Thursday, June 09, 2016 

Mark Allen and Jack Straw: guilty as hell.

In another of those wonderful moments of serendipity we get every so often, today has seen both the publication of the Loughinsland inquiry and the CPS decision on whether to bring charges against the former MI6 head of counter-terrorism.  For years various officials and politicians in Northern Ireland and the rUK have attacked the idea there had been collusion between the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries, despite previous inquiries finding precisely that, such as the de Silva report into the murder of Pat Finucane.  Far too much emphasis was placed on regrettable incidents like Bloody Sunday, and not enough on the outrages committed by the Republican terrorist organisations, helmed by figures now at the very top of the devolved government.   Where was the over-arching inquiry into their crimes, aided they often allege by the Irish government and the Garda?

That the IRA was riddled with informers and MI5 agents, some of whom commissioned attacks in order not to blow their cover is not as often brought up.  Now we know thanks to the Maguire report of further such examples involving loyalist groups, only with the RUC rather than the intelligence agencies covering their tracks or turning a blind eye.  Up to 70 murders and attempted murders were carried out with weapons smuggled in under the noses of the police, with the owner of the farm where the weapons were being hidden tipped off two hours before the RUC came looking.  While other officers were trying their hardest to track down those responsible for the Loughinisland massacre, someone informed members of the gang they were about to be arrested.  One of the suspects was in any case an informer, who carried on being so for a number of years after.

At least the motives in Northern Ireland were good ones though, right?  The object was to save lives; who's to say those agents and informers didn't ensure more people weren't killed than would have been otherwise?

The same cannot be said of our dealings with Colonel Gaddafi in the aftermath of his giving up his WMDs, a decision that hasn't exactly stood the test of time for either side, Gaddafi having ended up being sodomised with a knife and all.  Delivering over a couple of Islamist opposition figures to his jailers was the least we could do, wrote Mark Allen to the Libyan head of intelligence, Moussa Koussa.

A hint of the likely outcome to the police inquiry into the MI6 aided rendition of Abdul Hakim Belhadj and Sami al-Saadi was provided by the flying visit of said Moussa Koussa to the UK prior to the fall of Gaddafi.  After a quick chat with the rozzers about Lockerbie, Koussa was allowed to piddle off to Qatar.  You might have expected the intelligence chief of a dictatorship with an appalling human rights record would have been of especial interest, not least because of Yvonne Fletcher and the supplying of the IRA with large amounts of Semtex, but strangely not.

Likewise, Sir Mark Allen is not so much as named by CPS, instead referred to anonymously as the "suspect", despite how the entire rest of the media is naming him.  To be fair to the CPS, their full statement in fact gives them great credit.  While it starts off with Sue Hemming saying there was insufficient evidence to bring charges, it goes on to almost deliberately contradict itself.  While the actual rendition was not carried out by MI6, instead our mates in the CIA doing the kidnapping and strapping down of Belhadj's wife, there was contact between them and the suspect, as there also was with the Libyans.  While there also wasn't complete written authorisation by a minister, there was some discussion.  In other words, Allen and Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, are guilty as hell.  Only the law as it stands falls short of being able to guarantee a conviction.

Not that the explanatory part of the statement will make a scrap of difference.  Insufficient evidence is the part that will be repeated over and over.  Nothing to see here.  That the Gibson inquiry was in effect scrapped so the police could investigate the allegations against Straw and Allen was something of a happy coincidence for the coalition government, soon having got cold feet, despite originally promising a full independent inquiry into alleged collusion in torture and rendition.  Instead the Intelligence and Security Committee is once again left to try and get the truth out of MI6, which even with its new powers and the capable and trustworthy Dominic Grieve as chairman can hardly be depended on.

Still, this is without doubt the very closest we have yet come to any sort of government body admitting the intelligence services in the aftermath of 9/11 were perfectly happy to collude in torture.  It didn't matter that neither Belhadj or al-Saadi were of the slightest threat to the West, members of a group with links to al-Qaida or not; the lure of getting access for British companies to Libya's oil was enough of a justification.  Allen of course went on to become a special adviser to BP, even if the subsequent deal with Libya was rather soured by the uprising against Gaddafi, at which point we once again switched sides.

We're funny like that.  One minute we're handing over people to be tortured, the next we're deciding the responsibility to protect the ordinary citizens of Libya had to be invoked.  It's almost as though we make it up as we go along, with no moral code whatsoever, even while those with overall responsibility for such acts demand further such interventions.  Ah well.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2015 

The politicians we deserve.

You know, part of me really wants to look at the latest cash for access scandal, or whatever it is you want to call it, see the MPs ensnared, indulge in a bit of schadenfreude and leave it at that.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer couple of politicians, barring Nadine Dorries, John Hemming or a whole load of others you could name.  Good old "Rockets" Rifkind, who made a career out confusing people into thinking his innate pomposity was gravitas, and had never seemed happier than as chairman of the government's committee for whitewashing the intelligence agencies.  As for Jack Straw, what more is there to be said for the torture authorising (allegedly), prison building, dictator fawning war criminal?  Well plenty, but let's not extend ourselves too much.

Except the whole thing's a bit well, underwhelming, isn't it?  If you thought the previous sting by the same people was lacking in evidence of any wrongdoing as opposed to the suggestion there could be in the future, which memorably saw Stephen Byers describe himself as a "cab for hire", this one's even less convincing.  Dispatches could barely fill its half-hour time slot with the secret recordings of Rifkind n' Straw, and instead went to the expense of showing what both look like in cartoon form, presumably to eat up some time.  As previously, it was more they looked dodgy as filmed by hidden cameras, as most people will shot at an angle, something Newsnight dared to suggest, than anything else.  Then we heard the familiar boasts and exaggerations, which an awful lot of people will make if there's the possibility of some lucrative work in the offing.  Straw had "gone under the radar" to a former Ukrainian prime minister for a client, using a mixture of "charm and menace", neither of which are qualities you'd normally associate with the Blackburn MP.

Rifkind was even more effusive.  You'd be surprised how "much free time" he has, despite his parliamentary commitments, and in any case, he considers himself self-employed rather than, err, a public servant.  Not apparently realising the seriousness of having seen pound signs before his eyes, he then went on the Today programme and informed the listeners of BBC Radio Middle Class you can't expect people of his calibre to get by on a piffling £67,000 a year.  Most probably nodded sagely and then switched over to Grimmy.

"Rockets" has since claimed he's been terribly stitched up, and that he wouldn't for a moment have dreamed of lobbying on behalf of a Chinese firm in his capacity as an MP.  Instead his suggestion of contacting ministers without revealing his motives was to be done in a private capacity, one would have to assume, or at least would have been his explanation to the standards commission, since rendered fairly academic by his decision to stand down at the election.  Straw has long since announced his "retirement", although he clearly believed he was due to receive a peerage, as he would be able to help "even more" as a Lord.  There is perhaps a more prima facie case of breaking the rules for Straw in that he hosted the meetings in his parliamentary office, but hardly the most serious when compared to, ooh, signing off on the rendition of people back to Gaddafi's torture dungeons.

It's never so much the details in these exposes though as it is the sheer fact MPs have been caught looking comprised at all.  It just invites the "snouts in the trough" and "all the same" lines we've heard beyond the point of tedium.  It's also distinctly odd that we have such double standards over individual MPs' interests as opposed to those of their parties: conferences barring the Lib Dems' long since ceased being about policy and instead became an opportunity for a week of lobbying.  The Conservatives for their part advertise how they can be influenced, as pointed out before: just the £50,000 "donation" gets you access to the Leader's Group, where you can schmooze with Cameron and Osborne of an evening a couple of times a year.  Just the other week they were auctioning off "prizes" such as going for a run with Iain Duncan Smith, shoe-shopping with Theresa May, or a back-scuttle in a bus stop with Boris, as though such activities would be the only subject up for discussion.  Everyone points and laughs for a day or so, a few say how corrupt it all is, and then it's back to normal.

