[Ppnews] Guantánamo: Torture victim sues British government

[Political Prisoner News]

Guantánamo: Torture victim Binyam Mohamed sues British government for evidence

May 11, 2008 By Andy Worthington


On Tuesday, Binyam Mohamed, a 29-year old British 
resident in Guantánamo, sued the British 
government for refusing to produce evidence 
which, his lawyers contend, would demonstrate 
that he was tortured for 27 months by or on 
behalf of US forces in Morocco and Afghanistan, 
that any "evidence" against him was only obtained 
through torture, and that the British government 
and intelligence services knew about his torture 
and provided personal information about him -- 
unrelated to terrorism -- that was used by the 
Americans' proxy torturers in Morocco.

They insist, moreover, that his case is an urgent 
priority, because he is about to be charged 
before a 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/category/military-commissions/>Military 
Commission in Guantánamo -- the much-criticized 
system of trials for "terror suspects" that was 
conceived by the US administration in November 
2001 -- and they desperately need the exculpatory 
evidence in the possession of the British 
government to assist in his defence, and to prove his innocence.


Binyam's torture

A refugee from Ethiopia, who arrived in the UK in 
1994 and was later granted indefinite leave to 
remain, Binyam Mohamed was working as a cleaner 
in an Islamic Centre in west London in 2001, and 
attempting to recover from a drug problem, when 
he decided to travel to Afghanistan to see what 
the Taliban regime was like, and, he hoped, to 
steer clear of drugs because of the Taliban's 
reputation as fierce opponents of drug use.

He came to the attention of both the American and 
British intelligence services in April 2002, when 
he was seized by the Pakistani authorities as he 
tried to board a flight to London. Although he 
had a valid airline ticket, his passport had been 
stolen, and, rather foolishly, he had borrowed a 
British friend's passport instead.

In the heightened tension in Pakistan at the time 
-- just days after 
<http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17345>Abu 
Zubaydah, an alleged senior al-Qaeda operative, 
was captured in Faisalabad -- Binyam was 
immediately regarded with enormous suspicion by 
the American agents who visited him in the 
Pakistan prison in which he was held.

Although he later reported to his lawyer -- Clive 
Stafford Smith of the legal action charity 
<http://www.reprieve.org.uk/>Reprieve, which 
represents 35 prisoners in Guantánamo -- that the 
British checked out his story, and confirmed that 
he was a "nobody," the Americans were not 
convinced, and decided to send him to Morocco, 
where he could be interrogated by professional 
torturers who were not bothered about 
international treaties preventing the use of 
torture, and who were equally unconcerned about 
whether evidence of their activities would ever surface.

Speaking of his time in Morocco, where he was 
held for 18 months, Binyam told Stafford Smith 
that he was subjected to 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/02/terrorism.humanrights1>horrendous 
torture, which, included, but was not limited to 
having his penis cut with a razor on a regular 
basis. In spite of this, the regular beatings and 
other torture that he did not even want to talk 
about, Binyam said that his lowest moment of all 
came when his torturers produced evidence of his 
life in London, which could only have come from 
the British intelligence services, and he 
realized that he had been abandoned and betrayed by his adopted homeland.

After Morocco, Binyam was transferred to 
Afghanistan, where he endured further torture in 
the "Dark Prison," a secret "black site" near 
Kabul, run by the CIA, which was a grim 
recreation of a medieval dungeon, but with the 
addition of non-stop music and noise, blasted 
into the pitch-dark cells at an ear-piercing volume.

Moved from here to the main US prison at Bagram 
airbase, where at least two prisoners were 
murdered by US forces, Binyam was finally put on 
a plane to Guantánamo in September 2004, two and 
a half years after his ordeal began.

