Last Thursday Ian Cobain of The Guardian of London posted the dramatic article, “CIA working with Palestinian security agents: US agency co-operating with Palestinian counterparts who allegedly torture Hamas supporters in West Bank”. The sensational headline both illuminates and distorts the wider story.
For years, the US Government has been pursuing a strategy of bolstering the Palestinian (West Bank) administration of Mahmoud Abbas by providing funding, equipment, and training for the security services of the Palestinian Authority. Ostensibly, this support was part of a US strategy of moving towards an Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” by reassuring Israel that the West Bank security services were under responsible American oversight as they developed.
This policy was reinforced after Hamas’ ascendancy to power in Gaza in 2006 and its defeat of Abbas’ party, Fatah, in Gazan battles in 2007. Now US aid had become part of a low-grade civil war, bolstering Fatah/Palestinian Authority capabilities against their rivals. Part of that support inevitably was for repressive measures employed by the West Bank security services against “insurgents”, usually linked to Hamas.
David Rose exposed the relationship between the US military and CIA with the Palestinian Authority/Fatah agencies in April 2008 in a Vanity Fair article. Cobain’s piece confirms that this relationship will continue in the Obama Administration: the US is now locked into support of an Abbas regime, no matter how unstable or repressive it becomes, because there is no alternative both in the pursuit of talks with Israel and in the effort to contain Hamas.
Palestinian security agents who have been detaining and allegedly torturing supporters of the Islamist organisation Hamas in the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the Guardian has learned. Read the rest of this entry »
A major piece by Ian Cobain in today’s Guardian examines the significant part torture has played in Britain’s post-9/11 anti-terrorism policy:
Today, however, there is mounting evidence that torture is still regarded by some agents of the British state as a useful and legitimate investigative tool. There is evidence too that in the post-9/11 world, government officials have been prepared to look the other way while British citizens, and others, have been tortured in secret prisons around the world. It is also clear that an official policy, devised to govern British intelligence officers while interrogating people held overseas, resulted in people being tortured.
In a series of case studies Cobain shows how torture has become a standard method of interrogation for the British intelligence services, and how everyone involved- from personnel on the ground to high-ranking government ministers- may be complicit.
Whitehall devised torture policy for terror detainees
A policy governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects in Pakistan that led to British citizens and residents being tortured was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government, according to evidence heard in court. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Thursday Ian Cobain of The Guardian of London posted the dramatic article, “CIA working with Palestinian security agents: US agency co-operating with Palestinian counterparts who allegedly torture Hamas supporters in West Bank”. The sensational headline both illuminates and distorts the wider story.
Bravo to Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor. Amidst 
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