Only as we're so close to the election Labour's seized on the idea of trying to get an advantage where there almost certainly isn't one.  Miliband's suggestion of imposing a cap on earnings from outside interests to 10 or 15% of an MP's salary seems to be neither one thing or the other: it won't put an end to the claims of MPs' being bought, while it could have the perverse effect of stopping MPs from being able to work as barristers, GPs, or carrying on running a family business as some currently do.  As suspect and self-serving as the yelps from those extremely well renumerated for directorships and "advice" to businesses are, the last thing we want is a further professionalising of politics when that other cry is MPs don't have a clue as they've never had an ordinary job.

It's easy to be cynical about politics, as this blog proves on a daily basis.  £67,000 a year for working a number of hours broadly comparable to that of a teacher is more than a decent wage, not far off 3 times the national average.  Or at least it seems that way on the surface.  Factor in constituency work though, the arcane Commons practices currently being spotlighted in the BBC2 series, the way so many seem to think the absolute worst of their representatives, not always wrongly, and how in the current media environment you are essentially never off duty as it were, your every move and comment there to be scrutinised, filmed and tweeted, and you'd have to be either a masochist or a true believer in the idea of public service to want to be an MP.

This isn't of course to excuse Rifkind or Straw, god forbid, who proved to be just as gullible and potentially grasping as plenty of other mortals, but the last thing needed is further restrictions on individuals when the entire system of political funding is so open to abuse. Hence why it's possible something akin to Miliband's proposal could yet become law while all sides will continue to prevent the reform of party funding.  Frankly, we often get the politicians we deserve.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2014 

Look past the horror.

It's easy, reading the Senate intelligence report and the articles derived from it to be overwhelmed by the horror of the torture programme (because that's what it was, let's drop the euphemisms once and for all) established by the CIA.  With its 26 wrongly detained victims, those with broken limbs put into stress positions and chained to walls regardless of their injuries, the playing of Russian roulette with one victim, and perhaps most chilling of all, the image of Abu Zubaydah, so thoroughly broken and brutalised by his treatment that all it took for him to mount the waterboarding table was a raised eyebrow from his interrogator, to get distracted and not draw the necessary wider conclusions about what it should tell us would be thoroughly human.  Good thing I'm not then, eh?

First, it should tell us that torture affects those charged with implementing it just as much it does those on the receiving end.  With the exception of the few sadists and genuine psychopaths who are likely to find themselves in such roles, the report notes the sickened and disgusted responses of hardened CIA officers to what they both saw and were being asked to do.  Doctors who pledge to do no harm were forced to choose between refusing to treat detainees they were essentially fixing up enough so they were fit to be tortured again, and letting those under their care die, with all the potential consequences the latter option would open up.  How many would have died had it not been for medical intervention we'll never know; at the same time however, doctors were also behind the rectal feeding, as well as the forced feeding of hunger strikers at Guantanamo, itself considered to be a form of torture by the UN and condemned in journals by senior doctors.

Second, the decision by one Western state to use torture inevitably makes its allies complicit, such is the way intelligence agencies cooperate.  This puts those allies in a great quandary: do they blow the whistle, do as much as they can to avoid becoming wholly complicit in the practice, or the opposite and accept it as necessary in extraordinary times?  Our complicity in the CIA's programme can still not be properly quantified for the reasons outlined in yesterday's post.  What we do know is that just like the CIA lied to everyone concerned, including politicians themselves about what they were doing, so too did our spooks.  We know that as early as January 2002 MI6 officers reported back to their superiors that detainees at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan were being abused; this was before the torture regime proper had been established.  Those officers were told, wrongly, they were not required to intervene to prevent the abuse from continuing.  Despite these and subsequent reports, MI6 claimed it wasn't until 2004 and the Abu Ghraib scandal they properly realised the "black sites" they were aware of were being used as torture dungeons.

To believe that you have to believe the intelligence agencies are both unimaginative and lack inquisitiveness, precisely the qualities demanded of them.  We also now know about the renditions of Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi, both of whom were sent back to Colonel Gaddafi's prisons via the services of MI6 and the CIA.  Belhaj arrived back in Libya two weeks before Tony Blair went to meet his new friendly dictator.  Both he and Jack Straw deny any involvement in the rendition of the Libyans, Straw claiming that he was kept out of the loop.  MI6 respond they operate under ministerial oversight, more than suggesting Straw signed off on the rendition.

Straw though is nothing if not a serial offender.  When the first details of the rendition programme started to be leaked he said that unless he was lying and unless Condoleezza Rice was lying (we know she was; she was directly involved in the process of the setting up of the torture programme) it was little more than conspiracy theories. 

Let's not limit this to just Straw and Blair though, as a whole host of New Labour ministers also told if not lies then half-truths in an attempt to protect both the United States and the intelligence agencies.  Those with long memories for the mundane might recall the furore after the release of the "seven paragraphs", which detailed what the security services knew about the mistreatment of Binyam Mohamed, who was tortured in Morocco for the CIA before he was sent on to Guantanamo.  Alan Johnson, then home secretary, said the idea the security services didn't respect human rights was a "ludicrous lie", while David Miliband fought the courts for months in an eventually futile attempt to prevent the paragraphs being released.  This led directly to the justice and security bill passed this parliament, supposedly meant to prevent the "control principle" of intelligence from an ally being published being violated in such a way again.  That we know thanks to Edward Snowden how tens of thousands of contractors and sub-contractors have access to secret documents obviously doesn't mean the act was in fact meant to prevent ministers and the intelligence agencies being embarrassed again in such a way.

Lastly, the report shows just how quickly practices thought completely abhorrent can be implemented when national emergencies are declared and extraordinary powers handed out.  The CIA may well have lied to politicians about what it was doing and the president may not have been fully briefed, but senior figures in the Bush administration did know about and signed off on similar techniques to those adopted.  It's worth reflecting just how close we came in this country to giving the police powers akin to those of authoritarian states: not just the attempt to ram 90 days detention without charge through parliament, thankfully defeated, but also the struck down indefinite detention without charge of foreign "terrorist suspects", the law lords ruling the life of the nation was not threatened as politicians claimed.  We can argue over the additional powers still being sought which are claimed to be necessary to deal with the renewed threat, yet nothing proposed comes near to the attack on basic civil liberties Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown were behind.  The question remains whether come the next emergency we'll remember any of these lessons.

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Wednesday, April 16, 2014 

The conspiracy theories return.

Only on Monday were we mentioning in passing Sir Peter Gibson's truncated inquiry into alleged complicity in extraordinary rendition by our glorious security services and government. His final report sat waiting to be published for almost 18 months as arguments over which secret documents could and couldn't be included in full raged, regardless of how meek and mild Gibson's actual conclusions were. One of the key claims from all involved was this time the security services had cooperated fully, making the "vast majority" of requested documents available, except for those that couldn't be released without US permission.

Strange then that as Craig Murray posted on Monday, a source in the Foreign Office had told him our own government was lobbying the Americans over the similarly delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report into the rendition and wider torture programme operated by the CIA. Their worry was, even redacted, the release of the report's executive summary could damage the case currently being put before the courts blocking the attempt by Abdul Hakim Belhaj to seek compensation over his rendition. Despite the judge accepting the evidence for Belhaj's rendition via Hong Kong was all but established, to go any further would risk damage to the "national interest", i.e., the UK's relationship with the US.

Now via al-Jazeera America (and Yorkshire Ranter) comes another reason why both this government and the one previous would like the report's summary to remain sitting on President Obama's desk for a while yet. According to two US officials who have had access to parts of the 6,000 page report, it confirms for the first time that despite repeated denials from ministers back then and the Gibson inquiry not receiving any documents (PDF) that said otherwise, Diego Garcia was indeed used not only as a stopover point for rendition flights as was admitted in 2008, but also as a "black site".  This was with the full permission of the government, despite the likes of Jack Straw and David Miliband time after time telling parliament the exact opposite was the case.

