Shashi Tharoor discharged on murder charge - shame on the prosecution!

 

Deny the British empire's crimes? No, we ignore them

New evidence of British colonial atrocities has not changed our national ability to disregard it.

George Monbiot in The Guardian


 

Members of the Devon Regiment round up local people in a search for Mau Mau fighters in Kenya in 1954. Photograph: Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images


There is one thing you can say for the Holocaust deniers: at least they know what they are denying. In order to sustain the lies they tell, they must engage in strenuous falsification. To dismiss Britain's colonial atrocities, no such effort is required. Most people appear to be unaware that anything needs to be denied.

The story of benign imperialism, whose overriding purpose was not to seize land, labour and commodities but to teach the natives English, table manners and double-entry book-keeping, is a myth that has been carefully propagated by the rightwing press. But it draws its power from a remarkable national ability to airbrush and disregard our past.

Last week's revelations, that the British government systematically destroyed the documents detailing mistreatment of its colonial subjects, and that the Foreign Office then lied about a secret cache of files containing lesser revelations, is by any standards a big story. But it was either ignored or consigned to a footnote by most of the British press. I was unable to find any mention of the secret archive on the Telegraph's website. The Mail's only coverage, as far as I can determine, was an opinion piece by a historian called Lawrence James, who used the occasion to insist that any deficiencies in the management of the colonies were the work of "a sprinkling of misfits, incompetents and bullies", while everyone else was "dedicated, loyal and disciplined".

----Also read

 5 of the worst atrocities carried out by the British Empire

-----

The British government's suppression of evidence was scarcely necessary. Even when the documentation of great crimes is abundant, it is not denied but simply ignored. In an article for the Daily Mail in 2010, for example, the historian Dominic Sandbrook announced that "Britain's empire stands out as a beacon of tolerance, decency and the rule of law … Nor did Britain countenance anything like the dreadful tortures committed in French Algeria." Could he really have been unaware of the history he is disavowing?

Caroline Elkins, a professor at Harvard, spent nearly 10 years compiling the evidence contained in her book Britain's Gulag: the Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. She started her research with the belief that the British account of the suppression of the Kikuyu's Mau Mau revolt in the 1950s was largely accurate. Then she discovered that most of the documentation had been destroyed. She worked through the remaining archives, and conducted 600 hours of interviews with Kikuyu survivors – rebels and loyalists – and British guards, settlers and officials. Her book is fully and thoroughly documented. It won the Pulitzer prize. But as far as Sandbrook, James and other imperial apologists are concerned, it might as well never have been written.

Elkins reveals that the British detained not 80,000 Kikuyu, as the official histories maintain, but almost the entire population of one and a half million people, in camps and fortified villages. There, thousands were beaten to death or died from malnutrition, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery. In some camps almost all the children died.

The inmates were used as slave labour. Above the gates were edifying slogans, such as "Labour and freedom" and "He who helps himself will also be helped". Loudspeakers broadcast the national anthem and patriotic exhortations. People deemed to have disobeyed the rules were killed in front of the others. The survivors were forced to dig mass graves, which were quickly filled. Unless you have a strong stomach I advise you to skip the next paragraph.

Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women's breasts. They cut off inmates' ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked around the compound.

Elkins provides a wealth of evidence to show that the horrors of the camps were endorsed at the highest levels. The governor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, regularly intervened to prevent the perpetrators from being brought to justice. The colonial secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, repeatedly lied to the House of Commons. This is a vast, systematic crime for which there has been no reckoning.

No matter. Even those who acknowledge that something happened write as if Elkins and her work did not exist. In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan maintains that just eleven people were beaten to death. Apart from that, "1,090 terrorists were hanged and as many as 71,000 detained without due process".

The British did not do body counts, and most victims were buried in unmarked graves. But it is clear that tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Kikuyu died in the camps and during the round-ups. Hannan's is one of the most blatant examples of revisionism I have ever encountered.

Without explaining what this means, Lawrence James concedes that "harsh measures" were sometimes used, but he maintains that "while the Mau Mau were terrorising the Kikuyu, veterinary surgeons in the Colonial Service were teaching tribesmen how to deal with cattle plagues." The theft of the Kikuyu's land and livestock, the starvation and killings, the widespread support among the Kikuyu for the Mau Mau's attempt to reclaim their land and freedom: all vanish into thin air. Both men maintain that the British government acted to stop any abuses as soon as they were revealed.

