statism watch

Flashback: Tortured Guantanamo detainee set free | UK agents ‘colluded with torture in Pakistan’ | U.K. resident held at Gitmo alleges Canadian involvement in torture | Senior judges attack US over ‘torture evidence suppression’

David Rose, Daily Mail
April 19, 2009

Government lawyers have been forced to make a humiliating apology to the High Court for concealing 13 crucial intelligence documents about the torture of former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Binyam Mohamed.

Now it has admitted the papers do exist, the Government has handed them over to the court, although their exact contents remain secret.

But it is known that they do show MI5’s complicity in Mohamed’s torture went further than previously suspected — and contain the damaging admission that a senior MI5 officer known as Witness A gave ‘incorrect’ evidence at a hearing last year.

The apology, described by senior lawyers as ‘unprecedented’, last night prompted claims that intelligence agencies have been involved in a cover-up.

The newly unearthed papers will now form part of the Metropolitan Police inquiry into the role of British spies in the torture of terror suspects, which was ordered by Attorney General Baroness Scotland last month.

Mohamed, 31, has previously told The Mail on Sunday how he was captured in Pakistan in April 2002 and tortured on the orders of the CIA.

Later, he became the subject of ‘extraordinary rendition’ to Morocco, where he claims he was subjected to ‘medieval’ torture, before being transferred to the CIA’s ‘dark prison’ in Afghanistan. Finally, after almost five years in Guantanamo Bay, he was freed without charge in February.

Mohamed has always claimed that British intelligence officers were complicit in his treatment. Last year, while he was still a prisoner, his lawyers launched a High Court battle to force the British Government to hand over copies of any papers they had about his treatment.

A total of 42 documents were eventually disclosed and although most of their contents remain secret, the details that have surfaced in public support Mohamed’s version of events — for example, that he was questioned by MI5 agents in Pakistan and that MI5 gave the CIA thick dossiers about his background, together with lists of questions, when he was being tortured in Morocco.

However, the new apology, which comes in a letter from Treasury Solicitor David Mackie to High Court judges Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, reveals the Government’s previous disclosures were far from complete.

The correspondence, dated April 9, admits to nine previously undisclosed documents. A further four were found last Friday.

Mr Mackie’s letter says: ‘I am writing to inform the Court that nine documents that should have been disclosed as relevant to these proceedings have recently been identified.

‘Their disclosure at this stage is a matter of great regret. We offer our apologies on behalf of all concerned.’

The letter says the documents came to light after Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee asked MI5 detailed questions about Mohamed’s case.

At first, two of the documents were unearthed, prompting Government lawyers to order a further search of files held both by MI5 and MI6.

MI5 had a total of six ‘relevant’ documents that should have been disclosed, and MI6 three.

Damningly, the MI5 files had been already reviewed by Government barristers who handled the case last year — but were not ‘selected for disclosure’.

The letter insists there was ‘no intention to withhold relevant documents’ while the whole affair was due to ‘misunderstandings’.

It adds that a senior barrister, Jonathan Crow QC, who has had no previous involvement in the case, has now been asked to trawl for further documents.

The most explosive admission in the letter is that Witness A gave false evidence to the court last year, when he claimed that MI5 had no further contact with the CIA over Mohamed after February 2003, five months after he arrived in Morocco.

However, Mohamed would be subject to a further 18 months of torture there and in Afghanistan.

The letter says: ‘A sentence in the open witness statement of Witness A, which stated the last interview report received by the Security Service was in February 2003, is incorrect.’

But the letter does not say how much longer MI5 continued to receive CIA reports.

Last Friday, MI5 found the additional four documents. According to a second letter to the court, one of them had not been noticed before because it was filed under a different spelling of Mohamed’s name.

Former Shadow Home Secretary David Davis described the new revelations as ‘frankly astonishing’.

He added that the Government, MI5 and MI6 had ‘misled the court not in some minor way but over the major issue of the torture of Binyam Mohamed that is at the heart of this case.

‘The use of the phrase “selected for disclosure” indicates that some of this was deliberate.

‘Either this was action in bad faith, amounting to a cover-up, or evidence of such unbelievable incompetence that it calls the trust we place in these agencies into question.’

Clive Stafford Smith, one of Mohamed’s lawyers, said he found it astonishing that the failure to disclose such documents could have been due to ‘misunderstandings’.

He added: ‘If MI5 and MI6 can’t find documents when asked, it does concern me. What would happen if the Prime Minister asked them what they knew about some possible terrorist attack?

‘If they find it so difficult, I invite them to come and look at my own filing system — I’ve already amassed 60,000 pages on Binyam’s case, and they’re all indexed and easily accessible.’

The new files will be considered at a special hearing this week, when Mohamed’s lawyers will ask the High Court to publish its own full summary of the 42 previously known documents which are currently heavily edited.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband claims that to publish this would damage Britain’s intelligence-sharing relationship with America.

Source | See Also under Torture: Psychologists Helped Guide CIA Interrogations | Mumbai attacks suspect alleges torture, retracts confession | Obama publishes torture memos, protects perpetrators | Obama Tilts to CIA on Torture Memos | Document lays bare CIA torture techniques | CSIS chief backpedals on earlier torture statement, claims long-term official ‘misspoke’ | CSIS won’t rule out tips derived from torture | Watchdog rejects government bid to delay Afghan detainee inquiry | Rights groups press for better security oversight | Head of RCMP unit that framed Arar promoted to Assistant Commissioner | Obama administration: Guantanamo detainees have ‘no constitutional rights’ | CIA destroyed 92 interview tapes | Tortured Guantanamo detainee set free | UK agents ‘colluded with torture in Pakistan’ | Obama backs Bush: No rights for Bagram prisoners | U.K. resident held at Gitmo alleges Canadian involvement in torture | Senior judges attack US over ‘torture evidence suppression’ | After Obama praises torture ruling, civil liberties group appalled | Ban stun gun use on young people, Ontario child advocate urges | 24 star Keifer Sutherland opposed to torture, questions role of series in inspiring interrogations | RCMP destroyed evidence, charges dismissed in second torture case for officers | Obama shuts network of CIA ‘ghost prisons’ | Vets Sue CIA Over Mind Control Tests | US police could get ‘pain beam’ weapons | George Bush shoe-thrower ‘too severely beaten’ for court appearance | Conspiracy against Arar reached to highest levels, U.S. court told | Ottawa moves to block Afghanistan detainee torture hearings again | UK Home Secretary orders inquiry into MI5 and CIA torture claims | Tortured trio say report ‘vindicates us’ | Ottawa given evidence of torture, official says | Torture Tactics Endorsed in Secret White House Memos | Tasers being used for pain compliance during interrogation, suit alleges | Lawyers say UK Guantánamo suspect has no hope of fair trial | Defiant military watchdog widens detainee hearings | CSIS faces review in Khadr case | RCMP lays no charges in Maher Arar ‘terrorist’ leaks, declares case closed | Protesters push for Omar Khadr’s release | ‘You don’t care about me,’ Omar Khadr sobs in interview tapes | Remembering Brainwashing | Chinese Torture Techniques Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo | US Counterinsurgency Manual Leaked, Calls for False Flag Operations, Suspension of Human Rights | Torture was expected in ‘top-down’ decision to deport Arar: lawyer | Bid to Block Afghan Detainee Inquiry Slammed | CSIS suspected U.S. would deport Arar to be tortured: documents | What Ottawa doesn’t want you to know: Government was told detainees faced ‘extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial’ | Canadian MKULTRA project mind control victim to tell of pills, shocks, brainwashing

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 4:05 am and is filed under accountability, terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.