In Guantánamo, he was put forward for a Military 
Commission in November 2005, and made one 
memorable appearance before the military court, 
when he held up a hand-written placard declaring 
that the Commissions were in fact "Con-Missions," 
but in June 2006 the judge in his case was spared 
further embarrassment when the entire system was 
ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Revived later that year by a barely sentient 
Congress, the trials have since struggled to 
establish their legitimacy, and have yet to 
proceed beyond arraignment and pre-trial 
proceedings, with the exception of the case of 
the Australian David Hicks, who accepted a plea 
bargain last March in order to return home to 
serve a desultory nine-month sentence.

In recent months, however, the administration, 
which boldly states that it intends to try 
between 60 and 80 of the remaining 273 prisoners, 
has stepped up the rate at which new prisoners 
are being charged. In an attempt to save Binyam 
from a second dose of the Commissions, his 
lawyers at Reprieve, together with solicitors 
from Leigh Day & Co., decided that the most 
constructive and innovative way to secure 
Binyam's release was to put pressure on the British government.


The letter to the UK government

Armed with evidence from flight logs, which 
confirmed that CIA planes had flown from Pakistan 
to Morocco in July 2002, and from Morocco to 
Afghanistan in January 2004, as Binyam said they 
had, and with numerous accounts of British 
complicity in his interrogations, and knowledge 
of his rendition to torture, the lawyers 
submitted a list of requests to David Miliband, 
the Foreign Secretary, at the end of March.

The extensive list of items requested included 
any evidence relating to UK knowledge of Binyam's 
forthcoming rendition while he was held in 
Pakistan from April to July 2002, including "the 
identity of the US agents involved, so that they 
can be traced and interviewed or subpoenaed," and 
any evidence relating to Binyam's claim that 
representatives of the British intelligence 
services told him in Pakistan that they knew that 
he was a "nobody," which, the lawyers stated, led 
them to "assume that the UK intelligence services 
and police have carried out investigations in to 
Mr. Mohamed's activities whilst in the UK." "We 
believe," they added, "that such evidence will 
show that he does not represent a terrorist 
threat," and that as such "it forms a necessary part of his defence."

The lawyers also asked "to interview and take 
statements from the UK agents who (it is 
conceded) spoke to Mr. Mohamed whilst he was 
detained in Pakistan," and who, Binyam stated, 
"informed him that he was going to be rendered to 
an Arab country for torture." In December 2005, 
Jack Straw, who was the Foreign Secretary at the 
time, did indeed admit, in testimony to the 
Foreign Affairs Select Committee, that UK 
Security Service officers visited Binyam while he 
was in Pakistani custody, and Binyam's 
recollections of that encounter were noted by 
Clive Stafford Smith during a meeting at Guantánamo:

"They gave me a cup of tea with a lot of sugar in 
it. I initially only took one. ‘No, you need a 
lot more. Where you're going, you need a lot of 
sugar.' I didn't know exactly what he meant by 
this, but I figured he meant some poor country in 
Arabia. One of them did tell me I was going to get tortured by the Arabs."

As Binyam's lawyers pointed out, "Such evidence 
will be central to the defence of Mr. Mohamed 
because any evidence obtained as a result of torture is inadmissible."

The lawyers also requested "information about Mr. 
Mohamed's life in the United Kingdom that could 
only have come from UK intelligence agencies or 
other government sources," which, as Binyam 
pointed out, caused him particular distress in 
Morocco, when it was used by his torturers. 
According to Stafford Smith, this information 
included "personal details about his life in the 
UK, such as details of his education, the name of 
his kick-boxing trainer and his friendships in 
London, which he had never mentioned during 
interrogations, and that could only have 
originated from collusion in the process by the 
UK security or secret intelligence services."