What I find remarkable is not that they write such things, but that these distortions go almost unchallenged. The myths of empire are so well-established that we appear to blot out countervailing stories even as they are told. As evidence from the manufactured Indian famines of the 1870s and from the treatment of other colonies accumulates, British imperialism emerges as no better and in some cases even worse than the imperialism practised by other nations. Yet the myth of the civilising mission remains untroubled by the evidence.

CIA report details 'brutal' post-9/11 interrogations

US & CANADA

9 December 2014 Last updated at 16:15

The CIA carried out "brutal" interrogations of terror suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US, a US Senate report has said.

The summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report said the CIA misled Americans on the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation".

It said interrogations were badly managed and the information collected unreliable.

President Obama previously said that in his view the techniques were torture.

The Senate committee's report runs to more than 6,000 pages, drawing on huge quantities of evidence, but it remains classified and only a 480-page summary is being released.

Publication had been delayed amid disagreements in Washington over what should be made public.

President Barack Obama halted the CIA interrogation programme when he took office in 2009.

Earlier this year he said that in his view the methods used to question al-Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture.

During the presidency of George W Bush, the CIA operation against al-Qaeda - known internally as the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation - saw as many as 100 suspected terrorists held in "black sites" outside the US.

They were interrogated using methods such as waterboarding, slapping, humiliation, exposure to cold and sleep deprivation.

--------From The Independent

CIA 'torture' report: The 54 countries that will be worried by controversial revelations

After years of waiting, the US is about to publish a report exposing the “enhanced” interrogation techniques used by its intelligence service around the world – in other words, what many class as CIA torture.

The implications of the report stretch around the whole world, with much of the most controversial activity taking place off US soil. The map above shows just how many countries were participants in the CIA programme, according to the George Soros’ Open Society Foundation’s 2013 report.

Though unofficial, that very detailed probe concluded that 54 countries around the world assisted the CIA’s programme – 25 of them in Europe.

Today’s report, actually a 480-page summary of a 6,000-page investigation from the Senate Intelligence Committee, is expected to include graphic details about sexual threats, waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques meted out to captured militants since the 9/11 terror attacks.

Preparing for a worldwide outcry, and possibly even violence, from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday they had taken steps to shore up security of US facilities worldwide.

But what is the report? And how much light will it shine on almost a decade and a half of secretive, possibly illegal Government activity.

American diplomatic and military posts overseas have been told to prepare themselves for violent protests this week if the US Senate proceeds with its promised release of a long-awaited report into 'enhanced' interrogation techniques used by the CIA on prisoners after the 11 September attacks 13 years agoWhat is the report?

The report, which took years to produce, is the first independent assessment of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program, which George Bush authorised after 9/11.

Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and Obama swiftly banned so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.

Senate Intelligence Committee staff reportedly reviewed around six million pages of information, while the report itself has over 38,000 footnotes citing CIA documents.

What details will it reveal?

Sources say the overall findings of the report are expected to be that the CIA programme did not deliver life-saving intelligence, that its techniques were more brutal than previously admitted, and that CIA officials misled the White House as to the extent of their activities.

More specifically, the report is said to describe how senior al-Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened by his interrogators with a buzzing power drill. The drill was never actually used on Nashiri.

President Obama speaking ahead of the expected release of a Senate report that criticises the CIA’s treatment of captivesIn another instance, the report documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick, sources told the Reuters news agency.

Other methods, such as sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces and waterboarding, will be described as having gone beyond what was “legally allowable”, CBS News reported.

Cases in which CIA interrogators threatened one or more detainees with mock executions - a practice never authorised by Bush administration lawyers - are documented in the report, the Reuters sources said.

Why has it taken so long to be published?

It has taken three separate bipartisan votes to create, approve and finally declassify the report – in 2009, 2012 and 2014 respectively.

Republicans have fiercely opposed the publication, suggesting it will be to the detriment of national security, and critiques from Republican committee members and CIA officials are expected to be included in the release.

Abdulhakim Belhadj, a Libyan who claimed Britain helped the CIA in his illegal rendition into the hands of the Gaddafi governmentWith negotiations over how much could be released complete, Secretary of State John Kerry had earlier asked the committee to “consider” changing the timing of the report.

But that request has been denied – the committee does not want to risk not coming out under this Government, giving a potential new Republican government the chance to bury it altogether.

How will the world respond?

