Brits want to have secret court hearing on Libyan's rendition

[David Guyatt]

A typical Blighty government cop out.

They can't take the chance that an independent judge (not that there's that many of this species of "Brethren" left these days) might blurt out the truth...

UK inquiry on rendition and torture to be handed to ISC

Decision on stalled inquiry follows years of assurances by ministers that inquiry would be headed by senior judge

• Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor
  
• The Guardian, Wednesday 18 December 2013 11.59 GMT
  

The ISC's inquiry into rendition concluded only that MI5 and MI6 (pictured) had been slow to spot what the CIA had been doing. Photograph: Felix Clay

The stalled official inquiry into the UK's involvement in rendition andtorture in the years after 9/11 is to be handed to the controversial intelligence and security committee (ISC), the government will announce on Thursday.
The decision follows years of assurances by ministers that the inquiry would be headed by a senior judge, with the prime minister having told MPs that no other arrangement would command public confidence. It triggered warnings from human rights groups that the government risked complaints of a cover-up.
The ISC is the oversight body that has been condemned for failing to report on the bulk surveillance operations being conducted by the UK's signals intelligence agency, GCHQ, until after they became public. Itsinquiry into rendition concluded only that MI5 and MI6 had been slow to spot what the CIA had been doing.
Some details about the involvement of the UK's intelligence agencies in the abuse of terrorism suspects may appear in the interim report of the stalled inquiry when it is published on Thursday. The report is being redacted before publication.
It is understood that the head of the inquiry, Sir Peter Gibson, has reached no conclusions and made no criticisms of individuals, but has suggested a series of questions for the UK's intelligence agencies. Many concern process and training, rather than individual prisoners or operations.
One exception is understood to concern co-operation between MI6 and Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence agencies: the ISC is expected to investigate the UK's involvement in the rendition of two Libyan opposition leaders and their families to Tripoli in 2004, and any role Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, played in authorising those operations. Straw was not available for comment on Wednesday. He has denied any wrongdoing, although MI6 is reported to have confronted him with documentary evidence that he personally authorised the agency's involvement in the Libyan rendition operations.
The growing awareness of the extent to which the UK government and its agencies had become complicit in the mistreatment of terrorism suspects by the US authorities and allies in the "war on terror" was the cause of deep discomfort for incoming ministers when the coalition government was formed in 2010. Within weeks of the election David Cameron announced the inquiry to be led by Gibson. He repeatedly rejected suggestions at that time that the ISC should conduct the investigation,telling MPs: "I do not think for a moment that we should believe that the ISC should be doing this piece of work. For public confidence, and for independence from parliament, party and government, it is right to have a judge-led inquiry." He added: "That is what we need to get to the bottom of the case. The fact that it is led by a judge will help ensure that we get it done properly."
Gibson's inquiry came to a halt two years ago when Scotland Yardlaunched a criminal investigation, after evidence of the UK-Libyan rendition operations was discovered in an abandoned Tripoli office building during the revolution that overthrew Gaddafi. There had also been a behind-the-scenes disagreement over the question of whether Gibson, or the heads of MI6 and MI5, would have control of the publication of evidence.
Although Gibson took no oral evidence, he compiled a report based on the documentary evidence that he had been able to examine. After sitting on Cameron's desk for 18 months, part of that report is to be published on Thursday.
When the inquiry was shelved in January last year, Ken Clarke, then the justice secretary, promised MPs: "The government fully intends to hold a judge-led inquiry into these issues once it is possible to do so and all related police investigations have been concluded."
The decision to hand the inquiry not to a judge but to the ISC was widely condemned on Wednesday. The committee has faced years of criticism as evidence of UK involvement in rendition came to light, and following Edward Snowden's disclosure of the bulk surveillance operations of GCHQ and the NSA.
Today, committee members say they have more powers than in the past and a larger staff and budget, that they can compel the agencies to hand over documents, and that there is no need for "the mistakes of the past" to be repeated.
But the human rights charity Reprieve said it feared the ISC could not be trusted to deliver anything other than a whitewash. Clare Algar, the organisation's executive director, said: "If the government takes this course, it will be breaking its promise to hold a genuine, independent inquiry into the UK's involvement in torture. Worse still, it will be handing the task to a committee of MPs hand-picked by the prime minister which has consistently missed major scandals involving the security services.
"The ISC not only lacks independence it has also sadly been proven to be completely hopeless as a watchdog. David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ken Clarke have all personally pledged to hold an independent, judge-led inquiry into torture they must not abandon their promise in favour of a whitewash."
The NGO Freedom from Torture said the government risked complaints of a cover-up. The chief executive, Keith Best, said: "This entire episode both the allegations and the government's mishandling of them has further tarnished the UK's reputation as a country that believes in human rights, justice, fairness and the rule of law. We were expecting more from David Cameron."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "It's pantomime season and the government joins in. The 'judge-led inquiry' that never was is shut down and investigating kidnap and torture in freedom's name will be left to a watchdog that never barks and which exonerated the spooks six years ago."
The two rendition operations in which the Libyan dissidents and their families were kidnapped and taken to Gaddafi's jails were mounted either side of Tony Blair's first visit Libya, in which he embraced the dictator, declared that they had found common cause in the fight against terrorism, and announced a £550m gas exploration deal for Shell.
The wife of one of the dissidents was heavily pregnant at the time of the abduction; the other dissident was kidnapped along with his wife and four children, the youngest a girl aged six. Both men were leading members of an Islamist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Among the secret papers about their abduction that were discovered during the Libyan revolution was a signed letter from the then head of counter-terrorism at MI6, Mark Allen, in which he boasted of his agency's role in one of the operations. There were also secret CIA faxes describing the second operation as a joint UK-Libyan venture. One man received a £2.2m payment after suing the British government; government lawyers are trying to keep the claim by the second victim from being heard in the English courts.
The discovery and publication of the Tripoli documents came as a profound shock to MI6. However, there have been allegations of MI6 and MI5 involvement in a series of other operations in Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco and Bangladesh, as well as Guantánamo Bay and Afghanistan, which have resulted in terrorism suspects suffering severe mistreatment.
In some cases the most notorious being that of the British residentBinyam Mohamed the allegations have been found to be true, while in others the government has paid sums totalling several million pounds in order to settle compensation claims out of court.