If confirmed, it not only means ministers lied to both houses of parliament to protect the United States and its torture programme, it's also the first time the mistreatment of detainees has been found to have occurred on UK territory.  As all the reports up till now have also cleared the government of complicity in actual extraordinary rendition, having not considered the cases of Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi while downgrading the transfers of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna to Guantanamo as "renditions to detention", it would also for the first time leave the government with no wiggle room on that charge, potentially opening the way for more compensation claims, or even prosecution for those who gave the Americans permission to use their base on Diego Garcia as they saw fit.

Once again then we can be glad the eventual follow-up to the Gibson inquiry has been handed to the fearlessly independent Intelligence and Security Committee, the same one which let the intelligence chiefs know the questions they were going to be asked beforehand (although, it must be noted, they probably would have known anyway such are GCHQ's abilities).  It must also be a relief to Baroness Amos and David Miliband that they have since moved on from the Lords and the Commons respectively, as both insisted the government knew nothing about the use of Diego Garcia to host detainees, although there's a certain irony in how both are now involved in humanitarian work, Amoss at the UN and Miliband at International Rescue.  As for Jack Straw, he's set to leave parliament at the next election, probably before any subsequent inquiry reaches its conclusion.  While the chances of Inspector Knacker coming to call are unlikely, to judge by their past involvement in similar cases, it hopefully won't come too late to further tarnish what deserves to be regarded as one of the most ignominious political careers of recent times.  It might not be the equivalent of having your penis slashed with a scalpel, being deprived of sleep for over 11 days, forced into a pet carrier for two weeks or shackled to the ceiling of a cell by your wrists, but it's something.

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Thursday, December 19, 2013 

Rendition: one step closer to, something.

A day after saying I was right I can swiftly redress the balance by making clear I was also wrong.  There is actually very little in the Report of the Detainee Inquiry aka the Gibson report (PDF) that's been redacted.  Indeed, only one brief section of the report has been, although the main redaction consists of an entire paragraph (page 48 onwards, 5.23) which reading between the lines was an account of what MI5 and SIS officers saw on being allowed to interview detainees at Bagram airbase on the 9th of January 2002.  In what seems to be the first instance of an officer reporting back first hand the potential mistreatment of detainees, SIS Head Office responded by telegram on the 11th of January with advice that while it was "important that you do not engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment", "the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this".  In fact, international law explicitly states the opposite.  Another entire paragraph is then redacted, and this time it's impossible to know what the closed report said.

The main reason why more hasn't been redacted is immediately apparent on reading the rest of what is by inquiry standards, even one which was cancelled early, a fairly short document.  For anyone who presumed the report would deal in detail with individual cases of alleged complicity in rendition, they're likely be left extremely underwhelmed.  What the report amounts to is little more than a reprise of the narrative which those who've followed the rendition scandal from the outset will already be familiar with. This is hardly surprising when it draws heavily on the two previous reports by the Intelligence and Security Committee, 2005's detainee report and 2007's one on rendition. Both were wholly inadequate, thanks to how the ISC didn't then have the power to demand documents from the agencies, and the usual failure of the spooks to tell the truth. Gibson even fully accepts the ISC's defintion of what is and isn't an extraordinary rendition, so once again the agencies are cleared of personal involvement in rendition, despite the massive role played by MI5 in the transfer to Guantanamo of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna.

Despite also having almost full access to the documents requested from MI5 and SIS (the "vast majority" were released, although some, especially those requiring American consent have not been, which is interesting to note considering the NSA's horrendous failure to keep GCHQ documentation safe), new revelations are extremely few and far between. We already knew for instance that while expressing concern about conditions at Guantanamo in public when it opened, Jack Straw was agreeing the transfer of British citizens to the detention camp behind closed doors.  One new detail is that Straw, apparently looking for an alternative, suggested to David Blunkett the then being drafted Extradition Bill could try and restrict the precedent set by R vs Mullen, where the unlawful return of Nicholas Mullen from Zimbabwe had resulted in his conviction of conspiracy to cause explosions being quashed (page 35).  Blunkett reported back 5 months later saying "the obstacles to this suggestion are simply too formidable".

The key issue that remains is the one considered in chapter 6 of the report (page 73 onwards).  Despite what the then heads of MI5 and SIS said to the ISC previously, it's apparent there was more than enough evidence collected by the agencies themselves, not least from the reports of officers back to their heads, to suggest mistreatment was fairly widespread at Bagram and elsewhere.  Gibson says these "reports ... were of variable quality and viability", but when we now know that after the very first visit by British officers to Bagram they were reporting back their concerns only to be told they didn't have to worry their little heads about things like the Geneva convention, it's difficult not to conclude that some within the services knew full well what was happening.  Indeed, it seems as though as early as 2002 MI5 was conducting internal reviews in an attempt to collate the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Guantanamo.  Despite this, the report reveals, no centralised record was subsequently kept of either allegations of mistreatment or first hand accounts from officers themselves.

As to whether ministers were informed of these concerns, something that has previously been unclear, the report does little to clear things up.  Tony Blair annotated a briefing note on Guantanamo saying although he had been sceptical about claims of torture, it had to be "quickly establish[ed] that it isn't happening".  Jack Straw was also made aware of the report from Bagram, and like Blair, annotated it; he also went on to intervene in both 2003 and 2004 with the Americans with concerns on the treatment and conditions British citizens were subject to.  It wasn't until after the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light however that Straw specifically asked SIS to provide him with information on their experiences in interviewing those held in Afghanistan.  As much as it seems the security services didn't go out of their way to keep ministers informed, the ministers themselves hardly seemed to have been too bothered either.

Which, again, isn't wholly surprising when we know Straw was involved at around the same time in the transfer of Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi back to Libya.  Straw for his part responded in the Commons, once again denying that he was in "any way complicit in the unlawful rendition or detention of individuals by the United States or any other state".  The problem for Straw is that MI6 says they only acted in accordance with ministerial authority, meaning one of the two has to be wrong.

Aren't you glad then it'll be the ISC investigating once again, rather than a fusty old judge with a legion of lawyers getting fat off the taxpayer doing the interrogating?  Straw certainly must be, as no doubt are the intelligence services themselves.  Ken Clarke, who must have pulled the short straw and so gave today's Commons statement despite no longer being the justice minister, certainly didn't give anything approaching an adequate explanation as to why a judge-led inquiry can't take place now, with consideration of the alleged Libyan renditions delayed until the the court case and police investigation have concluded, whereas it seems the ISC can do both at the same time.  If nothing else, today's report makes clear that questions from parliamentarians, especially those who have previously held the same positions as those accused, are simply not going to be of the same standard as from those appointed to helm an independent inquiry, not least when the ISC is already conducting at least two other substantial investigations at the same time.

Then there's the very issue we started with.  This report has been with the prime minister for 18 months.  We can't know the battles that went on between Gibson and the Cabinet Office over the redactions, only in the end they've turned out to be relatively minor.  That it's taken such an incredible amount of time to be published does though suggest any report eventually issued by the ISC is even more likely to be affected.  I cannot possibly see how redacting that first paragraph dealing with events more than 10 years ago could affect national security now, and yet in the end Gibson gave in and allowed it to be removed.  When you also consider they've chosen to publish it on what has turned out to be a busy news day at the time of year when few are much interested in parliament, the potential for the hiding of embarrassment, let alone potentially criminal acts, remains immense.  It has at long last been stated fairly uneqovically, if carefully, that we chose to involve ourselves in rendition and the mistreatment of detainees during the initial period of the "war on terror".  It's how those involved are now held to account that matters, and the signs are that just as the CIA was allowed to get away with far worse, our own politicians and spies will be able to plead unique circumstances and get away with only stains on their character.  Those who were tortured will merely have to bear the very real scars for the rest of their lives.