Preparing for a worldwide outcry, and possibly even violence, from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and US intelligence officials said on Monday that they had taken steps to shore up security of US facilities worldwide.

“There are some indications that the release of the report could lead to greater risk that is posed to US facilities and individuals all around the world,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

John Kerry asked the committee to 'consider' the timing of the reportBut because so much of the CIA programme appears to have involved activity away from US soil, many other countries around the world will be concerned.

Among them is the UK which, it has been claimed, provided assistance to the CIA in the illegal rendition of Abdelhakim Belhadj, an anti-Gaddafi rebel leader who was returned to Libya reportedly via CIA custody.

The US State Department has warned all overseas posts to be prepared for a “range of reactions” in the wake of the report.

And the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, has been outspoken in his opposition. “I think this is a terrible idea,” he said on CNN. “Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths’.”

Wall Street Journal says Egypt needs a Pinochet

 

The Chilean dictator presided over the torture and murder of thousands, yet still the free-market right reveres his name

• 
• • Martin Pengelly in New York
  • guardian.co.uk, Saturday 6 July 2013 14.09 BST

Augusto Pinochet in 1997 in Santiago, Chile. Photograph: Santiago Llanquin/AP

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial entitled "After the Coup in Cairo". Its final paragraph contained these words:

Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took over power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.

Presumably, this means that those who speak for the Wall Street Journal – the editorial was unsigned – think Egypt should think itself lucky if its ruling generals now preside over a 17-year reign of terror. I also take it the WSJ means us to associate two governments removed by generals – the one led by Salvador Allende in Chile and the one led by Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. Islamist, socialist … elected, legitimate … who cares?

Presumably, the WSJ thinks the Egyptians now have 17 years in which to think themselves lucky when any who dissent are tortured with electricity, raped, thrown from planes or – if they're really lucky – just shot. That's what happened in Chile after 1973, causing the deaths of between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Around 30,000 were tortured.

Presumably, the WSJ hopes a general in the mold of Pinochet (or generals, as they didn't break the mold when they made him) will preside over all this with the assistance of Britain and America. Perhaps he (or they) will return the favour by helping one of them win a small war.

Presumably, eventually, the Egyptian general or generals – and we should let them have a junta if they want one, so long as it isn't like that beastly example in Argentina – will willingly relinquish power. After all, democracy cannot "midwife" itself. Presumably, the WSJ is sure a transition to elected government will follow, as it did in Chile. (Although, in 15 years' time the Argentinian writer Ariel Dorfman's words will, presumably, ring as true as they do now: "Saying Pinochet brought democracy to Chile is like saying Margaret Thatcher brought socialism to Britain." More of her later.)

Such quibbles notwithstanding, I'm presuming the WSJ envisages that the Egyptian general or generals will then be allowed to retire, unmolested. Possibly to Wentworth, where the golf's good. But if any molestation does occur, perhaps by some uppity human rights lawyer, they will receive further assistance from the governing classes of Britain and America. He or they will then retire and, unlike his or their victims, die a free man – or men – in bed.

And presumably, after another 20 or 30 years, when some other group of generals removes a democratic government upon which the Wall Street Journal is not keen, the people of the fortunate country in question will be told what is good for them in the same breathtakingly ugly way.

I am not an expert on Egypt, or Chile – most of my knowledge about General Pinochet comes from a book by a Guardian writer, Andy Beckett. But I know enough that when Margaret Thatcher died, reminders of her enduring support and praise for Pinochet left a nasty taste in the mouth. While people are dying in the streets of Cairo, to read an expression of the same sentiment from a respected, globally-read newspaper is repellent.

So just why does General Augusto Pinochet attract such nostalgic, unquestioning support from some on the free-market right? Do they simply overlook the accepted fact that thousands were tortured and killed under his rule?

Perhaps this might be a case of "Say what you like about Mussolini, but he made the trains run on time"? Bernie Ecclestone, the chap who runs Formula One motor-racing, tried it a couple of years ago – albeit he said it about Hitler (and Saddam Hussain), and we don't stand for that. Even Britain's Daily Mail was upset.

Presumably, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board believes that because Pinochet "hired free-market reformers", he should be excused the excesses of a few death squads. That is, presumably, why they think a business-friendly cold killer in the Pinochet mold is who Egyptians need now to manage their "transition to democracy".

But really, I'm at a loss. There must be some sort of justification for such a statement. I just haven't the slightest clue what it is.

