UPDATE 1115 GMT: Spectacle has posted the video of an interview with Omar Deghayes, speaking about his interrogation by British Intelligence agents while detained in Islamabad, Pakistan and Bagram, Afghanistan. – Long-time EA readers will know that I have been none-too-happy with the evasions of the British Government over torture in the War on Terror, criticising Foreign Secretary David Miliband for using deceptions as well as court action to prevent the truth from emerging.
This week Human Rights Watch brought out a bit of that truth, publishing a 46-page report on Britain’s involvement (not observation, involvement) in the torture of detainees in Pakistan. This is the summary, followed by a link to the full report:
A key lesson from the past eight years of global efforts to combat terrorism is that the use of torture and ill-treatment is deeply counterproductive. It undermines the moral legitimacy of governments who rely on it and serves as a recruiting sergeant for terrorist organizations. This is recognized in the UK government’s counterterrorism strategy, “CONTEST II,” which asserts that the protection of human rights is central and that the UK’s response to terrorism will be based on the rule of law.
However, this principled and pragmatic assertion of core values is being undermined by the official whitewash surrounding the complicity of UK intelligence and security agencies in torture in Pakistan, with ministers repeatedly rejecting calls for an independent judicial inquiry from a cross-party parliamentary committee and human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) alike. Research by Human Rights Watch and path-breaking investigative reporting by The Guardian newspaper makes it clear that British hands are not clean. The refusal of the government to order an independent and transparent investigation has been an important missed opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »
Ironically, as President Obama was trying to tuck away any more photographs revealing the US Government’s torture of detainees, former Bush Administration official Philip Zelikow was dissecting the legal and political cover for “enhanced interrogations” in testimony to a Senate committee. He reiterated that the techniques was approved at the highest levels of the Bush White House, including by his immediate boss, Condoleezza Rice, and that his memorandum objecting to the torture (still classified by the US Government) was blocked by other Bush officials. And he offered this pertinent point: if the torture methods were considered legal in their application against “foreign” detainees, then they would also be legal in application against US citizens.
C-SPAN has decided to charge $60 for the videos of the hearings before the Senate committee, which also included testimony by Ali Soufan (posted in a separate entry), the FBI agent who questioned 9-11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. So we offer two videos — a summary of the Soufan and Zelikow testimonies and Zelikow’s interview with Rachel Maddow — and the transcript of Zelkow’s statement:
Two days ago, we flashed back to the 2003 legal framework for the Bush Administration’s authorisation of torture (Mora: “Are you saying the President has the authority to order torture?”; White House lawyer John Yoo: “Yes”). In case you thought that was simply a rogue comment, consider this exchange between a questioner and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at Stanford University (it begins at about 0:58 in the clip):
In case you didn’t catch it, Rice says, “the president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture….And so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Obama Administration has been trying to hold the line against any punishment of the Bushmen for their actions, and the “Truth Commission” proposal of Senator Patrick Leahy is unlikely to become reality. Overseas, however, the battle is not yet done:
“A Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation into allegations that six former high-level Bush administration officials violated international law by providing the legal framework to justify the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an official close to the case said.”
The magistrate who ordered the enquiry is Baltasar Garzon, best known for his crusading arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Those named in the complaint include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff strategist, David Addington, ; Jay S. Bybee, Mr. Yoo’s former boss at the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and David S. Addington, who was the chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. the Bush Administration’s favourite twisters of the law, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and Department of Defense counsel William J. Haynes.
The New York Times, which has a copy of the 98-page complaint, says it is based on the Geneva Conventions and the 1984 Convention Against Torture. The case was prepared by Spanish lawyers, with help from experts in the United States and Europe, and filed by a Spanish human rights group, the Association for the Dignity of Prisoners.
Any arrest warrants are still months away and, as American legal experts quickly noted, they will be largely symbolic: it is unlikely that the Obama Administration would grant an extradition request from Spain. Still, the warrants would raise the prospect that any of the six men could be arrested and detained if they travelled abroad.
UPDATE 1115 GMT: Spectacle has posted the video of an interview with Omar Deghayes, speaking about his interrogation by British Intelligence agents while detained in Islamabad, Pakistan and Bagram, Afghanistan. 
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The Obama Administration has been trying to hold the line against any punishment of the Bushmen for their actions, and the “Truth Commission” proposal of Senator Patrick Leahy is unlikely to become reality. Overseas, however,
The magistrate who ordered the enquiry is Baltasar Garzon, best known for his crusading arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. 
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