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12/19/2013 11:54:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 18, 2013 

The futility of being right.

There are times when despite every fibre of your being telling you it makes you look an arse, you really just want to say I told you so/I was right/you people are damn fools.  In fact, it doesn't just make you look an arse, it means you almost certainly are an arse.  We hear complaints all that time that no one managed to predict the recession or the Arab spring, except of course for the tiny number some have deemed to be our latter day equivalent of Cassandras.  It doesn't matter it's more than likely those same people completely lucked out and prior to getting something right had been wrong, wrong, and thrice wrong, we tend to downplay such things in our search for those who seem to know something the rest of us dunderheads don't.

To labour the point even further, it's incredibly easy to pose a political soothsayer, not least when by far the best policy is to expect the worst and go from there.  Don't predict riots though, as even if you turn out to be right, you really do look a tool.  Chances are your hit rate if you're careful will be quite high, although considering others despite these rules have failed miserably, such as the sadly departed Mystic Mogg, or Mark "Osama bin Laden is dead" Steyn, perhaps there's more to it than there really seems.

Right, have I delayed the inevitable quite enough?  Those with longer memories will recall that back in the mists of time an inquiry into our "alleged" collusion in extraordinary rendition, helmed by a certain Sir Peter Gibson, was cancelled after further "allegations" against MI6 and Jack Straw came to light.  These "allegations" were such that almost exactly a year ago Sami al-Saadi received a £2m settlement without the government admitting any liability.  In other words, yes, we were perfectly happy to send those associated with an Islamic group opposed to Gaddafi (but which also had links to al-Qaida) back to the colonel's torture chambers, so long as it meant a few of our finest FTSE 100 companies got access to the country's copious natural resources.  A few years later, and a different government decided we would join forces with these terrorists to get rid of the man we felt we could do business with (although, if we're to believe David Shayler, we had already paid the LIFG to make an attempt on Gaddafi a few years previous to that).  Changing geopolitics, eh?

12 months on, and finally we've learned there is indeed to be a follow-on inquiry.  Only, as was predictable, rather than the judge-led independent inquiry hoped for by human rights groups and those others compensated by the governments it is instead to be carried out by, err, the Intelligence and Security Committee.  Yep, in what seems to be a deliberate joke on those of us who have been mocking the ISC for years now, the same committee that produced the ridiculous whitewash on rendition in the first place is to have a second try.  I'd like to say this boggles the mind, except as the general response to the Snowden revelations has made clear, we've come a long way from the days when the coalition was making a lot of noise about "freedom" bills and not introducing ID cards.

It does though raise the question of how such a committee can possibly even begin to hold either ministers or the security services to account.  The government seems to be asking Malcolm Rifkind, former foreign secretary, to sit in judgement of Jack Straw, former foreign secretary.  Also alongside Rifkind will be Hazel Blears, a minister at the same time as Straw was failing to stop the Iraq war and signing memorandums authorising renditions.  Will she be recusing herself?  One suspects not.  It also won't be able to get straight on with the work as the government continues to try to get Abdel Hakim Belhaj's case thrown out, meaning it's possible the inquiry won't have started until after the next election. Apparently enough then the government isn't even pretending to be interested in keeping its word any longer, and those hopes the likes of Liberty had for something better to turn up have very much not come to pass.  As even a goon like me thought was the most likely result.

We will however be getting Gibson's interim report, which will be somewhat limited as the inquiry never heard any evidence.  Seeing as it's also sat around for the best part of 18 months, it's bound to be redacted to the verge of complete pointlessness, and in the best Whitehall tradition, to blame precisely no one and also reach err, no conclusions whatsoever.  Fantastic.  It's also being published on the last parliamentary day before Christmas, no doubt alongside dozens of other unpleasant documents and statistics the government doesn't want anyone to know about.  Isn't it great being right?

No.

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12/18/2013 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 05, 2013 

Keeping secrets secret.

There's a scene in the film Liar Liar (this will almost certainly be the only time I quote from a Jim Carrey film other than the Truman Show or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind approvingly) in which Carrey's character, compelled to tell the truth after a wish made by his son, screams down the phone at a long-term client once again seeking his legal advice that he should "STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLE".

 A similar scene ought to have been repeated a long time ago when it came to the intelligence agencies and their active collusion both with the US rendition programme, and indeed as we now know, MI6's own escapades in delivering opponents of Gaddafi back into his torture system, I mean prison system.  Of course, this could never have happened as, we also now know, it was Jack Straw who was signing the paperwork that authorised the rendition in the first place.

The misfortune of the coalition is that they've been the ones left to deal with the mess created by years of litigation from former detainees who believe, rather justifiably considering what's come to light as well as from their own experiences that both MI5 and SIS were up to their neck in rendition.  The government, desperate to ensure that hundreds of thousands of pages of documents detailing what was going on at the time the former Guantanamo detainees were either being transferred or in the odd case, actively handed over to the Americans remain secret, has in the aftermath of the "seven paragraphs" and a ruling by the Court of Appeal that allegations of wrongdoing must be heard in public, instead resorted to large cash settlements, accepting no culpability for what happened to the men.  The latest, a massive payout to Sami al-Saadi, one of the two men sent back to Gaddafi's holiday camps, was for £2.2 million.

An obvious solution to this unpleasantness would be, you would have thought, to not get involved in illegal conspiracies where "terrorist suspects" are flown to various black sites around the world, or as the rendition programme has since ceased, to not actively conspire with authoritarian states over the detention of opposition figures, regardless of the business interests involved.  This doesn't mean not working with states that we regard as having poor records on human rights whatsoever, when such relationships are vital to protecting our own citizens and interests, rather it means just not helping them with the things that our own courts would reject.

But no.  No, what we need instead to placate both foreign intelligence agencies and to protect our sources on the ground is closed material procedures in civil cases, similar to the current Special Immigration Appeals Commission process, where claimants (or defendants, in SIAC's case) are represented by special advocates who can only give a "gist" of the evidence against their clients to them.  Passed yesterday in parliament, the system will allow justice to be done, the claimants either vindicated or the intelligence agencies cleared of wrongdoing, the taxpayer no longer giving money to suspected terrorists to fund future missions, as Ken Clarke implied at one point, and our allies who have threatened to stop sharing intelligence due to a supposed breach of the "control" principle will be satisfied.

As Henry Porter (as an aside, it's worth noting the lack of outrage from the vast majority of those who condemned ZaNuLiarBore for their constant attacks on civil liberties this time round) and Richard Norton-Taylor have pointed out, these arguments might carry more weight if we didn't know all too well this part of the Justice and Security Bill only exists because of lobbying from the intelligence agencies.  The fact is that the courts were getting far too close to the truth: that despite all of the claims to the contrary, the security services are still involved in practices that are either incompatible with basic human rights or which rather than making us more safe, do the exact opposite.  While the Guantanamo detainees all decided to settle, as has al-Saadi since, it's more than possible that someone would emerge who had suffered either at their hands or indirectly who wouldn't, and would take the case all the way.  The seven paragraphs were enough to get ministers hyperventilating; some of the material contained in the documentation of the war on terror could be enough to alter the perception of the security services for a generation.

The row over the control principle was always secondary to this.  The Americans may well have been angered by the release of the seven paragraphs, but they were only ever released by our courts because the American courts had already let even more damning evidence on the treatment of Binyam Mohamed out into the public domain.  In any case, as David Davis pointed out during the debate, the Americans are more than willing to let intelligence out when it shows them in a good light, and to say their own levels of security were previously wanting considering Bradley Manning and Wikileaks is an understatement.  While it's certainly true that SIAC does not always find in the government's favour, as demonstrated in how Abu Qatada has been granted bail and in Ekaterina Zatuliveter's successful appeal against deportation as a spy, unless there are absolutely exceptional reasons justice must be open, and seen to be open.  Closed material procedures were designed to protect the blushes of the security services, and the amendments to the legislation haven't done anything to change this.