The justice and security bill will have a corrosive impact on individual rights.

I'm leaving the Liberal Democrats too

The justice and security bill will have a corrosive impact on individual rights. The party's support for it is a coalition compromise too far

• 
• • Philippe Sands
  • The Guardian, Monday 11 March 2013 20.30 GMT

Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate Jo Shaw announces her resignation during a speech at the party's spring conference. Photograph: Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images

I have worked closely with the Liberal Democrats since the attacks of 11 September; it has been the only party to adopt a principled and consistent position favouring the rule of law and the protection of individual rights. In difficult times, and in the face of blanket claims invoking risks to national security, the Liberal Democrats have resisted policies embracing torture, rendition and the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists without charge, as well as war under conditions of patent illegality.

After the London attacks of July 2005 the Lib Dems stood firm against the idea that the "rules of the game" had changed, committed to respect of human rights for all. They opposed executive authority, secrecy and the rise of the "security state". In government, on many issues, that position has been maintained. But to my great regret, last week the parliamentary group was whipped to vote in favour of the introduction of secret court hearings in part 2 of the justice and security bill. If adopted, the bill will put British judges in the invidious position of adjudging certain civil claims under conditions in which one party will not be entitled to see the evidence on which the opposing party relies. Last year Lib Dem members voted overwhelmingly against this. They did so again at their conference on Sunday. Their approach was informed, reasonable, principled and correct. Why was it ignored?

This part of the bill is a messy and unhappy compromise. It is said to have been demanded by the US (which itself has stopped more or less any case that raises 'national security' issues from reaching court), on the basis that it won't share as much sensitive intelligence information if the UK doesn't rein in its courts. Important decisions on intelligence taken at the instigation of others are inherently unreliable. We remember Iraq, which broke a bond of trust between government and citizen.

There is no floodgate of cases, nothing in the coalition agreement, nor any widely supported call for such a draconian change. There is every chance that, if the bill is adopted, this and future governments will spend years defending the legislation in UK courts and Strasbourg. There will be claims that it violates rights of fair trial under the Human Rights Act and the European convention (no doubt giving rise to ever-more strident calls from Theresa May and Chris Grayling that both should be scrapped). Other countries with a less robust legal tradition favouring the rule of law and an independent judiciary will take their lead from the UK, as they did with torture and rendition.

I accept that there may be times when the country faces a threat of such gravity and imminence that the exceptional measure of closed material proceedings might be needed. This is not such a time, and the bill is not such a measure. Under conditions prevailing today, this part of the bill is not pragmatic or proportionate. It is wrong in principle, and will not deliver justice. It will be used to shield governmental wrongdoing from public and judicial scrutiny under conditions that are fair and just. The bill threatens greater corrosion of the rights of the individual in the UK, in the name of "national security".

It smells too of political compromise in the name of coalition politics. Being a party of government does not mean such compromise is inevitable. This is particularly important now, as Conservative forces ratchet up their attacks on rights for all and against the European convention. At this moment the need for the Liberal Democrats to stand firm on issues of principle – for individual rights and open justice, against the security state – is greater than ever.

Secrecy begets secrecy. I have listened to all the arguments, and concluded this is a compromise too far, neither necessary nor fair at this time. The point has been made eloquently in recent days by Dinah Rose QC and Jo Shaw. Their principled arguments have long had my full support and so I have joined them in resigning from the Liberal Democrats. I have done so with regret, given the courageous positions adopted on these issues by Charles Kennedy, Menzies Campbell and Nick Clegg in the past. I still hope that the views of the membership might yet prevail, before the bill passes into law. If not, the Liberal Democrats will have lost integrity on one issue that has truly distinguished them from other parties, and on which they can rightly claim to have made a real difference.

Justice and security bill is designed to stop disclosure of intelligence secrets

After recent embarrassments, the government wants to ensure no intelligence information emerges in civil court hearings again

• Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Cobain
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 September 2012 14.38 BST

The government has tried to assuage opponents by keeping the relatively liberal Ken Clarke in charge of the bill. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA

The justice and security bill is the direct result of evidence that emerged in court supporting allegations that MI5 and MI6 knew about the torture or inhuman and degrading treatment meted out by the CIA to terror suspects, including British citizens and residents, notably Binyam Mohamed.

The high court, later backed by senior judges in the court of appeal, ruled that information the CIA had passed to MI5 and MI6 should be disclosed. Washington was furious. The British government, and in particular David Miliband, the foreign secretary at the time, was deeply embarrassed.

