Britain and rendition: Wait for the facts, says Tony Blair
The former prime minister has told an interviewer that he was not aware of the transporting of terror suspects for torture during his time in office. Jane Merrick reports
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In his interview, Mr Blair also risked irritating Gordon Brown by revealing he is not going to criticise David Cameron's government if the Tories win the next election
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Tony Blair has appeared to wash his hands of the extraordinary rendition scandal, claiming he was not aware of Britain's involvement under his watch as Prime Minister. The former premier was yesterday accused of "evasiveness" and failing to ask "awkward questions" when he was in Downing Street about the UK's role in the rendition of two terror suspects in 2004.
Mr Blair, in an interview, failed to condemn the controversial practice, which the British Government denied involvement in until only February this year, by saying: "The Obama government is going to continue [with them] in certain circumstances anyway."
In the July issue of Esquire, Mr Blair also spoke for the first time about the alleged torture of Binyam Mohamed, saying people should "wait for the facts" of his case.
In 2005, when details began to emerge of the rendition of terror suspects by the US to torture sites in East Africa and the Middle East, both Mr Blair and the then Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, told the Commons that British airports had not been used and British forces played no part.
But in 2008, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, was forced to apologise to the Commons after admitting that US forces used the British overseas territory airbase in Diego Garcia for the "torture" flights.
And in February this year, John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Defence, finally admitted that Britain was involved in the rendition of two suspects, who were captured by SAS forces in Iraq and handed over to the US to be sent to Afghanistan.
"First of all, really wait for the facts. I didn't know about those things, incidentally. But my strong advice is: wait for the facts."
What Mr Hutton told the Commons in February "wasn't known by politicians", Mr Blair said, adding: "Look, we could go into a whole debate about renditions, and so on. I think you'll find that the Obama government is going to continue [with them] in certain circumstances anyway. It's only ever journalists who ask me questions about issues like that. It's not an issue [with people] out there."
Mr Hutton revealed that documents sent at the time to Mr Straw and the then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, made reference to the rendition of the two terror suspects and admitted that more questions should have been asked.
Mr Mohamed, released from Guantanamo Bay this year, claims that he was tortured in Pakistan and Morocco and that his torturers were helped by MI5.
When Esquire attempted to clarify Mr Blair's remarks following the interview, a spokesman for the former prime minister said in a statement: "TB is, and always has been, opposed to torture, without qualification. He didn't want to get into a debate about the separate issue of rendition, because UK policy is clear, as is the Obama administration policy, and he didn't want to get into that debate between those two positions."
But the Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on rendition, who was last week in Washington meeting senior US legal advisers to discuss the issue, said Mr Blair's decision to "hide behind" President Obama was "ludicrous".
The MP for Chichester added: "If I hadn't watched Tony Blair in the Commons for so many years, I would be really shocked by his evasiveness on this. Blair, as ever, seems to want to be in two camps at once.
"Either you take the Bush/Cheney view that there are circumstances in which kidnap and torture are necessary in trying to prevent terrorism, or you take the view, as I do, that it is counterproductive: it is likely to damage the perception of the West in the eyes of those we are trying to persuade. It is ludicrous for Blair to hide behind Obama on this.
"Since Bush, there has been a fundamental change of policy in the US, which Blair must know, and Obama has inherited an extremely difficult situation, but he has made an unequivocal commitment to abandon torture.
"As for his pleas of ignorance, I'm speculating, but if our PM didn't know, given all the information that dribbled out in his six years as PM after 9/11, he must have gone out of his way to avoid asking awkward questions. To Obama's credit, he has had the courage to ask those questions."
In his interview, Mr Blair also risked irritating Gordon Brown by revealing he is not going to criticise David Cameron's government if the Tories win the next election. Backing the Prime Minister, he said: "Look, I support the Government and hope they win the next election and believe that they can. Of course they can. Should there at some point in time be a change in government I wouldn't go out and start attacking them, either... It's a really bloody hard thing, government, and the last thing you need is some elder statesman – in inverted commas – telling you what to do."
