Gordon Rayner and Duncan Gardham report in the Telegraph.co.uk that UK intelligence agencies are complaining that their officers are being diverted from intelligence work to prepare for lawsuits alleging human rights violations. One’s view of this may depend on attitudes towards the alleged violations – and an assessment of the specific claims being litigated.
Tag Archives: torture
BBC: Lord Chief Justice orders release of CIA document on torture of British citizen
From Government loses Binyam Mohamed torture appeal:
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has lost a bid to prevent the disclosure of secret information relating to the alleged torture of a UK resident.
Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed says UK authorities knew he was tortured at the behest of US authorities during seven years of captivity.
Mr Miliband had said releasing the material would harm national security.
But judges ruled the documents, which say his treatment was “cruel, inhuman and degrading”, should be released.
The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, said the court would now publish a summary of what the CIA had told British intelligence officials about Mr Mohamed’s treatment in 2002.
Mr Mohamed was secretly flown to Morocco in 2002 having been arrested in Pakistan over a visa irregularity and handed to US officials.
There, he says, he was tortured while interrogators asked him questions about his life in London that could only have come from British intelligence officers.
Government loses Binyam Mohamed torture appeal via BBC News.
Canadian controversy about Afghan torture
Via PiePalace.ca: Sorry to say that we’ve just become aware that, last November, a
Richard Colvin by Pawel Dwulit for the Toronto Star
career Canadian diplomat blew the whistle on Afghani torture of prisoners turned over by Canadian troops.
a senior Canadian diplomat, Richard Colvin, who told a parliamentary committee last week that “the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured” during his time as second in command at the embassy in Kabul in 2006 and 2007.
Ian Austen, General Says Canada Fears for Afghans (The New York Times, November 22, 2009).
In the same piece, Austen reports a “vigorous campaign by the Conservative government to discredit [Colvin’s] testimony.” Continue reading