The United States does not have to share intelligence with us. Nor do other countries. The US government has expressed its deep disappointment at the publication of the paragraphs and has said that the judgment will be factored into its decision-making in future. We must hope, for our safety and security, that this does not make it less ready to share intelligence with us.

David Guyatt Wrote:I tried to post this fully but couldn't. it's just to sickening...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8511905.stm

Magda Hassan Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:I tried to post this fully but couldn't. it's just to sickening...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8511905.stm

All these mendatious pollies turning on the waterworks and feeling sorry for themselves. They must be worried. Cynical bastards.

Quote:MI5 watchdog slammed over torture probe
Parliamentary committee accused by senior Labour critic of closing ranks with secret service

Tracy McVeigh, Chief Reporter
The Observer, Sunday 14 February 2010

The senior Labour MP who led the revolt against Tony Blair's 90-day detention bill yesterday intensified the political storm over Britain's alleged complicity in torture by attacking the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) for failing in its remit as overseer of the security services. The ISC, David Winnick said, had become a "mouthpiece for MI5".

"The impression given is that this committee, which reports directly to the prime minister, is in danger of being open to the accusation that it has gone native," said Winnick.

His attacks came after Kim Howells, the ISC's chairman, defended MI5's director general, Jonathan Evans, in the row over allegations that British security officers colluded in torture. Howells denied that the ISC had been misled by the security service and said the committee had seen no evidence that MI5 had been involved in torture.

Any claim to the contrary, said Howells on Friday in a joint statement with the senior Tory on the ISC, Michael Mates, was "calumny and a slur and it should not be made".

Evans publicly contested the allegations against his officers in an article in Friday's Daily Telegraph. "We did not practise mistreatment or torture and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to do so on our behalf," he stated.

Winnick, a long-standing member of the home affairs select committee, said the ISC needed to start holding sessions in public to reverse its current "unhappy" lack of accountability. He accused it of closing ranks with the intelligence services at the very time when scrutiny should be at its most intense.

The attack puts further pressure on the government after it lost a long and damaging court case to try to suppress a court document which showed that MI5 officers were complicit in the ill-treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a British former Guantánamo inmate.

The furore only increased when it was revealed that a draft judgment written by the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, had originally contained a strong attack on MI5 officers who had "deliberately misled parliament" and shared a "culture of suppression". The government's lawyer, Jonathan Sumption, successfully demanded the removal of the phrases.

The home secretary, Alan Johnson, then waded into the fray, accusing the media of publishing "ludicrous lies" about the intelligence services and the shadow home secretary, David Davis, of spreading "gross and offensive misrepresentation of the truth". Davis had alleged that there were other cases beyond Mohamed's where M15 or MI6 had been involved.

Last night, Mates told the Observer that he was appalled at the "careless use" of allegations flying around and defended the ISC, saying the only mistake MI5 had made in regard to torture was being a little slow to understand that the Americans had been authorised to use torture by "those two dreadful men" – Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

"MI5 and MI6 were slow in identifying that the Americans had sanctioned waterboarding and other torture that no civilised western society should have," said Mates. But he insisted that Neuberger's draft judgment was wrong.

"Nobody should be making allegations that are not supported by evidence," he said. He had seen in full the evidence of witness B (the MI5 officer who interrogated Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002 and whose report showed that he had been deprived of sleep) and there was no reference to anything more. Witness B is the subject of a Scotland Yard investigation, but sources have told the Observer it is unlikely to result in prosecution.

Quote:How David Davis Exposed Britain’s Secret Torture Scandal
9.7.09



The following is the statement that David Davis MP made to the House of Commons on the evening of July 7, which exposed the extent of British complicity in the torture in Pakistan of British citizen Rangzieb Ahmed. For further information, see the article “B[URL="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/07/09/britains-secret-torture-policy-exposed/"]Britain’s Secret Torture Policy Exposed.”
[/URL]
Four years ago today, this country suffered a terrible atrocity at the hands of terrorists: 52 people were killed and many more horribly injured. I stood at the dispatch box that day and spoke of the need to face down this barbarism. In the subsequent weeks and months, I was proud of the calm and just way that the ordinary British citizen dealt with this assault and of the comparative absence of people trying to make scapegoats of the ordinary, decent Muslim community. I was proud of the courage, sense of honour, tolerance and justice of our citizens at home.