Mr Blair, asked whether being prime minister can "turn a man's head", said: "I'm probably the least qualified person to answer it. Erm, most people would say I haven't changed as a person much. Also, you do learn, and I certainly have learned, a lot of humility... And you realise you are very fallible, and that you make mistakes."
The former PM is tipped to become the EU's first full-time president if Ireland ratifies the Lisbon Treaty later this year, after two years as the international community's Middle East envoy.
Mr Blair denied that his role in the Middle East was "atonement" for the war in Iraq. He said he had not got very far in writing his autobiography, but added: "I want to do something different: [to explain] what it is actually like to be a normal person but with this responsibility; what sustains you."
He said he had made a "few friends in the life I've got now", adding: "Only friendships, you have to spend time on, that's difficult. I try to... I believe in friendship."
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Comments
TONY BLAIR IS A BIG LIAR
IN FACT A POLITICAL PARIAH
WITH HIS PHONY CHESHIRE CAT SMILE
HE MISLEAD THE PEOPLE OF THIS ISLE
HE AND HIS GOLD DIGGING WIFE
LEFT US ALL IN DEEP STRIFE
WARS AND ECONOMIC WOES
CREATING NEW HATEFUL FOES
HE WAS ALWAYS VERY SLIPPERY
THE PERFECT IMAGE OF A BENT MP
Sorry, I have a plane to catch to 10 Downing Street We are having new elections on September 11th . However I am all ears for you to come back. I swear I will not laugh, I say, I say, I say, I say , booo booo , The circumcision is against the Hindus, Non, Religious, Sorry mouse jumps like your positions from UK, Middle East and to Pope, Please excuse moa. "The Obama government is going to continue [with them] in certain circumstances anyway." Is he? I thought he was after the closing of the Gitmo and the paper that said, ?You will be going out of the office on the Idea on March. You know the Julius Cheeeser. That.
Mr. Blaire I thought after your wife sold the houses you were good. But you fail me. I feel so bad.
The argument can be made that the surge of biotech development in the 1980s and 1990s was a result of increased government funding for programs like the National Institutes of Health, which bridged the gap between the academically possible and the commercially profitable.
From 1983 to 1993, the budget of the NIH increased 158%, rising from $4 billion to $10 billion. From 1993 to 2003, that budget increased another 163% to $27 billion. In addition to opening its purse strings, Congress also passed a series of laws that fostered the ability to profit from biotech discoveries.
In particular, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 permitted universities and small businesses to patent discoveries that evolved from NIH-funded research. Indeed, I think the biotech boom was a direct consequence of rising National Health Institute funding, cheap equity capital, and the ability to patent NIH-funded discoveries.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla
Human rights groups were telling the British government as well as the Irish and others about torture flights despite the CIA's best efforts to hide their trail and long before Blair was challenged in Parliament about it.
The man is an abject liar, cravenly intent on saving his own skin on the back of others suffering.
We have the facts, the groups were telling Parliament about illegal transits and Parliament still try and deny it and Blair is hoping to become the new unvoted EU President...?
But if El Tone reads this... a message for you... some of us have been working diligently in the background, working to see you stand in the dock in the Hague and from there, who knows... maybe an extradition order to Iraq where they have the death penalty and Mr Blair, there are some of us out here that would like nothing better to see you tried, convicted and hung for your crimes but if Iraq doesn't go for it, the rest of your natural life behind bars will suffice nicely...
Keep 'working diligently' ....
... it'll keep you out of harm's way, to no avail.
Tony Blair is a hero.
If I wait for the British government to release the true facts I'll be long since dead & buried before I get the information I want, either about British complicity in 'extraordinary rendition' or anything else. You spent years trying to hide the facts behind 'spin'. Shame on you for your deceit.
Oh dear Tony do you not fear meeting you maker one day? We are all fallable !
The American Heritage Foundation?
how does this man sleep at night?
its telling that he became a Catholic. he needs confession so badly.