No surprise then that Jack Straw himself stood up in the Commons yesterday and argued against his own party.  Not for him a quiet life while the allegations against him continue to be investigated, and as the civil case from Mr Belhaj remains unresolved (Straw didn't take the opportunity to respond to Belhaj's offer of a settlement for a token sum and an apology), this was a case which required his expertise.  Never mind that it's that exact expertise which has seemingly led to the need for this bill, for as Straw reminded us, it's not scaremongering to say that to carry on in the position we are in is the equivalent of abandoning the intelligence agencies, and with it their ability to protect us.  Just as Straw once said it was a conspiracy theory there was any such thing as a rendition programme, so it would be deeply unwise to regard him as discredited now.

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3/05/2013 09:42:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, December 13, 2012 

The least they could do.

Right on cue, the news that the government has settled the case brought by Sami al-Saadi over the rendition of his entire family from Hong Kong to Libya only serves to underline how little has changed since the days of collusion with terrorist gangs in Northern Ireland.  Desperate to bring Libya in from the cold so that UK businesses could fully exploit the country's potential, both Tony Blair and Jack Straw went the extra mile in wooing one of the most vicious tyrants of our age, authorising Mark Allen to deal directly with Moussa Koussa in the rendition of both al-Saadi and Abdul Hakim Belhaj.  Al-Saadi was bundled onto a plane in Hong Kong just three days after Blair's trip to Libya to shake hands with Gaddafi, while Belhaj had made a similarly forced trip two weeks prior to Blair's arrival.  Allen went so far as to write that the rendition of Belhaj was "the least we could do for you and Libya".

As with the settlements reached with the men who ended up in Guantanamo, the government has accepted no liability for what happened to al-Saadi, also known as Abu Munthir.  Both Munthir and Belhaj were senior leaders in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a faction which had close ties to al-Qaida, prior to its dissolution.  This association didn't bother us too much when Libya was a sworn enemy, however: according to David Shayler (prior, it must be said, to his espousal of 9/11 conspiracy theories) MI6 funded a failed assassination attempt on Gaddafi by the LIFG.  This accepting of no liability is despite it being the most clear-cut case of collusion with an authoritarian state, thanks to the documents discovered by Human Rights Watch, and our knowing full well that any promises sought that the men would not be mistreated were worthless.

It certainly brings into perspective the anger expressed by Blair at how he couldn't deport anyone designated as a "terrorist suspect" to wherever the hell he felt like; no doubt aware of how swiftly those opposed to a new dictatorial ally had been delivered into their grasp, it must have smarted that the likes of Abu Qatada and others kept winning their legal battles.  It also remains to be seen whether charges will be brought against anyone involved in these two cases: the Gibson inquiry into rendition was abandoned as a consequence, ostensibly for the reason that the investigation by the Met would have further delayed the hearing of evidence.  I'm certainly not holding my breath on that score. 

Considering then that Blair has been making such a killing through his work for Kazakhstan, and Straw will presumably be receiving royalties from his memoir, perhaps the pair would like to contribute towards the £2.2m cost to the taxpayer of their handiwork.  It's the least they could do for us, and the country's worldwide reputation for human rights, surely?

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12/13/2012 09:03:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 12, 2012 

Lying and the passing of time.

It's a wonderful thing, the passage of time. Yes, we all of course edge ever closer to the grave with each second that goes by, but look on the bright side: it also means your memory of unpleasant past events in your life gradually fades.

This onset of forgetfulness comes sooner to some than others. Take Tony Blair for instance. He claims to have "no recollection" of the rendition of Abdul Hakim Belhaj to Libya, something that took place a mere 2 weeks before he jetted in to meet Colonel Gaddafi and in effect declare the country open for business. Almost certainly part of the mutual process showing that both sides would get something out of the new relationship, you would have thought the prime minister should have known that his foreign intelligence service was conspiring with the CIA to provide a dictatorship with one of its most high profile opponents.

Then there's Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary. You might recall (he probably doesn't) that when first faced with the exposure of the US rendition programme he was absolutely certain that the British government had no case to answer. What was more, unless you believed the lovely Condoleezza Rice was lying, there was no programme whatsoever. It was akin to believing in conspiracy theories. 7 years later, and while Straw has changed his tune somewhat, he's still vehement that he knows nothing about this specific case. Rather, this is an example of MI6 simply not telling him what they were up to, as the security services are apparently wont to do on occasion. As he said, "[N]o foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time."

It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the security services have told lies to the toothless Intelligence and Security Committee, who most certainly weren't informed at any point of MI6's role in the rendition. Would they also though mislead the Foreign Office, and so close to the point at which our relationship with Libya was about to change so utterly? Either MI6 was completely out of control, authorising its own missions without informing ministers, delivering innocent people into the hands of torturers, or Jack Straw signed off on the entire thing. Which is more likely?

Happily, it's unlikely that should this or any future government think about doing anything similar that it'll be exposed as easily. I said at the time that it was a little early to welcome the cancelling of the Gibson inquiry when it was far from clear that we would ever get a replacement, let alone a more independent one, and with the continuing controversy over the secret courts plan which would stop them ever releasing the equivalent of the seven paragraphs again it just underlines that this government is not more enlightened, it's simply more subtle in slamming the door shut. Hands up anyone who thinks that there'll be charges once the Met have finished investigating the two Libyan renditions, regardless of the offering of £1m to Belhaj. Exactly.

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4/12/2012 09:51:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 

As if things couldn't get any worse for Steve Kean...

Veterans of what used to be the terraces at football grounds are for the most part a tough, difficult to shock bunch. When even some of them then walk out during the first half of a game, not because of the performance of their team but because of the truly poisonous atmosphere their fellow fans have created, it's time to sit up and take notice. Regardless of how poor a manager Steve Kean, the former coach of Blackburn Rovers is, absolutely no one deserves the abuse he's been subjected to now for months. Yesterday this culminated not only in supporters engaged in running battles with stewards as they attempted to parade "KEAN OUT" banners during the match, he was also nearly confronted by a fan who got into the dug-out. At the final whistle, among the other objects thrown at Kean was a season ticket book.

In a way it's unfair to specifically pick on Blackburn and their fans, especially when it's difficult for them to properly project their rage at the incompetence of the club's owners, Venky's, who are making the Glazers look like philanthropists by comparison. It does though highlight what ought to be recognised as football's new problem after the almost eradication of hooliganism: the truly unacceptable behaviour of some fans, who seem to think that buying a ticket entitles them to subject players and managers to an endless torrent of verbal, the kind of which would result in a criminal charge should do they it on the street. As the Secret Footballer wrote earlier in the year, it isn't so much the culture among players which means there isn't a single openly gay footballer, it's the fans and the abuse they know they would receive should they decide to come out. Open racism might have been stamped out, at least among the fans, yet homophobia is still sadly all too common.

The only reason Kean is staying around in the face of such treatment is obvious. If he were to walk away, he wouldn't get anything in the way of compensation; stay until Venky's are forced to act and he'll at least have something for putting up with what would be regarded in any other walk of life as bullying. And who could possibly blame him when he's become the scapegoat?

Oh. Yes, of all the people that really ought to keep their mouths shut, up steps Jack Straw. One thing that perplexes me is how keen Newsnight seems to get Henry Kissinger on to comment on world affairs; last week, not content with one potential war criminal in the shape of the bloated frame of Kissinger, it also had on Jeremy Greenstock, our man at the UN during the failed attempts to get a second resolution authorising war in Iraq. At least there's a certain logic in getting someone responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people to comment on dictators murdering their own civilians; there is however no one less qualified than Straw to comment on when a football manager should leave his job. Having been intimately involved not only in the Iraq war, he then subsequently lied about the role of the UK in the United States' extraordinary rendition programme, back in 2005 notably claiming that anyone suggesting there was such a worldwide torture regime being run by the US was a conspiracy theorist. Perhaps that's one thing Kean should take comfort from: that at least he isn't a politician completely divorced from the concept of morality.