I am afraid that I cannot be so complimentary about the actions of our government abroad. In the last year, there have been at least 15 cases of British citizens or British residents claiming to be tortured by foreign intelligence agencies with the knowledge, complicity and, in some cases, presence of British intelligence officers. One case — that of Binyam Mohamed — has been referred to the police by the attorney general, which implies that there is at least a prima facie case to answer. The most salient others include Moazzam Begg, Tariq Mahmoud, Salahuddin Amin and Rashid Rauf, all in Pakistan, Jamil Rahman in Bangladesh, Alam Ghafoor in United Arab Emirates, and Azhar Khan and others in Egypt.

For each case, the government have denied complicity, but at the same time fiercely defended the secrecy of their actions, making it impossible to put the full facts in the public domain, despite the clear public interest in doing so. Although the combined circumstantial evidence of complicity in all these cases is overwhelming, it has not so far been possible — because of the government’s improper use of state secrecy to cover up the evidence — to establish absolutely clear sequences of cause and effect.

In the case I am about to describe, we can follow the entire chain of events from original suspicion, through active encouragement of the Pakistani authorities to arrest and through the subsequent collaboration between UK and Pakistani agencies. This is the case of Rangzieb Ahmed, a convicted terrorist, whose treatment I can describe in some detail.

As the House will realise, the account I am about to relay comes from several sources. I cannot properly give my sources, given the vindictive attitude of this government, particularly the Foreign Office, to whistleblowers. Indeed, in this case of Rangzieb Ahmed, the authorities were so paranoid that they threatened to arrest a journalist for reporting facts stated in open court. Nevertheless, although I am prevented from naming my sources, I can say that I am confident of these facts beyond reasonable doubt. I will not, of course, disclose any names, or anything that discloses intelligence agency techniques — other than torture — or other issues that threaten national security.

I should say that the individual whose case I am going to describe is not someone for whom I have any natural sympathy. He is a convicted — indeed, self-confessed — terrorist. So what I am talking about today is just as much about defending our own civilised standards as it is about deploring what was done to this man in the name of defending our country.

In 2005-06, Rangzieb Ahmed was a suspected terrorist who was kept under surveillance for about a year before leaving the country to go first to Dubai and on a subsequent trip to Pakistan. During that time, evidence was collected against him, on the basis of which he was later convicted. Let me repeat that point, as it is very important to my subsequent argument — during that time, evidence was collected, on the basis of which he was subsequently convicted.

Despite the authorities having that evidence, he was — astonishingly — not arrested but instead allowed to leave the country. To understand how odd this decision was, we should remember that this was only a year after the tragedy of 7/7, after which agencies were criticised for allowing terrorist suspects to leave the country to go to Pakistan. Since they knew he was leaving, since they knew where he was going, and since they had more than enough evidence to arrest him, allowing him to leave was clearly deliberate. That the authorities knew his itinerary is demonstrated by the fact that he was kept under surveillance when he was in Dubai. He later went on to Pakistan, where the Pakistani authorities were warned of his arrival by the British government. The British intelligence agencies wrote to their opposite numbers in Pakistan — the members of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence — suggesting that they arrest him. I use the word “suggest” rather than “request” or “recommend” because of the peculiar language of the ISI’s communication. No doubt the minister can confirm that for himself by asking to see the record.

We also know that the intelligence officer who wrote to the Pakistanis did so in full knowledge of the normal methods used by the ISI against terrorist suspects that it holds. That is unsurprising, as it is common public knowledge in Pakistan. The officer would therefore be aware that “suggesting” arrest was equivalent to “suggesting” torture.

Rangzieb Ahmed was arrested by the ISI on 20 August 2006. Once he was taken into custody in Pakistan by the ISI, the Manchester police and MI5 together created a list of questions to be put to him. MI5 arranged for those questions to be given to the ISI.

