Torture appeal lost by UK government

[David Guyatt]

The central drift of the below story strikes me as being obvious. It has long been known that the pols are scared stiff of the intelligence community and bend over backwards to avoid offending them lest their dirty little secrets be leaked (or fabricated and then leaked as the case demands).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/14...CMP=AFCYAH

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.