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12/21/2011 08:12:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 10, 2011 

Bullshit, vindictiveness and classic little Englander syndrome.

You wouldn't normally consider Denis MacShane likely to be one of the few MPs to stand up for "classic, bleeding-heart, do-gooding British liberalism". MacShane's voting record, possibly influenced by his time as a minister, includes voting very strongly for ID cards as well as 90 days detention without charge for terrorist suspects; he also made one of those poor souls administering the new expenses regime cry, later returning with chocolates in an attempt to make up for his behaviour. It's come to something then when his intervention into the debate on votes for prisoners is almost certainly the best informed and most cogently argued of the few to make the case for the extension of the franchise to some of those currently languishing in our prisons.

As to how heavy an influence the fact he's an ardent Europhile is on his opinion is open to question, but at least it's better to be somewhat consistent rather than just an eternal opportunist, a description which doesn't quite do justice to the wretched Jack Straw. There simply isn't a more loathsome individual left in the Commons than this lickspittle, a politician so repulsive that he must even have dogs vomiting when they set eyes on him. Lest we forget, Jack Straw oversaw the introduction of the Human Rights Act, which enshrined the European Convention in UK law. Since then he's done everything he possibly can to undermine it, culminating in him agreeing with the Daily Mail that it was seen as a villians' charter, all thanks to those completely irresponsible judges daring to come decisions that the right-wing press and populists everywhere simply can't abide.

No surprise then that of all people he could have shacked up with over the ECHR's judgement that some prisoners must have the right to vote, he decided to do so with David Davis. Davis at least is consistent in that he's a traditional libertarian: opposed to any restrictions on freedom for those who do no harm to others, highly punitive on those who do break the law. Even he however erred badly during the debate, saying that the concept "if you break the law, you should not make the law" is sound. This would be applicable if voters actually made the law: they do not. We elect representatives to do that for us, and that seems to have been the point most grievously missed by MPs. Those imprisoned currently, despite what some of the tabloids would have you believe, have next to no one who represents them and their concerns, and as a result prison reform is occasionally discussed but hardly ever acted upon or put into practice. It would be more than pushing it to suggest that giving prisoners the franchise would greatly improve the chances of this happening, but it would as has been previously argued put votes into it. Prisoners should be able to challenge the conditions under which they are held, something they can currently only do if they can prove their remaining rights are being infringed.

Straw meanwhile was as dependent as ever on being disingenuous. According to him to problem is not with either the HRA or the ECHR, but rather with "judicial activism", with the judges trying to carve out a role for themselves as an ultimate supreme court of Europe. Judicial activism is a phrase more associated with the right in America, used to condemn any decision which offends their morals. Anyone who reads the Hirst vs UK ruling in full will see that not only was much leeway given, but that it was also conciliatory and a majority rather than unanimous decision. It has since been built on by the Frodl vs Austria judgement, which is slightly more prescriptive, yet it's still clear that the court is not ordering that every prisoner must have the vote, only that a full ban is disproportionate. Despite much comment otherwise, and as the attorney general Dominic Grieve made clear, we are not obliged to follow the ruling to the letter, it's just that simply ignoring it completely is not an option. The Council of Europe criticised the UK last year for not introducing a full ban on smacking after we changed the law as a result of an ECHR ruling, but has not as yet gone any further. The same would almost certainly be the case if we allowed those imprisoned for two years or less to vote.

The end result, considering the media comment, was hardly as overwhelming as might have been expected. Only a third of the house voted with ministers and their shadows all abstaining, along with many others. 22 bravely voted against, MacShane strangely not among them according to the list on ePolitix, with Peter Bottomley deserving a special mention for being the only Tory to swim against the tide. We don't need so much "classic, bleeding-heart, do-gooding British liberalism" it seems as a few with a backbone prepared to stand up against bullshit, vindictiveness and classic little Englander syndrome, made even more ridiculous by how we drafted the ECHR in the first place.

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2/10/2011 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, November 01, 2010 

The cargo bomb plot and never, ever playing down the consequences.

Funny thing, coincidence. Those with tinfoil hats strapped securely to their bonces are already noting just how odd it was that two highly sophisticated, "undetectable" bombs were discovered, conversely, just a couple of days after the chairman of British Airways had a moan about the level of airport security, a day after Sir John Sawers stepped out of the shadows and, obviously, just five days before the US mid-term elections. As comedians know, timing is everything. Clearly though, coincidence and correlation are two entirely separate things; and even those most fevered with conspiratorial thoughts will have problems with false flag operations being launched just because the world's favourite airline is having a whinge, especially just as they re-enter profit. Quite how the discovery of the devices could possibly help Obama or really damage him much further is also dubious. You don't need to wield Occam's razor to realise coincidence is just coincidence this time round.

There are however seriously odd things about the "cargo plane bomb plot", or whatever it's being referred to as. Certainly, no one seems to be 100% sure whether or not the devices really were primed to explode in the air as our own glorious government has it; the Americans for instance aren't so explicit, when they are usually far more aggressive in stating exactly what it was they believed was meant to be the target. As a sceptical Mark Urban had it on Newsnight, if they had been timed to explode either over the ocean or before landing in Chicago, then the one found at East Midlands airport should have detonated while the police were still uncertain over whether or not it was an actual viable device. Almost completely discounted has been the idea that it was a dry run: after all, if they had reached their end destination without being discovered, then they would obviously have been reported by those receiving them at the synagogues, presuming that they weren't meant to detonate once finally reaching their destination. Equally, if it was meant just to cause fear, panic and to put further restrictions on air travel and the global shipping industry, why bother with such complicated devices that may never have been detected if it wasn't for the apparent tip-off, unless of course they knew that those warnings were on their way?

The most reasonable explanation at the time of the writing does seem to be that planes were the target, although it seems those responsible weren't bothered as to whether the plane which ended up being brought down was purely a cargo flight or one which also carried passengers. We then come back to whether or not the devices were genuinely viable and if they were, whether they would have actually brought the planes down. If the devices are the work of the man being blamed, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, then his record is not exactly stellar. While the device which his brother used in an assassination attempt on the Saudi security minister detonated (it's disputed as to whether the bomb was in his rectal canal or hidden in his underpants ala Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab), the explosion resulted in his own death, causing only slight injuries to his target. Similarly, even if Abdulmutallab's bomb had detonated properly, it would have most likely failed to have brought down the plane, killing the bomber and the person sitting next to him and most likely de-pressurising the cabin, but not resulting in a catastrophic decompression. The difference with the devices discovered on Friday is in the amount of PETN apparently used, with it being put at around 300 and 400 grammes respectively, far higher than the 80 grammes which Abdulmutallab was meant to have tried to detonate. That is certainly within the region where a successful explosion would put the plane in danger - a similar amount of plastic explosive, most likely Semtex, of which PETN is a major ingredient, brought down Pan Am Flight 103.

That everything is still mostly being couched in hypotheticals suggests that the authorities are not wholly certain themselves that the devices would have been successful. This might be because, as Martin Rivers puts it, we didn't realise the one which made it to East Midlands airport was even a bomb until it was checked and checked and checked again, with everyone accordingly being cautious until more is known. If this is the case, then this is a remarkable change from 2006, when the disruption of the liquid explosives plot was welcomed with blood-curdling warnings of how "mass-murder on an unimaginable scale" had been averted, when the plotters in that instance had never even managed to construct a viable device and when it took the experts numerous attempts themselves to do so. Also in the equation is that it doesn't seem that the UK itself was the principal target, even if the bombs passed through the country on the way to their destination and it could well have been our own citizens who died as a result, altering the assessments as such knowledge does.