Rangzieb Ahmed was viciously tortured by the ISI. He says, among other things, that he was beaten with wooden staves the size of cricket stumps and whipped with a 3ft length of tyre rubber nailed to a wooden handle, and that three fingernails were removed from his left hand. There is a dispute between Ahmed and British intelligence officers about exactly when his fingernails were removed, but an independent pathologist employed by the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that it happened during the period when he was in Pakistani custody.

Rangzieb was asked questions, under torture, about the UK by ISI officers. He claims that he saw “UK/Pakistan Secret” on the question list used by the ISI. That was presumably the list put together by the Manchester police and MI5. After about 13 days, he was visited by an officer from MI5 and another from MI6. He claims to have told them, during questioning, that he had been tortured. They deny that, but it is significant that they did not return for further interviews. By that stage, MI5 policy was not to return after any interview in which the subject claimed that he had been tortured. The British agents did not return, but Rangzieb was subsequently questioned by Americans.

Is it also an extraordinary, if sinister, coincidence that the Manchester police accessed Rangzieb Ahmed’s medical records within days of the MI5/MI6 interview? Why would they do that if he was in perfect health?

Rangzieb Ahmed was kept in detention by the Pakistani authorities for a total of 13 months — first at the ISI centre, then at Rawalpindi and then at Adiyala jail — before being deported to the United Kingdom in September 2007. He was tried and convicted of terrorist offences in late 2008 — according to the prosecution, entirely on the basis of evidence obtained while he was under surveillance in the UK and Dubai in 2005-06. I cannot imagine a more obvious case of the outsourcing of torture, a more obvious case of “passive rendition.”

Let me recap. Rangzieb Ahmed should have been arrested by the UK in 2006, but he was not. The authorities knew that he intended to travel to Pakistan, so they should have prevented that; instead, they suggested that the ISI arrest him. They knew that he would be tortured, and they arranged to construct a list of questions and supply it to the ISI.

The authorities know full well that this story is an evidential showcase for the policy of complicity in torture, should that evidence ever come out. One way in which the in-camera veil of secrecy might be lifted would be a civil case by Mr. Ahmed against the government for their complicity in torture. Part of that process would involve challenging the in-camera rulings and revealing the details of agency involvement. Just such a case was being considered by Mr. Ahmed, and on 20 April this year he was visited in prison by his solicitor and a specialist legal adviser to discuss it.

Mr. Ahmed tells us that a week later he was visited by an officer from MI5 and a policeman. That is the story told today on the front pages of the Daily Mail and the Guardian. During the course of their visit they said that they would like him to help in the fight against terror with information about extremism. This is perfectly proper.

However, the sinister part of this visit was an alleged request to drop his allegations of torture: if he did that, they could get his sentence cut and possibly give him some money. If this request to drop the torture case is true, it is frankly monstrous. It would at the very least be a criminal misuse of the powers and funds under the government’s Contest strategy, and at worst a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

I would normally be disinclined to believe the word of a convicted terrorist. However, when he initially told his lawyer about it, he did not want to pursue the matter. Also, in common with many other criminals, after the scandal of the taping of the current minister of state, Department for Transport, the Right Honourable member for Tooting [Sadiq Khan], on a prison visit, he believes all these meetings are taped and he says this will back him up.

Given that belief, he is unlikely to have made an allegation that would be so easily proven wrong. I do not believe the conversation was taped, but it would have been videoed and this could be used to check his story. For reasons of policy and natural justice, it is imperative that the Crown Prosecution service investigates this allegation immediately, but that is not my principal concern today.

My questions to the minister are as follows: First, will he undertake to look at the in-camera court records and the records of the police and intelligence agencies so that he can confirm for his own satisfaction that my account of the handling of Rangzieb Ahmed pre-trial is correct? That process should take only a few days. Secondly, will he publish the current guidelines governing the agencies handling the suspected torture so that we can see whether the UK authorities broke those guidelines or whether it was the policy that was at fault? The Prime Minister has undertaken to publish the new guidelines, so if the minister cannot publish the current ones, can he explain why his approach is different to the Prime Minister’s?

