Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Coalition moves to deal with allegations on torture
The announcement by the Prime Minister this week of an unprecedented inquiry into evidence and allegations of British complicity in the torture and abuse of terror suspects is very welcome.
According to the Guardian this honours a promise while in opposition that he would set up a judge-led inquiry into mounting evidence, emerging mainly from court hearings:
The prime minister told the Commons he had asked Sir Peter Gibson – a former appeal court judge who privately monitors the activities of the intelligence agencies – to "look at whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees held by other countries that may have occurred in the aftermath of 9/11".
He said that while there was no evidence that any British officer was "directly engaged in torture" in the aftermath of 9/11 there were "questions over the degree to which British officers were working with foreign security services who were treating detainees in ways they should not have done".
Though he did not point directly to a particular case, he made clear he was referring to evidence disclosed by the high court that MI5 knew about the abuse of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held incognito in Pakistan in 2002 before being secretly rendered to jails in Morocco, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay.
Although there are concerns about moves to exclude the intelligence service from this inquiry I believe that this is an important step forward and will do much to repair the damage to Britain's reputation internationally.
According to the Guardian this honours a promise while in opposition that he would set up a judge-led inquiry into mounting evidence, emerging mainly from court hearings:
The prime minister told the Commons he had asked Sir Peter Gibson – a former appeal court judge who privately monitors the activities of the intelligence agencies – to "look at whether Britain was implicated in the improper treatment of detainees held by other countries that may have occurred in the aftermath of 9/11".
He said that while there was no evidence that any British officer was "directly engaged in torture" in the aftermath of 9/11 there were "questions over the degree to which British officers were working with foreign security services who were treating detainees in ways they should not have done".
Though he did not point directly to a particular case, he made clear he was referring to evidence disclosed by the high court that MI5 knew about the abuse of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident held incognito in Pakistan in 2002 before being secretly rendered to jails in Morocco, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay.
Although there are concerns about moves to exclude the intelligence service from this inquiry I believe that this is an important step forward and will do much to repair the damage to Britain's reputation internationally.