There was a danger of further incriminating evidence emerging in court as UK citizens and residents who were held at Guantánamo Bay demanded compensation. To avoid disclosing what MI5 and MI6 may have known about the secret transfer of the detainees to the US military prison on Cuba and about their treatment, the government offered them expensive out-of-court settlements.

Under pressure from the security and intelligence agencies – and the US – the coalition government decided to introduce a statute designed to prevent any intelligence information from being disclosed in civil court hearings ever again.

The government argues that the bill would allow more intelligence information to be heard in court than hitherto, even though it would be heard in secret. A judge would decide whether the information should be kept secret. The bill's critics say that the way it is drafted means it would be extremely difficult for a judge to challenge any minister's claim that information should be kept secret on grounds of national security. The fact that a hearing would be held in secret could itself be kept secret.

Critics say the bill represents a creeping move towards more and more secret courts, based on the model of the special immigration appeals commission, where any evidence can be withheld from a defendant and his or her lawyers. Evidence of British collusion in the abuse and rendition of terror suspects to places where they risked being tortured – including evidence of MI6's role in the rendition in 2004 of two Libyan dissidents into the hands of Muammar Gaddafi's secret police in Tripoli – might never have seen the light of day had the bill been in place.

The government has tried to assuage opponents by keeping the role of steering the bill through parliament in the hands of the relatively liberal former justice secretary Ken Clarke, rather than his successor, Chris Grayling. Liberal Democrat ministers have sought credit for excluding inquests from the bill, an element of the original draft that had provoked strong opposition from armed forces families and the British Legion.

But senior Liberal Democrats have not all been persuaded and will express their concern about the bill at their conference in Brighton this month. A motion says the bill's proposals for "closed material procedures", as they are called, form no part either of the Liberal Democrat or Conservative manifestos in 2010, or the coalition agreement.

Indian police still using truth serum

Use of Sodium Pentothal to secure confessions – classified by some as torture – still common in certain regions of India

• Helen Pidd
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 July 2012 18.37 BST

A person injected with “truth serum” is generally too woozy to give lengthy explanations, but can supply answers to certain questions and clues. Photograph: Valentin Flauraud/Reuters

It is the sort of scene that belongs in a film noir, not a 21st-century democracy: an uncooperative suspect being injected with a dose of "truth serum" in an attempt to elicit a confession. But some detectives in India still swear by so-called narcoanalysis despite India's highest court ruling that it was not only unreliable but also "cruel, inhuman and degrading".

The technique is back in the news after officers from India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) asked a judge for permission to administer sodium pentothal to a high-profile Indian politician and his financial adviser embroiled in a corruption case. The drug is a barbiturate that acts on the central nervous system, dissolving anxiety, inducing drowsiness and even unconsciousness.

CBI investigators made the application in order to try to prove embezzlement allegations against Jagan Mohan Reddy, the charismatic son of YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in southern India, who died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2009. They argue that the technique is warranted because neither Reddy nor his auditor are co-operating with the inquiry.

Reddy Jr tipped for the chief minister's job himself, has protested vehemently against the use of narcoanalysis on the grounds that a supreme court ruling in 2010 held that such tests are illegal without consent from the individuals.

But Dr Gandhi PC Kaza, chairman of the Truth Lab, India's first independent forensic service, told the Guardian that despite narcoanalysis being "unscientific, undemocratic, illegal and inhumane", it was still used with enthusiasm in certain Indian states – notably Gujarat and Karnataka. He condemned the practice, saying it had "no place in the world's greatest democracy".

There are no official figures for the number of suspects who have been subjected to narcoanalysis, but VH Patel, deputy director at the Directorate of Forensic Sciences, Gandhinagar, in Gujarat, western India, told the Guardian he had personally conducted narcoanalysis in nearly 100 cases. He estimates that his lab gets requests for narcoanalysis three to four times a month.

He insisted that the procedure was safe and ethical. "There is no violence involved. It's a good methodology that helps the investigation," he said. "After all, there has to be justice for the victims.If we conduct narcoanalysis on a terror suspect, everyone kicks up a fuss, but what about the people who have suffered?"

Patel said he worked with a team of three other scientists to administer the tests, as well as a psychiatrist and an anaesthetist, who decides which drugs to use at what dosage. "It takes almost a week to test a single person. We conduct various medical tests and interviews with them," he said. "It's an important methodology but we cannot say how accurate it is in the end. That depends on the investigation."