Thirdly, I believe, but cannot be certain to an evidential level, that the judge in the court case intimated that disciplinary action should be considered within the intelligence agencies. Was this done? If not, why not?

Finally, can the minister now announce a proper judicial inquiry into the allegations of UK complicity in torture, since it is now clear that there is not just circumstantial evidence but hard evidence in government records for ministers to read, if they had but eyes to see?

Let me conclude by saying that our handling of the subject of torture has, in my view, been completely wrong. The Americans have made a clean breast of their complicity, while explicitly not prosecuting the junior officers who were acting under instruction at a time of enormous duress and perceived threat after 9/11. We have done the opposite. As things stand, we are awaiting a police investigation that will presumably end in the prosecution of the frontline officers involved. At the same time, the government are fighting tooth and nail to use state secrecy to cover up crimes and political embarrassments to protect those who are probably the real villains in the piece — those who approved these policies in the first place.

The battle against terrorism is not just a fight for life; it is a battle of ideas and ideals. It is a battle between good and evil, between civilisation and barbarism. In that fight, we should never allow our standards to drop to those of our enemies. We cannot defend our civilisation by giving up the values of that civilisation. I hope the minister will today help me in ensuring that we find out what has gone wrong so we can return to defending those values once again.

Quote:How a Torture Protest Killed a Career

By Craig Murray
October 24, 2009
Editor’s Note: In this modern age – and especially since George W. Bush declared the “war on terror” eight years ago – the price for truth-telling has been high, especially for individuals whose consciences led them to protest the torture of alleged terrorists.

One of the most remarkable cases is that of Craig Murray, a 20-year veteran of the British Foreign Service whose career was destroyed after he was posted to Uzbekistan in August 2002 and began to complain about Western complicity in torture committed by the country’s totalitarian regime, which was valued for its brutal interrogation methods and its vast supplies of natural gas.

Murray soon faced misconduct charges that were leaked to London’s tabloid press before he was replaced as ambassador in October 2004, marking the end of what had been a promising career. Murray later spoke publicly about how the Bush administration and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government collaborated with Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov and his torturers. [See, for instance, Murray's statement to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Torture.]

But Murray kept quiet about his personal ordeal as the victim of the smear campaign that followed his impassioned protests to the Foreign Office about torture. Finally, on Oct. 22 at a small conference in Washington, Murray addressed the personal pain and his sense of betrayal over his treatment at the hands of former colleagues.

While Murray’s account is a personal one, it echoes the experiences of many honest government officials and even mainstream journalists who have revealed inconvenient truths about wrongdoing by powerful Establishment figures and paid a high price.

Below is a partial transcript of Murray’s remarks:

I was just having dinner in a restaurant that was only a block from the White House. It must have been a good dinner because it cost me $120. Actually it was a good dinner. …

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I’ve never, ever spoken in public about the pain of being a whistleblower. Partly because of the British stiff-upper lip thing and partly as well because if you wish to try eventually to get on and reestablish yourself then it doesn’t do to show weakness. …

I was sitting in this place on my own and feeling rather lonely. And there were a whole bunch of people in dark suits coming from government offices, in many cases in groups, and there they were with the men’s suits sleek and the ladies, the whole office, power-politics thing going on, having after-dinner champagne in the posh bar.

And I was remembering how many times I’d been the center of such groups and of how successful my life used to be. I was a British ambassador at the age of 42. The average age for such a post is 57.

I was successful in worldly terms. And I think I almost never sat alone at such a place. Normally if I had been alone in such a place, I would have ended up probably in the company of a beautiful young lady of some kind.

I tell you that partly because this whole question of personal morality is a complicated one. I would never, ever, no one would have ever pointed at me as someone likely to become or to be a person of conscience. And yet eventually I found myself on the outside and treated in a way that challenged my whole view of the world.