One thing which does seem to have been overlooked is that just as much as is this al-Qaida and its offshoots and allies searching for "new" ways to target the West is that it is also just as much an admission of failure. It needs to remembered that even while jihadists are having some relative successes in Somalia and Yemen and making in-roads in Pakistan and Afghanistan, there has been no successful attack on the "West" now since 7/7, even if there have been a number of attempts (whether the Fort Hood massacre can be described as an actual attack is debatable). Up until recently, there had also not been any "copycat" attempts at repeating a previously failed or foiled plot. While there have been adaptations, such as how the liquid bomb plot had its base in the foiled "Project Bojinka", it wasn't until Abdulmutalab attempted to succeed where Richard Reid had failed, even if the execution wasn't exactly the same, that it became clear that desperation has began to set in. We shouldn't therefore see the use of posted bombs meant to explode on cargo planes as much as a new way to cause economic damage as much as a recognition of continuous failure. While takfirist jihadists have not always exclusively used suicide attacks against Western targets, they have long been the method of preference; for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to try the humble bomb in the hold is not exactly a showing of strength. Whether they will now try this again having been foiled is doubtful, at least again in the short-term.

Inevitably then, changes to security at check-in are being made, regardless of the cries from the likes of Michael O'Leary and also regardless to how this was a threat from the postal system, not passengers. Such things it seems almost have to be done not because they are necessarily effective, but to provide the good old illusion of safety, supposedly reassuring even if costly in terms of time. As to whether there's really been a difference in governmental response now we're under the yoke of the civil liberties respecting coalition, it's difficult to tell: the response from the then new Brown administration to Abu Beavis and Abu Butthead attempting jihad was relatively mooted too, even if they soon attempted to extend the detention without charge limit regardless. It was however nice to be reminded of the good old days of life under Blair in an article by Jack Straw at the weekend. His advice: "never, ever, downplay the possible consequences". The only time they ever did was when we invaded Iraq.

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11/01/2010 10:27:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 

The Maltese double cross part 4.

It would be tempting to dismiss the continuing posturing and political point-scoring over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi as a late silly season skirmish between parties with nothing else to argue about. Yet this whole dispiriting farce in fact seems to be where politics in this country is going - away from actual policy to focusing on unprovable conspiracies, and also interfering directly with decisions that should be made not on ideological background but on the facts available before the person at the time.

Incredible though it might seem, nothing has actually changed since al-Megrahi was released on the 20th of August. Al-Megrahi is still terminally ill, although some have called into question the prognosis that he has only 3 months or less to live; the decision was still made wholly by the Scottish government, which the documents released today don't even begin to alter; and lastly, the decision was the right one, taken by Kenny MacAskill, and also one which was supported by the prison service and parole board. It remains a nonsense and half gesture that al-Megrahi should have been released to a hospice, as some have suggested, regardless of the probably exaggerated security costs mentioned by MacAskill. The best solution remains that al-Megrahi should have been granted compassionate release, but allowed to continue with his appeal against his conviction in the interests of justice.

Al-Megrahi's dropping of his appeal, which he didn't need to, remains the only real properly unanswered question surrounding the case, and should be the main bone of contention, along with MacAskill's visit to him, which many have deemed unnecessary. Whether al-Megrahi was told that he had to drop his appeal otherwise it would cause major problems with his release is unclear, but it seems likely that it was intimated to him or his lawyers in some way. Likewise, why MacAskill felt that he needed to meet the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing when he could have made his decision without doing so is also currently impenetrable, and is only likely to lead to conspiracy theories.

Instead we're being lead on a wild goose chase, where everyone seems to think that something isn't right, yet no one has found any definitive evidence to prove it. It's quite obvious that since Libya emerged from its pariah status that the UK state and the companies which are only at arms length from it have been salivating at the opportunities which the country promises, and it's equally obvious that Libya, as proven by the documents released today, was intent on getting al-Megrahi back at the earliest opportunity, with the likes of Jack Straw scrabbling around looking for a way for al-Megrahi to be eligible for return under the prisoner transfer agreement. Who knows quite why Jack Straw suddenly came round to the idea that despite previously saying al-Megrahi had to be excluded from the agreement that he could in fact be included in it, although we can probably guess. The government was never going to release anything that directly implicated it; you only have to look at the tenacity with which it is refusing to hand over documentation on Binyam Mohamed's treatment to see that. Instead Straw and the government will doubtless be mildly embarrassed at how easily his mind could be turned, as will Brown and Miliband at how they agreed that they didn't want to see al-Megrahi die in jail, a fairly benign thought to make clear, considering how it's distasteful in the extreme for anyone to die from cancer while in prison, even a mass-murderer, and also knowing how outraged Libya would be.

Yet if anything the documentation makes the Scottish parliament and the SNP look far better than they did originally. They clearly wanted al-Megrahi excluded from the prisoner transfer agreement (PDF), unless they were just going through the motions, something which the UK government decided wasn't going to happen. The machinations of Downing Street look shady; Salmond and MacAskill look pure.

Even if the dealings do look shady, David Cameron is calling for a public inquiry on the grounds of a hypothetical, and demanding to know what the prime minister thinks about a decision which he couldn't make and which is none of his business to interfere with. Cameron isn't the only one playing politics though, as we saw previously: every major party both in Scotland and Westminster with the exception of the SNP has disagreed with the decision, almost certainly in some instances purely because they can, rather than what they would have done were they to make the decision. Somewhere in all of this there is a dying man, denied the opportunity to clear his name, and over 280 families in similar circumstances, some equally uncertain of how their loved ones came to die, others outraged by the decision to release the man in anything other than a box. All are being ignored for as ever, short term political gain. This isn't going to win any elections, it isn't even going to make a difference in opinion polls; it's either, according to your view, bringing a good, humane decision into disrepute, or even further distracting attention from someone who has escaped justice. Politics is as usual struggling to pull itself out of the sewer.

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9/01/2009 08:09:00 pm | | | links to this post

Thursday, August 06, 2009 

Jack Straw, also synonymous with heartless bastard.

It seems that we have Ronnie Biggs to thank for two things: firstly, for demonstrating just what condition you have to be released from prison on "compassionate" grounds, and secondly for highlighting what a charmless, inhumane bastard Jack Straw is.

On the 1st day of last month Straw ruled that Biggs couldn't be released because he was "wholly unrepentant". This was despite the fact that Biggs can't talk, walk, eat or drink. A few days before Straw's ruling he had fell and broken his hip; the parole board without apparently being sardonic, said the risk he posed "was manageable under the proposed risk management plan". The risk from a man who has to be fed through a tube and who can barely walk must rank up there with the risk posed by eating Pop Rocks and then drinking Coke, or the risk of being mauled to death by a band of marauding gerbils. Straw didn't bother to explain how keeping such a man in prison at a cost doubtless far in excess of that if he was in a nursing home was justifiable except in terms of pure vindictiveness. If the aim was to please the authoritarian populists in the tabloids, he failed: even they blanched at a man close to death being kept inside for no real reason except the establishment getting its own back for being played a fool for years.

37 days later and Biggs' condition has now deteriorated so significantly that Straw has granted parole on "compassionate" grounds. This in effect means that Biggs is about to die, with his son hoping that he survives long enough to see out his birthday on Saturday. If Straw had granted Biggs parole back on the 1st of July, he might just have been able to enjoy a few days of something approaching freedom; now he's likely to just slip away, having gone down with pneumonia. Politicians such as Straw justify the likes of Iraq war on the basis that even if hundreds of thousands of people died, the ends justified the means; in any event, rarely do they see the consequences of their actions close up, and even then they can take the abstract view, that they weren't personally responsible even if in the chain of command. Yet Straw can hardly deny in this instance that he may well have directly contributed to Biggs' suffering further than he needed to. Straw's shamelessness though seems unlikely to even slightly twinge his conscience, even when others would have been deeply troubled by just that thought.