A person injected with "truth serum" is generally too woozy to volunteer lengthy explanations, but is usually able to give answers to certain questions and clues. Patel said his lab had received no complaints regarding side-effects. But in 2011, Sheikh Mujib, an engineering student who was accused in a bomb blast case in the Indian city of Ahmedabad, complained of health problems after narcoanalysis.

Arun Ferreira, a political activist who underwent forced narcoanalyis after being arrested in 2007 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for being an alleged Maoist, described the procedure as a sort of torture – and one whichthat "only decreases the individual's ability to lie and is in no way a foolproof method for uncovering the truth". The revelations supposedly made under the influence of truth serum may contain fantasies like a person under the influence of alcohol."

Sometimes defendants undergo the procedure in an attempt to prove their innocence. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar, currently on trial in Delhi for murdering their 14-year-old daughter, volunteered for narcoanalysis in an attempt to prove their innocence. The inventor of narcoanalysis, an American obstetrician called Robert House, originally meant it to exonerate prisoners. During his time in labour wards around 1915, he noticed that the drug administered to women during childbirth, scopolamine, had a strange effect on his patients, causing them to talk freely. In 1922, he arranged to interview two suspected criminals under the influence of the same drug – they denied the charges and were later found not guilty.

Many experts believe narcoanalysis can be classed as torture under the United Nations Convention against Torture. Though India signed the convention in 1997, its parliament never ratified it.

UK's secret policy on torture revealed

Document shows intelligence officers instructed to weigh importance of information sought against pain inflicted

• Ian Cobain
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 4 August 2011 12.42 BST
• larger | smaller

