The Guardian reports today:
“The true depth of British involvement in the torture of terrorism suspects overseas and the manner in which that complicity is concealed behind a cloak of courtroom secrecy was laid bare last night when David Davis MP detailed the way in which one counter-terrorism operation led directly to a man suffering brutal mistreatment.
In a dramatic intervention using the protection of parliamentary privilege, the former shadow home secretary revealed how MI5 and Greater Manchester police effectively sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to a Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), whose routine use of torture has been widely documented.”
On the assumption that what David Davis said, using the protection of parliamentary privilege, is true, this raises a number of rather worrying issues
1. The extent to which the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary (MI6), The Home Secretary (MI5) and the Justice Secretary were aware of the use of torture by Mi5 – and the rest of the Cabinet?
2. If they were aware of the use of torture indirectly (or directly) by our own security services did they sanction it?, approve it? turn a blind eye to it? or call for it to stop?
3. With instances, albeit rare, of brutal treatment of prisoners in Iraq by the British army, the use of excessive force by Police in terror cases (Charles Menezes comes to mind) is it now the only way we can deal with terror? and if so, are we comfortable with this as a civilised nation? The senior law lords have, not surprisingly, condemned the use of torture and excessive force and secret evidence and control orders in combatting terror.
4. Do we have to pay the price of such oppressive measures to maintain the security of our nation? Is this the the new real politik?
5. Are we in danger of winning the war but losing the peace?
6. Has Britain, as a nation, always used such ‘secret’ force to maintain liberty and freedom? We have been involved in World Wars and serious military conflict for nearly every year in the last hundred years. Is it realistic to suggest, in war, that there are any rules at all and the reality is that if terror measures are used on us, we are released from the obligation to fight fair and clean?
I do hope not…. but what is the reality in modern Britain? Has David Davis got it right? It seems to me that a rather ominous silence is enveloping on this issue – the blogs are not exactly falling over themselves to comment and the newspapers and mainstream television mediaare not, when I last looked, giving Mr Davis’ intervention last night much further comment – perhaps qualified privilege defines a line in the sand?
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Nick Griffin’s views are popular in the UK with the Yoberati or knuckle dragging classes, so why should we be surprised when he goes on the BBC and suggests that the EU should start sinking boats with illegal immiigrants on them?
I have posted my response to Colin Samuels’ post on Madoff sentence at the foot of his post.
Charon QC 