Mission to Tashkent

Let me start to tell you something about how that happened. I was a British ambassador in Uzbekistan and I was told before I went that Uzbekistan was an important ally in the war on terror, had given the United States a very important airbase which was a forward mounting post for Afghanistan, and was a bulwark against Islamic extremism in Central Asia.

When I got there I found it was a dreadful regime, absolutely totalitarian. And there’s a difference between dictatorship of which there are many and a totalitarian dictatorship which unless you’ve actually been in one is hard to comprehend.

There’s absolutely no free media whatsoever. News on every single channel, the news programs start with 12 items about what the president did today. And that’s it. That is the news. There are no other news channels and international news channels are blocked.

There are about 12,000 political prisoners. Any sign of religious enthusiasm for any religion will get you put into jail. The majority of people are predominantly Muslim. But if you are to carry out the rituals of the Muslim religion, particularly if you were to pray five times a day, you’d be in jail very quickly. Young men are put in jail for growing beards.

It’s not the only religion which is outlawed. The jails are actually quite full of Baptists. Being Baptist is illegal in Uzbekistan. I’m sure that Methodists and Quakers would be illegal, too, It’s just that they haven’t got any so they haven’t gotten around to making them illegal.

And it’s really not a joke. If you are put into prison in Uzbekistan the chances of coming out again alive are less than even. And most of the prisons are still the old Soviet gulags in the most literal sense. They are physically the same places. The biggest one being the Jaslyk gulag in the deserts of the Kizyl Kum.

I had only been there for a week or two when I went to a show trial of an al-Qaeda terrorist they had caught. It was a big event put on partly for the benefit of the American embassy to demonstrate the strength of the U.S.-Uzbek alliance against terrorism.

When I got there, to call the trial unconvincing would be an underestimate. There was one moment when this old man [who] had given evidence that his nephew was a member of al-Qaeda and had personally met Osama bin Laden. And like everybody else in that court he was absolutely terrified.

But suddenly as he was giving his evidence, he seemed from somewhere to find an inner strength. He was a very old man but he stood taller and said in a stronger voice, he said, “This is not true. This is not true. They tortured my children in front of me until I signed this. I had never heard of al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.”

He was then hustled out of the court and we never did find out what had happened to him. He was almost certainly killed. But as it happens I was within touching distance of him when he said that and I can’t explain it. It’s not entirely rational. But you could just feel it was true. You could tell he was speaking the truth when he said that.

And that made me start to call into doubt the whole question of the narrative about al-Qaeda in Uzbekistan and the alliance in the war on terror.

Boiled to Death

Something which took that doubt over the top happened about a week later. The West -- because Uzbekistan was our great ally in the war on terror – had shown no interest in the human rights situation at all. In fact, the opposite, going out of its way to support the dictatorship.

So the fact that I seemed to be interested and seemed to be sympathetic came as something of a shock and people [in Uzbekistan] started to come to me.

One of the people who came to me was an old lady, a widow in her 60s whose son had been killed in Jaslyk prison and she brought me photos of the corpse of her son. It had been given back to her in a sealed casket and she’d been ordered not to open the casket but to bury it the next morning, which actually Muslims would do anyway. They always bury a body immediately.

But she disobeyed the instructions not to open the casket. She was a very old lady but very determined. She got the casket open and the body out onto the table and took detailed photos of the body before resealing the casket and burying it. These photos she now brought to me.

I sent them on to the chief pathologist at the University of Glasgow, who actually now by coincidence is the chief pathologist for the United Kingdom. There were a number of photos and he did a detailed report on the body. He said from the photographs the man’s fingernails had been pulled out while he was still alive. Then he had been boiled alive. That was the cause of death, immersion in boiling liquid.

Certainly it wasn’t the only occasion when we came across evidence of people being boiled alive. That was the most extreme form of torture, I suppose, but immersion in boiling liquid of a limb was quite common.

Mutilation of the genitals was common. Suffocation was common, usually by putting a gas mask on people and blocking the air vents until they suffocated. Rape was common, rape with objects, rape with bottles, anal rape, homosexual rape, heterosexual rape, and mutilation of children in front of their parents.