A number of men said they were questioned by MI5 and MI6 officers after being tortured at Guantánamo Bay. Photograph: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
A top-secret document revealing how MI6 and MI5 officers were allowed to extract information from prisoners being illegally tortured overseas has been seen by the Guardian. The interrogation policy – details of which are believed to be too sensitive to be publicly released at the government inquiry into the UK's role in torture and rendition – instructed senior intelligence officers to weigh the importance of the information being sought against the amount of pain they expected a prisoner to suffer. It was operated by the British government for almost a decade. A copy of the secret policy showed senior intelligence officers and ministers feared the British public could be at greater risk of a terrorist attack if Islamists became aware of its existence. One section states: "If the possibility exists that information will be or has been obtained through the mistreatment of detainees, the negative consequences may include any potential adverse effects on national security if the fact of the agency seeking or accepting information in those circumstances were to be publicly revealed. "For instance, it is possible that in some circumstances such a revelation could result in further radicalisation, leading to an increase in the threat from terrorism." The policy adds that such a disclosure "could result in damage to the reputation of the agencies", and that this could undermine their effectiveness. The fact that the interrogation policy document and other similar papers may not be made public during the inquiry into British complicity in torture and rendition has led to human rights groups and lawyers refusing to give evidence or attend any meetings with the inquiry team because it does not have "credibility or transparency". The decision by 10 groups – including Liberty, Reprieve and Amnesty International – follows the publication of the inquiry's protocols, which show the final decision on whether material uncovered by the inquiry, led by Sir Peter Gibson, can be made public will rest with the cabinet secretary. The inquiry will begin after a police investigation into torture allegations has been completed. Some have criticised the appointment of Gibson, a retired judge, to head the inquiry because he previously served as the intelligence services commissioner, overseeing government ministers' use of a controversial power that permits them to "disapply" UK criminal and civil law in order to offer a degree of protection to British intelligence officers committing crimes overseas. The government denies there is a conflict of interest. The protocols also stated that former detainees and their lawyers will not be able to question intelligence officials and that all evidence from current or former members of the security and intelligence agencies, below the level of head, will be heard in private. The document seen by the Guardian shows how the secret interrogation policy operated until it was rewritten on the orders of the coalition government last July. It also: • Acknowledged that MI5 and MI6 officers could be in breach of both UK and international law by asking for information from prisoners held by overseas agencies known to use torture. • Explained the need to obtain political cover for any potentially criminal act by consulting ministers beforehand. The secret interrogation policy was first passed to MI5 and MI6 officers in Afghanistan in January 2002 to enable them to continue questioning prisoners whom they knew were being mistreated by members of the US military. It was amended slightly later that year before being rewritten and expanded in 2004 after it became apparent that a significant number of British Muslims, radicalised by the invasion of Iraq, were planning attacks against the UK. The policy was amended again in July 2006 during an investigation of a suspected plot to bring down airliners over the Atlantic. Entitled "Agency policy on liaison with overseas security and intelligence services in relation to detainees who may be subject to mistreatment", it was given to intelligence officers handing over questions to be put to detainees. Separate policy documents were issued for related matters, including intelligence officers conducting face-to-face interrogations. The document set out the international and domestic law on torture, and explained that MI5 and MI6 do not "participate in, encourage or condone" either torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. Intelligence officers were instructed not to carry out any action "which it is known" would result in torture. However, they could proceed when they foresaw "a real possibility their actions will result in an individual's mistreatment" as long as they first sought assurances from the overseas agency. Even when such assurances were judged to be worthless, officers could be given permission to proceed despite the real possibility that they would committing a crime and that a prisoner or prisoners would be tortured. "When, not withstanding any caveats or prior assurances, there is still considered to be a real possibility of mistreatment and therefore there is considered to be a risk that the agencies' actions could be judged to be unlawful, the actions may not be taken without authority at a senior level. In some cases, ministers may need to be consulted," the document said. In deciding whether to give permission, senior MI5 and MI6 management "will balance the risk of mistreatment and the risk that the officer's actions could be judged to be unlawful against the need for the proposed action". At this point, "the operational imperative for the proposed action, such as if the action involves passing or obtaining life-saving intelligence" would be weighed against "the level of mistreatment anticipated and how likely those consequences are". Ministers may be consulted over "particularly difficult cases", with the process of consulting being "designed to ensure that appropriate visibility and consideration of the risk of unlawful actions takes place". All such operations must remain completely secret or they could put UK interests and British lives at risk. Disclosure of the contents of the document appears to help explain the high degree of sensitivity shown by ministers and former ministers after the Guardian became aware of its existence two years ago. Tony Blair evaded a series of questions over the role he played in authorising changes to the instructions in 2004, while the former home secretary David Blunkett maintained it was potentially libellous even to ask him questions about the matter. As foreign secretary, David Miliband told MPs the secret policy could never be made public as "nothing we publish must give succour to our enemies". Blair, Blunkett and the former foreign secretary Jack Straw also declined to say whether or not they were aware that the instructions had led to a number of people being tortured. The head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, said that, in the post 9/11 world, his officers would be derelict in their duty if they did not work with intelligence agencies in countries with poor human rights records, while his opposite number at MI6, Sir John Sawers, spoke of the "real, constant, operational dilemmas" involved in such relationships. Others, however, are questioning whether – in the words of Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, "Tony Blair's government was guilty of developing something close to a criminal policy". The Intelligence and Security Committee, the group of parliamentarians appointed by the prime minister to assist with the oversight of the UK's intelligence agencies, is known to have examined the document while sitting in secret, but it is unclear what – if any – suggestions or complaints it made. Paul Murphy, the Labour MP and former minister who chaired the committee in 2006, declined to answer questions about the matter. A number of men, mostly British Muslims, have complained that they were questioned by MI5 and MI6 officers after being tortured by overseas intelligence officials in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Some are known to have been detained at the suggestion of British intelligence officers. Others say they were tortured in places such as Egypt, Dubai, Morocco and Syria, while being interrogated on the basis of information that could only have been supplied by the UK. A number were subsequently convicted of serious terrorism offences or subjected to control orders. Others returned to the UK and, after treatment, resumed their lives. One is a businessman in Yorkshire, another a software designer living in Berkshire, and a third is a doctor practising on the south coast of England. Some have brought civil proceedings against the British government, and a number have received compensation in out-of-court settlements, but others remain too scared to take legal action. Scotland Yard has examined the possibility that one officer from MI5 and a second from MI6 committed criminal offences while extracting information from detainees overseas, and detectives are now conducting what is described as a "wider investigation into other potential criminal conduct". A new set of instructions was drafted after last year's election, published on the orders of David Cameron, on the grounds that the coalition was "determined to resolve the problems of the past" and wished to give "greater clarity about what is and what is not acceptable in the future". Human rights groups pointed to what they said were serious loopholes that could permit MI5 and MI6 officers to remain involved in the torture of prisoners overseas. Last week, the high court heard a challenge to the legality of the new instructions, brought by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Judgment is expected later in the year.

• guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011