We did hand over terror suspects for rendition, Hutton admits
Defence Secretary sorry for misleading statements made by ministers
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The British Government admitted for the first time yesterday that it had been involved in "extraordinary rendition". The Defence Secretary John Hutton disclosed that terror suspects handed over to the US in Iraq were flown out of the country for interrogation.
Contradicting previous insistences by the Government that it had no played no part in the controversial practice, John Hutton revealed that details of the cases were known by officials and detailed in documents sent to two cabinet members at the time – Home Secretary Charles Clarke and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
The prisoners, two men of Pakistani origin who were members of the Lashkar-e-Toiba group, which is said to be affiliated to al-Qa'ida, were captured by SAS troops serving near Baghdad in February 2004. They were handed over to US custody and flown to Afghanistan within the next few months. Among other inmates who passed through the prison was Binyam Mohammed, the UK citizen recently freed from Guantanamo Bay.
Mr Hutton apologised to the Commons "unreservedly" for misleading statements made by the Government in the past, adding "in retrospect, it is clear to me that the transfer to Afghanistan of these two individuals should have been questioned at the time".
Yesterday, Mr Clarke said he had nothing to add. A spokesman for Mr Straw said "passing references" were made to the cases in documents but he "was not alerted to the specific cases at the time".
There were immediate calls for an inquiry. The former shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the case was the "latest in a series of issues where the Government has been less than straightforward with regard to allegations of torture".
A fellow Tory MP, Crispin Blunt, asked why the transfer had not been more fully investigated in 2004, adding: "It is at the very least unfortunate that both officials and ministers overlooked the significance of these cases, not least since the issue of rendition was already highly controversial ... The country is owed an account of what happened – nothing does more to undermine our fight against terrorism and violence [than] if we depart from the rule of law and the values we seek to defend."
Last night, Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Ludford – who led an EU-wide inquiry into rendition in 2007 – said the admission was "another breach in the wall of denials and cover-ups". She said there was further evidence of 170 stopovers at UK airports by CIA-operated aircraft flying to or from countries where prisoners could be tortured.
The Defence Secretary said the two men continue to be held in Afghanistan as "unlawful enemy combatants" and their status is reviewed on a regular basis. There was no "substantial evidence" he continued, that they had been mistreated or subjected to abuse.
However, a report released by Human Rights Watch in 2004 accused American forces in Afghanistan of inflicting "illegal and abusive treatment" on inmates. Members of the US Congress also alleged mistreatment, with Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy saying some inmates had died. The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a formal complaint to the US in 2007.
Mr Hutton told MPs there had been a number of other errors in previous statements to the Commons, including the number of prisoners held by the UK in Iraq, where ministers "overstated by approximately 1,000 the numbers of detainees held by UK forces".
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Comments
with a bomb but no airforce.
Send this sorry shower to the Hague!
Yes sqeaze it out them if necessary.
Our Judges dont wear white wigs. You have all probaly seen hundreds of films of court sceens from US courts. but in all seriousness, no kangaroo courts here.
Lets bear in mind this man didn't exactly "hack" any systems. He looked for systems and accounts with NO PASSWORD set and managed to acccess the systems that way. Even shcool children can see the dangers inherent in such lax security. Gary McKinnon embarrased the US armed forces and THAT is why hes being prosecuted so vehemently.
The police can go into people's homes on "fishing expeditions" as upheld by the Rhenquist Court in a case where Texas police entered a home without a warrant in search of thieves--and trashed the house. There are numerous accounts of police corruption from Chicago to Dallas, New York to Sacramento, and everywhere in between. The State Police in Colorado ticketed a man for attempting to save the lives of two elderly women; the Iowa Highway Patrol stops "speeders" in quest of sex--and it is all on the internet and public record.
I am a lawyer, and in military courts there are no juries of peers, and the panel of judges are military with a vegenance. Most juries in the USA take into consideration heresay which is inadmissible in a court in the UK before the days of Tony Blair and his miscreants.
OJ was freed from murder charges because of an all-black sympathetic jury where several admitted that they did not want to see a black citizen punished. He did not get off the last time because of the ponderance of evidence. The last court one can appreciate, but the military courts should be disbanded, and all military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan should be tried for crimes against humanity, as the judgment of Nuremberg clearly states (and the USA agreed by signing the document) that no one is above the law, and "following orders" is no excuse for crimes against humanity. The military that has killed civilians should be tried first by an Iraqi court, and the first who should be executed should be Lynde England and her boyfriend at Abu Gharib prison. As a man born and educated in Iowa and other states, I confess that it is people like England, Bush, Condi Rice, Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Gates, and the CIA that has made the USA, rightfully, the most hated nation on this planet.
If betoyjewett had studied history, he/she would know that the white wig was a symbol that all judges were equal regardless of status or wealth, but had the same education as other judges--for the barristers (lawyers) approached the bench--not the judge.