Lied and forver trying to cover it up.
But Britain hovers around this vile crook as though he is somehow beyond the law??
Expense-cheating is not even the half of it - it's manifestly clear that it was not only this yankee puppet Bliar who knew... but the cabinet, and MPs too. And they're all too spineless to dare attempt to try him, because they know they will be dragged down too.
STRAW knew. BLUNKETT knew. BROWN knew. HOON knew and was instrumental in enabling it. REID knew and was complicit in organising it. CAMPBELL knew. MILIBAND knew.
But Britain is too spineless to do anything about it. A nation of scum.
He agreed to commit UK troops to an illegal invasion of both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Neither the invasion of Iraq nor Afghanistan was illegal.
Prove they were in court, or belt up.
No-one is guilty until proven so, just like the poor terrorist suspects whose rights, I have little doubt, you'd support.
Tony Blair may have done many things wrong but he is just a man, a politician, who made choices. British people elected him. Three times.
Ask yourself, do you hate Blair more or do you hate Taleban more? (seriual torturers them - see the vids!) How about Al Quaeda? (loads more torture vids, wo-hooo). What about Iraqi Baathists?
Look at what you write about each, the volume and content. See. Mentally ill arent you!
Meanwhile 27 million Iraqis remain emancipated (made politically free) in spite of "people" like you and despite people like you. Pakistanis and Afghans fight and die every day figthing these people who would enslavbe and brutalise them like we saw in SWAT.
I should get hysterical about Blair instead eh?
Oh, yes, they hate Blair more than the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin-Laden, and any other terrorist. Of course.
I have a theory: you need to be mentally unstable to think in these terms - trials & hanging for a political decision in a democracy where you have secured parliamentary backing.
You also need to be completely irrational and absolutely bonkers to keep on about the criminality of a man who has not been tried.
(Perhaps you also need to be mentally unstable to comment at the Independent at ALL - better not go there!)
Is he speaking as God's messanger this time or as America's glove puppet?
Keep on raking the money in Phoney, there's plenty more out there.
Others include reimbursement for carpets bought during a trip to India, Stolen from India. Chocolates by a former party leader, the Valentines gift, and office expenses used for household items such as bathmats. Dirty baths, leaking bats, the revenues allowable expenses. The Loo has to be clean as many women visit these and throw the Freedom condoms, and the sanitary pads?? Asking for some, sir?
The revelations come as a new ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph shows that for the first time in 20 years, Labour has polled lower than the Liberal Democrats. That is not true I object to these polls and branches
Voters were asked who they would vote for in a general election. Indians
Indians, sirs.
Labour have slumped to third place in a poll for the first time in 20 years - as it emerged one MP tried to claim back a £5 church donation on expenses.
I take the Gays as men, I do not mind Lesbians, and I mean they have the pleasure of theirs. However, the small tiny amount paid because you had the coins tearing your trousers and you want to be rid off, donated to the Church in Sunday 17.09.06. £5 contribution to offertory on behalf of Frank Cook MP." Asking for these coins, Man alive are you human. Sir?
Once you give to Jesus whether this because of, ?Oh Lord, if I get the parliamentary seat, I will give the church some donations.? You get then you forget God? How will you remember men?
Vote for this man.
GATLINBURG, Tenn. ? Chris Turner normally wouldn't drive into the remote Tennessee mountains just to deliver a pizza. The one time he did, he came upon a scene that drained the color from his face and made him "numb from head to toe" ? a woman with her hands tied, silently begging him to call 911.
It was no joke, and Turner, 32, rushed to a nearby house and made the call. Police say the woman was jogging in her Atlanta neighborhood when a man who frequented her business whisked her away. Authorities say he drove her off, raped her and held her captive inside a cabin. Sevier County deputies rescued the 24-year-old woman on Tuesday evening because of Turner's quick thinking.
I thank you
Firozali A.Mulla
Also, so would Mandy.