It began with that and became a kind of personal mission for me, I suppose, to do what I could to try to stop this. I spent a great deal of time with my staff gathering evidence on it.

Being a very capricious government, occasionally a victim [of the Uzbek regime] would be released and we’d be able to see them and get medical evidence. More often you’d get letters smuggled out of the gulags and detention centers, evidence from relatives who managed to visit prisoners.

We built up an overwhelming dossier of evidence, and I complained to London about the conduct of our ally in rather strong terms including the photos of the boy being boiled alive.

‘Over-Focused on Human Rights’

I received a reply from the British Foreign Office. It said, this is a direct quote, “Dear Ambassador, we are concerned that you are perhaps over-focused on human rights to the detriment of commercial interests.”

I was taken aback. I found that extraordinary. But things had gotten much worse because while we were gathering the information about torture, we were also learning what people were forced to confess to under torture.

People aren’t tortured for no reason. They’re tortured in order to extract some information or to get them to admit to things, and normally the reason you torture people is to get them to admit to things that aren’t actually true. They were having to confess to membership in al-Qaeda, to being at training camps in Afghanistan, personally meeting Osama bin Laden.

At the same time, we were receiving CIA intelligence. MI-6 and the CIA share all their intelligence. So I was getting all the CIA intelligence on Uzbekistan and it was saying that detainees had confessed to membership in al-Qaeda and being in training camps in Afghanistan and to meeting Osama bin Laden.

One way and another I was piecing together the fact that the CIA material came from the Uzbek torture sessions.

I didn’t want to make a fool of myself so I sent my deputy, a lady called Karen Moran, to see the CIA head of station and say to him, “My ambassador is worried your intelligence might be coming from torture. Is there anything he’s missing?”

She reported back to me that the CIA head of station said, “Yes, it probably is coming from torture, but we don’t see that as a problem in the context of the war on terror.”

In addition to which I learned that CIA were actually flying people to Uzbekistan in order to be tortured. I should be quite clear that I knew for certain and reported back to London that people were being handed over by the CIA to the Uzbek intelligence services and were being subjected to the most horrible tortures.

I didn’t realize that they weren’t Uzbek. I presumed simply that these were Uzbek people who had been captured elsewhere and were being sent in.

I now know from things I’ve learned subsequently, including the facts that the Council of Europe parliamentary inquiry into extraordinary rendition found that 90 percent of all the flights that called at the secret prison in Poland run by the CIA as a torture center for extraordinary rendition, 90 percent of those flights next went straight on to Tashkent [the capital of Uzbekistan].

There was an overwhelming body of evidence that actually people from all over the world were being taken by the CIA to Uzbekistan specifically in order to be tortured. I didn’t know that. I thought it was only Uzbeks, but nonetheless, I was complaining internally as hard as I could.

Retaliation

The result of which was that even when I was only complaining internally, I was subjected to the most dreadful pattern of things which I still find it hard to believe happened.

I was suddenly accused of issuing visas in return for sex, stealing money from the post account, of being an alcoholic, of driving an embassy vehicle down a flight of stairs, which is extraordinary because I can’t drive. I’ve never driven in my life. I don’t have a driving license. My eyesight is terrible. …

But I was accused of all these unbelievable accusations, which were leaked to the tabloid media, and I spent a whole year of tabloid stories about sex-mad ambassador, blah-blah-blah. And I hadn’t even gone public. What I had done was write a couple of memos saying that this collusion with torture is illegal under a number of international conventions including the UN Convention Against Torture.

I couldn’t believe [what was happening], I’d been a very successful foreign service officer for over 20 years. The British Foreign Service is small. Actual diplomats, as opposed to [support] staff, are only about 2,000 people,
I worked there for over 20 years. I knew most of them by name. All the people involved in smearing me, trying to taint me on false charges, were people I thought were my friends. It’s really hard when people you think are your friends [lie about you].

I’m writing memos saying it’s illegal to torture people, children are being tortured in front of their parents. And they’re writing memos back saying it depends on the definition of complicity under Article Four of the UN Convention.