In addition, the lawyers requested any evidence 
about rendition flights that stopped on the 
British territory of 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/10/22/guantanamos-ghosts-and-the-shame-of-diego-garcia/>Diego 
Garcia in the Indian Ocean (which is leased to 
the United States). After five years of denials, 
the British government 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/02/22/david-miliband-admits-that-two-extraordinary-rendition-flights-refuelled-at-diego-garcia-is-this-a-joke/>finally 
admitted in February that two flights had indeed 
stopped at Diego Garcia, and Binyam's lawyers 
requested information about these flights, 
pointing out that one of the flights had 
"subsequently stopped in Morocco at the time that 
Mr. Mohamed was there," and that it was, 
therefore, "almost certainly (a) taking another 
prisoner to Morocco for torture; or (b) taking US 
personnel there who were involved in Mr. Mohamed's interrogation process."

The lawyers also requested any evidence relating 
to Binyam's time in the "Dark Prison" in Kabul, 
where, they noted, "it seems highly probable that 
the UK government has details of the conditions 
that prevailed there," because various British 
residents -- including Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil 
El-Banna, who returned to the UK from Guantánamo 
last year -- were also held there, and any 
evidence relating to Binyam's time in Bagram, 
where other British prisoners were also held.

The lawyers' final request was for access to 
Binyam's medical records from Guantánamo. They 
noted that these were "relevant to the question 
of torture, and Mr. Mohamed's current physical 
and mental condition," and added that, although 
the Guantánamo authorities have given the UK 
government access to Binyam's records, they have 
refused to provide them to Stafford Smith. "The 
UK should provide a copy now," they wrote, "or 
provide whatever information or documents they 
have recording the contents of the medical records."


The lawsuit

The lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Reprieve and 
Leigh Day & Co. was triggered when lawyers for 
the government responded to the letter described 
above by refusing to hand over any of the 
evidence requested by Binyam's lawyers, claiming 
that "the UK is under no obligation under 
international law to assist foreign courts and 
tribunals in assuring that torture evidence is 
not admitted," and adding, "it is HM Government's 
position that ... evidence held by the UK 
government that US and Moroccan authorities 
engaged in torture or rendition cannot be obtained" by Binyam's lawyers.

The government lawyers proceeded to claim that 
Binyam's lawyers did not "provide any evidence" 
to support their assertion that "such alleged 
information or assistance ‘was subsequently used 
in the torture of [Mr. Mohamed],'" to which 
Reprieve and Leigh Day responded by pointing out 
that Binyam's allegation that UK sources provided 
information to his torturers in Morocco was 
"found credible" by the Intelligence and Security 
Committee (IRC), a committee established in the 
UK Intelligence Services Act 1994, and empowered 
to examine the expenditure, administration and 
policies of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. Binyam's lawyers 
pointed out that the government had ignored the 
conclusion of the IRC's Rendition Report in 2007, 
when the committee had explicitly stated, "There 
is a reasonable probability that intelligence 
passed to the Americans was used in [Binyam 
Mohamed]'s subsequent [Moroccan] interrogation."

They also cited the particular passage from 
Binyam's statement to Clive Stafford Smith, in 
which he spoke about the interrogation in Morocco 
that contained information that could only have 
come from the British intelligence services:

"Today I was questioned about my links with 
Britain. The interrogator told me, ‘We have been 
working with the British, and we have photos of 
people given to us by MI5. Do you know these?' I 
realized that the British were sending questions 
to the Moroccans. I was at first surprised that 
the Brits were siding with the Americans. I 
sought asylum in Britain rather than America 
because it's known as the one country that has 
laws that it follows. To say that I was 
disappointed at this moment would be an understatement."

It remains to be seen, of course, if this novel 
approach taken by Binyam's lawyers will bear 
fruit, but it seems plausible, as it is hardly in 
the interests of the British government to run 
the risk of further embarrassing disclosures. The 
lawsuit may, therefore, put pressure on the 
politicians to step up their efforts to secure 
Binyam's return to Britain -- to face charges in 
the UK, if any can be found that will stick to 
the "nobody" from west London -- rather than to 
allow him to be tried in a much-criticized system 
in Guantánamo that threatens to embarrass both 
the British and the American governments.



Andy is the author of 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/>The 
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 
Detainees in America's Illegal Prison. His 
website is: 
<http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/>http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/


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