Scott Lucas on BBC1 TV "The Big Questions": Is Torture Ever Justified?

I thought this morning's live discussion "Is Torture Ever Justified?" on BBC1's The Big Questions raised some important points, especially given the limited time (25 minutes) available and the initial attempt to frame the question around the "ticking bomb" scenario.

It was a particular pleasure to talk with Moazzam Begg (pictured), who was detained and tortured in Afghanistan's Camp Bagram before being moved to Guantanamo Bay. He is now working with CagePrisoners, an organisation raising the cases of and providing assistance to detainees around the world.

The programme is available until next Sunday on the BBC iPlayer.

Update: Binyam Mohamed and the Hiding of Torture Evidence

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Related Post: Binyam Mohamed - "I Know Beyond a Doubt He Was Tortured"

On 4 February, we reported on a British High Court decision which reluctantly ruled that it could not consider documents related to the alleged torture of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The court said that US authorities had threatened to cut off intelligence-sharing with Britain if the evidence was disclosed.

Well, guess what? Turns out it was the British Foreign Office who asked the US to make the threat. From this morning's Observer of London:

[A] former senior State Department official said: "Far from being a threat, it was solicited [by the Foreign Office]." The Foreign Office asked for it in writing. They said: 'Give us something in writing so that we can put it on the record.' If you give us a letter explaining you are opposed to this, then we can provide that to the court."

The letter, sent by the State Department's top legal adviser John Bellinger to foreign secretary David Miliband's legal adviser, Daniel Bethlehem, on 21 August last year, said: "We want to affirm in the clearest terms that the public disclosure of these documents or of the information contained therein is likely to result in serious damage to US national security and could harm existing intelligence-sharing arrangements."

US Government Documents: Proof of "Ghost Detention", Torture, Death

Last night we closed an update with a note that CNN had just reported on hundreds of pages of documents obtained by Amnesty International USA, New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and the Center for Constitutional Rights — which established that the Pentagon sought loopholes in the Geneva Conventions to hide “ghost detainees”. They also confirmed that the Bush Administration delayed the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees to avoid negative publicity.

This morning the American Civil Liberties Union has released two pages from a Department of Defense document concerning the death of two detainees at Camp Bagram in Afghanistan:

"In both cases, for example, [prisoners] were handcuffed to fixed objects above their heads in order to keep them awake. Additionally, interrogations in both incidents involved the use of physical violence, including kicking, beating, and the use of "compliance blows" which involved striking the [prisoners] legs with the [interrogators] knees. In both cases, blunt force trauma to the legs was implicated in the deaths. In one case, a pulmonary embolism developed as a consequence of the blunt force trauma, and in the other case pre-existing coronary artery disease was complicated by the blunt force trauma.

Seven years after the Bush Administration effectively set aside the Geneva Conventions, declaring they were not relevant to US detentions from Guantanamo Bay to Camp Bagram to CIA "black sites" in North Africa and Eastern Europe, five years after Abu Ghraib, here are the documents establishing not only that detainees were tortured and, yes, murdered. Here is the evidence that US Government officials sanctioned the renditions and "enhanced interrogations" and that they were willing to lie to cover up the programme they had authorised.

It was with a sense of expectation that I have just turned to the headlines in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London. And here is what I found: nothing. I cannot find the story in any "mainstream" US or British newspaper this morning.

Full credit to CNN. And full credit to Harper's, Mother Jones and The Raw Story because, without outlets such as these, "ghost detainees" --- and what happens to them --- would remain, well, ghosts.

Mr. Obama's World: Alerts in US Foreign Policy (12 February)

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9:30 p.m. A relatively quiet foreign policy day, as domestic politics --- notably Republican Judd Gregg's withdrawal from his nomination as Commerce Secretary because of "irreconcilable policy differences" with President Obama --- occupy Washington.

One emerging story is a lawsuit by three human rights organisations --- Amnesty International USA, New York University's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and the Center for Constitutional Rights --- claiming that the Pentagon sought loopholes in the Geneva Conventions to hide "ghost deatinees" and that the Bush Administration delayed the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees to avoid negative publicity. We'll have more on this tomorrow.



4:30 p.m. We're off the clock for awhile on emergency business (dinner and a movie). Back with an Evening Update.

2:20 p.m. Eight Iraqi pilgrims have been killed and 18 wounded by a bomb less than 1/2 mile from the Imam Hussein Mosque in Karbala.

1:40 p.m. A couple of items of note from US envoy Richard Holbrooke's trip to Pakistan. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who met Holbrooke earlier today (see 6:45 a.m.), has issued a co-operative statement: ""There's a change in [US] approach towards Pakistan. They do give importance to the people of Pakistan and their emotions and that's the feeling that I got from today's meeting."

It is now being reported, as we projected in a separate entry, that Holbrooke and Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi will head a joint committee "improving intelligence sharing and strengthen security".

12 noon. Further violence in Iraq today. A car bomb in Mosul has killed four policemen and wounded five. Two senior Sunni politicians have been killed by gunmen in Mosul, and a former army officer has been killed in Khaldiya.

10:15 a.m.Of course, today's statement by Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik, admitting that "some part of the conspiracy" behind December's attacks in Mumbai was planned in Pakistan, has nothing to do whatsoever with the visit of US envoy Richard Holbrooke.

Morning Updates (6:45 a.m. GMT; 1:45 a.m. Washington): Quiet start this morning, after yesterday was dominated by news of bombings and violences in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will name Stephen Bosworth, the Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, as US envoy to North Korea. The move, accompanying yesterday's confirmation that a US delegation will attend the six-party talks in Moscow on North Korea next week, signals the Obama Administration's diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang. It is a far cry from the George W. Bush Administration, which shut down talks with North Korea soon after taking office in 2001.

In Pakistan, US envoy Richard Holbrooke has met former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. No details on the conversation, but it is a signal of a change in American strategy, reaching out to politicians that had not been favoured by the Bush Administration. Sharif was sent into exile by General Pervez Musharraf and only returned to Pakistan with the strong backing of Saudi Arabia. He had been seen by Washington as too sympathetic to "conservative" elements in Pakistan, both religious and political, to be an alternative to President Zardari.

Binyam Mohamed: Guantanamo Torture Evidence Hidden from Obama

From The Guardian:

Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident detained in Guantánamo Bay, is to be visited by British officials and could be returned to Britain shortly, the foreign secretary, David Miliband, signalled today. The US authorities have agreed to treat Mohamed's case as "a priority", the minister said, enabling Britain to work with Washington for "a swift resolution".

London and Washington may want to act quickly, because yet more embarrassing detail on the case has emerged today.

Clive Stafford-Smith, Mohamed's lawyer, claims the US Department of Defense is preventing President Obama from seeing evidence of Mohamed's alleged mistreatment and torture. He has written to Obama:

You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command.