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8/06/2009 09:33:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 

Basic inhumanity.

What possible purpose is served by the refusal to grant parole to Ronnie Biggs? The only conclusion that can be reached is that this is pure political grandstanding by Jack Straw, designed to win favour with the more punitive tabloids. It's also an insight into the similarly ridiculous way in which the prison system works. While Biggs was clearly guilty of his part in the Great Train Robbery, those convicted of murder who reject their guilt cannot be considered for parole and so are destined to spend their entire life behind bars until they do so, as Sean Hodgson almost did, until finally proved innocent by newly discovered forensic evidence.

As Biggs has apparently refused to show repentance for his crime and has not taken part in the courses which those looking to be released usually have to pass before their parole is granted, he looks set to languish in a cell until he dies, which might not be that far in the future. According to his family, Biggs can no longer speak, cannot walk and at the weekend broke his hip after a fall. Keeping a man in prison in such circumstances is the heighth of stupidity, as not only can he not receive the help that he obviously needs, but he also doubtless takes up extra resources which could be better used elsewhere. The prison system is overcrowded enough as it is, without also having invalids who now only seem to be inside because of the perniciousness of a government minister. It would be different if Biggs' crime was similar in proportion to that of say, Ian Brady's, still refusing after all these years to reveal where his final victim was buried, but despite the huge amount seized in the robbery, no one suffered to anywhere near the extent to which it would be appropriate to inflict a similar amount of suffering on those guilty. Jack Straw seems to be just playing to the gallery yet again.

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7/01/2009 08:00:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, March 23, 2009 

Rights and responsibilities in a policy vacuum.

2009 is turning out to be an incredibly strange year as far as politics is concerned. By any measure, Labour ought to be doing far far worse in the polls than it currently is - most showing a Conservative lead of around 12 points, which if repeated at the ballot box would give Cameron's Tories either a very slim majority or result in a hung parliament. Labour would suffer major casualties, but still not have been wiped out to anything like the extent to which the Tories were in 1997. It's uncertain why despite the recession that Labour's support is holding up, even if reports claiming that if the recession bottoms out before polling day that Labour could still pull it back seem optimistic at best. Brown's constant repetition of two points, firstly that the economic crisis is global, which is true, but doesn't acquit him especially as far as banking regulation goes, and secondly that the Conservatives are the "do nothing" party, which is far less accurate, might be having some effect, but it also seems to be as others constantly witter, that voters like Cameron but don't like his party or trust them.

At the same time, there seems to be an almost complete deficit of policy discussion coming from all the main parties. This is to be expected when all thoughts turn towards the economy, and should it ought to be remembered what so many of us bemoaned for long periods - that when the differences over how to run economy went the major differences between the political parties also went. This doesn't excuse however the almost complete lack of discussion about anything other than taxes, havens and bail-outs, which has become increasingly glaring, entertaining as the Tories bickering internally over tax is. After years of discussing Iraq, we seem to want to blot all talk of Afghanistan out, a war which has never been explained in anywhere near the detail that Iraq was and continues to be. Everyone knows the supposed reasons why we went into Iraq, yet if you asked the same question about what we're doing in Afghanistan shoulders would be shrugged uniformly. We've gone from politicians wanting the troops to leave without firing a single shot to an average of around one body a week returning home, all without anything approaching a reason from a minister as to why such blood and treasure is being spent on such an apparently endless conflict.

As well as the recession, this is also partially down to the election being probably only just over a year away, and we're either at the beginning of the phony war or fast approaching it. Labour's legislating instinct has also somewhat fallen away under Brown, with the resulting dullness of Westminster except over the continuing fallout over expenses not helping. Into all this greyness, Jack Straw seems to want to inject a bit of colour, by finally getting round to publishing the green paper on "rights and responsibilities", much delayed having being trumpeted since Brown's ascension to the throne, as it were, as part of his agenda for constitutional reform. It soon becomes clear why it has been repeatedly kicked into the long grass - even by New Labour's standards, this is a document of such woe and potential pitfalls that it's quite something that it has finally come to light at all.

Fundamentally, you have to approach this knowing two things: firstly, that Labour quite rightly finally got round to introducing the European Convention on Human Rights, largely drafted by us, into our own common law, negating the need for claimants to have to go to Europe to gain recompense. Secondly, that despite its British origins, the tabloids and others have long regarded the ECHR and the HRA as foreign entities, enshrining rights that are beyond the pale, such as the right to life, right to a private family life, right against inhuman and degrading treatment etc, making the HRA appear to be a charter only for terrorists and criminals, and also one which very sadly might well threaten the tabloids' business model, bringing hated ideas of European privacy to our media and stopping the scandal sheets from splashing on the latest strumpet to shag a star. Since then Labour has always deeply regretted introducing it, and has at best put up a shallow defence of it, although Jack Straw, having introduced it, has put in a better one than others. Also to be noted is that the HRA has done very little to prevent the same government from drastically reducing actual civil liberties, given the lengths of time it takes for appellants to go all the way to Strasbourg and challenge things such as the DNA database, our own courts having not seen things the same way as the European one eventually does.

Straw's cherished bill of rights and responsibilities is then at best an attempt to make up for the unpleasantness surrounding the HRA. Straw has tried to cover this up by noting the "interesting times" in which we are living, suggesting that turmoil has often led to constitutional reform, and at the same time somewhat insultingly given the proposals bracketing the "R 'n' R" he has developed with the likes of the American declaration of independence, the subsequent constitution and the French 1789 declaration of the rights of man and the citizen. This might have worked if Straw's bill was a relatively recent idea, but it dates back to before the start of the credit crunch, if we have to call it that. It hence takes on a very different tone, one far more associated with that of New Labour - one of control.

The obvious point to make is that rights protect us, whether from the state or from other individuals or corporations. Responsibilities, on the other hand are the unwritten rules, or indeed, actual written laws which we already know we have to abide by, and which we don't need informing about. Straw actually seems to want to take it even further than this though: he seems to want to extend responsibilities into the territory of norms and values, into outright conformity with the state. The argument that the green paper makes is that some of these existing responsibilities are "arguably so central to our functioning as a society that they deserve an elevated constitutional status...". This argument might be more convincing if the responsibilities which Straw is thinking of were either breaking down and being ignored or if they weren't already being treated with respect. Yet it's a list of essential banalities which Straw wants to enshrine: treating NHS staff with respect, caring properly for children, "participating in civic society through voting and jury service", assisting the police, paying taxes, obeying the law. Yes, seriously, Straw wants potentially to enshrine obeying the law as a responsibility. While these are banalities, there's also something far more sinister lurking underneath them, especially when it comes to voting and assisting the police: neither are legally required, although you can be charged with perverting the course of justice for deliberately obstructing the police in the course of their investigations. This seems to be New Labour setting down on an elevated constitutional status at least two things which should always be personal decisions: the right not to vote especially should be as important as the right to vote.

Before we get too carried away, we ought to note that the chances of this becoming law still seem pretty slim, and the green paper itself acknowledges that the rights in the ECHR and HRA "cannot be legally contingent on the exercise of responsibilities". In others words, even if we do this, we know full well that we cannot in any way enforce them. All they're destined to be is pretty words, a sop to authoritarian opinion whilst also underlining our own far from libertarian attitudes. Even with this in mind, it bears comparison to the great aforementioned documents - nowhere in the American constitution does it outline how those in society are expected to behave whilst wielding their right to bear arms and arm bears and everything in-between, elevating them above normal status because of their utmost importance in ordering society. It smacks of a government that has become so mad with power that it no longer knows how or where to wield it; it just has to do it, and even something as important to the state as the constitution is not out of bounds to the wackiest thinking when it comes to trying to win favour with some of the nation's media. If this is the stuff to fill the policy vacuum, perhaps we want things to remain lifeless for as long as possible.

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3/23/2009 11:49:00 pm | | | links to this post

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