If betoyjewett had studied history, he/she would know that testimony has been repeatedly coerced from USA citizens in USA penal confines from Chicago to Miami, etc. The USA Congress long before W Bush dismantled the USA Constitution and erased habeas corpus, had attacked right against self-incrimination, freedom of movement (popularly known as segregation and mixed marriages, etc), and applied tarrifs, etc.
The USA has a long sordid history, from pushing Indians west until the original aborigines fought back, and then butchers such as Cody, Cassidy and Custer became cold blooded murderers of women, children, and the elderly. Ultimately the Nez Perce (ended up in Washington State being moved forcibly from Massachusetts) just gave up.
Under FDR, civil liberties vanished for oriental looking American citizens, as the goons of the USA military moved Chinese and Japanese into USA-based concentration camps such as at Fort Pillow, Arkansas, but the betoyjewett ignores this fact. Eisenhower sent in troops to overthrow the King of Vietnam and JFK bumbled on increasing illegal military forces in a foreign land when failing at the Bay of Pigs, intensifying the missle crises, etc when not womanizing (especially with Marilyn Monroe). Nixon so loved the USA that he had enemy lists, had Hoover (when Hoover was not cross dressing into women's evening wear) break into private homes without search warrents, detain "suspects" for weeks, and harassed others while Nixon plotted to save himself from impeachment.
Betoyjewett should study USA history. The USA has no glorious past, and with the odious opportunism of the disasterous invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, two wars the USA will lose, the world will contiue to hate the USA as a nation of promise-breakers who talk too loud and have little to offer but the dollar--but most people can be bought but still hate you after pocketing your cash.
We already know the Britishe representative in Uzbekistan resigned in disgust at the British involvement in torture carried out in their dungeons. We know a 16 year old boy had the skin boiled off his hand, and a woman was raped with a broken bottle, dying in agony. This is what our elected representative were doing: creating our own terrorism.
Then when the muck started to hit the fan, the government, the ones we elected to run the country and represent our interests and uphold OUR LAWS lied to us about it. This shows that the leaders of our own society are criminals. We can hide it using clever speeches and confusing words such as on reporter's version:
"We allow extraordinary rendition only because we cannot reconcile human rights with the real threat of terrorism"
..but the fact is, they, and by implication, we, are criminals: we are as guilty of creating terror as the extremists who we are shouting about. No arguments support the torture of people not convicted of any crime, just as no provocation would justify it taking place in the homes of any private citizen. The ability to look the other way is a sign of our own criminal mind.
According to a ministerial answer here, Aust troops in Iraq also handed prisoners over to the US forces. The question at the time, was, I think whether Australian forces imprisoned people, and if so, what prison conditions were like (remembering Abu Ghraib etc).
The significance at the time was taken to be, Australia didnt run prisons in Iraq, so we had nothing to worry about.
But now, that same answer acquries different significance. Its implications are very, very clear.
No slight intended on the troops - who do as they are oardered - and cannot know all the consequences.
But as for the higher echelons in the Australian military and Australian politicians who order prisoners to be rendered....
Seriously the time for games is over for these people, and they know who they are. They must all go to prison for a very long time or rot in a hell of their own creation for evermore.
These people can hardly decry "Sir Fred" for stealing a few million and blowing a few hundred billion, as they do, while they have the blood of a single person on their hands whether from a nose bleed or a cut penis.
I'd still shake "Sir Fred's" hand but Jack Straw? And some people say single parents can bring children up, ...... well look at Straw to see the lie in that, a man with the moral character of a woman, what use is that in a man's world?
Lt appear this government are puppets of the CIA.
He also not a UK citizen when he arrived in the UK this week.
So when did Binyam Mohammed become a the UK citizen?
Have the government made him one because they are guilty of despicable lying behaviour and/or are they determined to continue their social engineering programme to dilute our culture and fill our wee land mass with foreigners, funded of course by the pip squeaked husk of a taxpayer, and all during a recession as jobs are disappearing?
It would appear the government are culpable for all kinds of heinous behaviour, but that's nothing new. However, it is high time Parliament grew a backbone and some decent principles and kicked this lot out, now if not sooner.
Don't these trough gobbling self serving myopic morons realise the people have had enough, or are they deliberately trying to create civil unrest to justify more oppression and martial rule?
I still want smacking of children outlawed, cause this is where it starts.. Hey, I even felt sad for Thatcher last evening. I had a boss like that. great fun
Happy birthday everyone. !!!
We have listened to how outraged our government was when the US "extraordinary rendition" policy came to light. We have listened to the lies of how the Brittish Government would never condone such actions. And now this. Hutton is only admitting this because they have been caught.
The people responsible should be sent to The Hague to face war crime charges but of course they won't and the British public will have forgotten about it in a month or so.
This is but the tip of the iceberg folks.
Blair calls himself a born-again Christian and a convert to the Roman Catholic Church--but what he practices is not the theology of John XXIII but that of medieval popes, the Spanish Inquisition, and the despocy of the German pope Benedict XVI. Tony Blair is one reason, along with Benedict XVI, I am relieved that I have renounced and left the Roman Catholic communion of bigots, bashers, and bullies.
I repeat : who is going to be charged?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/638