War on Terror Watch (2): Former British Intelligence Chief, Judges/Lawyers Break Ranks

Stella Rimington (pictured), the former head of MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, has launched a scathing attack on the "security" measures adopted in the US and Britain after the attacks of 11 September 2001:

It would be better that the Government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state.

Rimington singled out the American "enhanced interrogation" regime for criticism: "The US has gone too far with Guantánamo and the tortures...It has achieved the opposite effect: there are more and more suicide terrorists finding a greater justification."

Rimington's charges are given substance by the International Commission of Jurists, which has issued a report after a three-year investigation of measures in more than 40 countries. The lead judge of the study summarises, "We have been shocked by the extent of the damage done over the past seven years by excessive or abusive counterterrorism measures."

Particularly pertinent is the Commission's identification of the case of British resident Binyam Mohamed, still held at Guantanamo Bay:

UK security services facilitated in various ways the questioning of Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan and the US detention, while being held incommunicado and subjected to ill-treatment. The relationship between the UK government and the US authorities was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.