Gee Blair lied? UK did assist in 'reditions'.
- From: GLOBALIST <free.tuneup@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:11:11 -0800 (PST)
Britain aided Iraq terror renditions, government admitsTwo Pakistani
men were handed to US and taken to Afghan jail, defence secretary
tells Commons after year of official denials
Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 26 February 2009
The government admitted today that British troops in Iraq handed over
terror suspects to the US, which then secretly rendered them to a
prison in Afghanistan.
After a year of allegations and repeated ministerial assurances to the
contrary, the admission was made in the Commons by John Hutton, the
defence secretary, who apologised to MPs for inaccurate information
ministers had previously given them.
He said British soldiers, believed to have been SAS troops, handed
over two terrorist suspects to the US in Iraq in February 2004. The
men had been captured outside the UK-controlled zone covering south-
eastern Iraq.
Hutton said the pair, believed to be Pakistanis, were still being held
in Afghanistan. He said they were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a banned
organisation that he said was linked to al-Qaida. The US had assured
Britain the two continued to represent "significant security concerns"
and it was "neither possible or desirable to transfer them to either
their country of detention or country of origin", Hutton told MPs.
The US had assured him the men were being held in humane conditions
and had access to the Red Cross, Hutton said.
The admission is hugely embarrassing to the government, coming in the
wake of the continuing dispute over the suppression of evidence of UK
collusion in the alleged torture of former British residents,
including Binyam Mohamed, who was released by the US last week after
more than four years in Guantánamo Bay.
The defence secretary said a review of all records of detainees in
Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003 had revealed the inaccuracy, adding:
"This has been a thorough and comprehensive review and it really has
got to the heart of the issue."
But Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said damaging "secrets
about British complicity in rendition and torture continue to seep
out" and a judicial public inquiry into was the "only hope for lancing
the boil and moving on".
The call was echoed by Human Rights Watch, which described the
internal review announced by Hutton as an apparent "bureaucratic and
documentary exercise designed not to get at the truth but to cover
tracks by ring-fencing any incriminating evidence in official
records".
In the Commons, Crispin Blunt, the Tory security spokesman, welcomed
the information about the two detainees but said Hutton had left open
the "glaring hole" of wider UK complicity in torture. Fellow Tory MP
Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the parliamentary group on extraordinary
rendition, told Hutton that as ministers had previously denied a
number of allegations that turned out to be true, he hoped he could
"understand that we have less confidence than we did in assurances
being made now".
Nick Harvey, a Liberal Democrat MP, asked whether records had now been
so exhaustively checked that today's statement could be considered the
"last word".
The defence secretary said the review was "comprehensive and as
thorough as it can possibly be," adding: "We operate to a very high
standard. It is right that we do, because as I said earlier these
define the nature of our country."
Labour's Andrew Dismore (Hendon), chairman of the joint committee on
human rights, asked Hutton whether the Lashkar-e-Taiba members would
be transferred out of Afghanistan. He also asked whether they had been
subjected to waterboarding.
Hutton reiterated that there was "no evidence" of torture and said UK
forces were not aware "at the time" that the detainees would be
transferred to Afghanistan.
In March 2006, Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier, revealed that Iraqis
and Afghans had been captured by British and American special forces
and rendered to prisons where they faced torture. The MoD said at the
time that it did not comment on the activities of special forces.
The government subsequently obtained a gagging order in the courts
preventing Griffin from saying any more.
Hutton also said the transfer had first been brought to his attention
on 1 December last year. He revealed that officials knew about the
transfer of the two prisoners in 2004, and references had been made in
"lengthy papers" sent in April 2006 to Jack Straw and Charles Clarke,
the then foreign and home secretaries. "It is clear that the context
provided did not highlight its significance at that point to the
ministers concerned," Hutton said.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, was forced last year to admit,
after earlier government denials, that two CIA aircraft transporting
abducted prisoners landed on UK territory in 2002. The planes
refuelled on the British dependent territory of Diego Garcia in the
Indian Ocean.
Today, Tom Porteous, spokesman for Human Rights Watch, said it was
clear the UK had more knowledge and involvement in US counter-terror
policy than had been admitted, adding: "The drip, drip of allegations
and admissions does huge damage not only to the government but the
international reputation of the UK and the ability of our troops in
Iraq and Afghanistan to hold their heads high and say that they are
fighting on the side of justice and truth."
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