I’m thinking what’s happening to their moral sense, and I never, ever considered myself a good person, at all. Yet I couldn’t see where they were coming from and I still don’t; I still don’t understand it to this day.

And then these people – and I’m absolutely certain quite knowingly – tried to negate what they saw as these unpatriotic things. I was told I was viewed now as unpatriotic, by trying to land me with false allegations.

I went through a five-month fight and formal charges. I was found eventually not guilty on all charges, but my reputation was ruined forever because the tabloid media all carried the allegations against me in 25-point headlines and the fact I was acquitted in two sentences on page 19. It’s extraordinary.

Lessons Learned

The thing that came out of it most strongly for me is how in a bureaucratic structure, if the government can convince people that there is a serious threat to the nation, ordinary people who are not bad people will go along with things that they know are bad, like torture, like trying to stain an innocent man.

And it’s circular, because the extraordinary thing about it was that the whole point of the intelligence being obtained under torture was to actually exaggerate the terrorist threats and to exaggerate the strength of al-Qaeda.

That was the whole point of why people were being tortured, to confess that they were members of al-Qaeda when they weren’t members of al-Qaeda and to denounce long lists of names of people as members of al-Qaeda who weren’t members of al-Qaeda.

I always tell my favorite example which is they gave me a long list of names of people whom people were forced to denounce and I often saw names of people I knew.

One day, I got this list from the CIA of names of a couple dozen al-Qaeda members and I knew one really quite well, an old dissident professor, a very distinguished man who was actually a Jehovah’s Witness, and there aren’t many Jehovah’s Witnesses in al-Qaeda. I’d even bet that al-Qaeda don’t even try to recruit Jehovah’s Witnesses. I’m quite sure that Jehovah’s Witnesses would try to recruit al-Qaeda.

So much of this intelligence was nonsense. It was untrue and it was designed to paint a false picture. The purpose of the false picture was to make people feel afraid. What was it really about. …

I want to mention this book, which is the greatest book that I’ve ever written. It’s called Murder in Samarkand and recounts in detail what I have just told you together with the documentary evidence behind it.

But the most interesting bit of the entire book comes before the page numbers start, which is a facsimile of a letter from Enron, from Kenneth Lay, chairman of Enron, to the honorable George W. Bush, governor of the state of Texas. It was written on April 3, 1997, sometime before Bush became president.

It reads, I’ll just read you two or three sentences, “Dear George, you will be meeting with Ambassador Sadyq Safaev, Uzbekistan’s Ambassador to the United States on April 8th. … Enron has established an office in Tashkent and we are negotiating a $2 billion joint venture with Neftegas of Uzbekistan … to develop Uzbekistan’s natural gas and transport it to markets in Europe … This project can bring significant economic opportunities to Texas.”

Not everyone in Texas, of course. George Bush and Ken Lay, in particular.
That’s actually what it was about. All this stuff about al-Qaeda that they were inventing, extreme Islamists in Central Asia that they were inventing.

I have hundreds and hundreds of Uzbek friends now. Every single one of them drinks vodka. It is not a good place for al-Qaeda. They were inventing the threat in order to cover up the fact that their real motive was Enron’s gas contract and that was the plain and honest truth of the matter.

Just as almost everything you see about Afghanistan is a cover for the fact that the actual motive is the pipeline they wish to build over Afghanistan to bring out Uzbek and Turkmen natural gas which together is valued at up to $10 trillion, which they want to bring over Afghanistan and down to the Arabian Sea to make it available for export.

And we are living in a world where people, a small number of people, with incredible political clout and huge amounts of money, are prepared to see millions die for their personal economic gain and where, even worse, most people in bureaucracies are prepared to go along with it for their own much smaller economic gain, all within this psychological mirage which is so much of the war on terror.

It’s hard to stand against it. I do think things are a little more sane now than they were a year or two ago. I do think there’s a greater understanding, but you’ll never hear what I just told you in the mainstream media. It’s impossible to get it there.

• Ian Cobain
  
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 February 2010 09.14 GMT
  
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