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<h1><b>Guantánamo: Torture victim Binyam Mohamed sues British government
for evidence</b></h1><font size=3>May 11, 2008 By <b>Andy Worthington</b>
<br><br>
<br>
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.<br><br>
They insist, moreover, that his case is an urgent priority, because he is
about to be charged before a
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/category/military-commissions/">
Military Commission</a> 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.<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Binyam's torture</b></h2><font size=3>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
In the heightened tension in Pakistan at the time -- just days after
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17345">Abu
Zubaydah</a>, 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. <br><br>
Although he later reported to his lawyer -- Clive Stafford Smith of the
legal action charity <a href="http://www.reprieve.org.uk/">Reprieve</a>,
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.<br><br>
Speaking of his time in Morocco, where he was held for 18 months, Binyam
told Stafford Smith that he was subjected to
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/aug/02/terrorism.humanrights1">
horrendous torture</a>, 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
</font><h2><b>The letter to the UK government</b></h2><font size=3>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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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: <br><br>
"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."<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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."<br><br>
In addition, the lawyers requested any evidence about rendition flights
that stopped on the British territory of
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2007/10/22/guantanamos-ghosts-and-the-shame-of-diego-garcia/">
Diego Garcia</a> in the Indian Ocean (which is leased to the United
States). After five years of denials, the British government
<a href="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</a> 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." <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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."<br><br>
</font><h2><b>The lawsuit</b></h2><font size=3>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.<br><br>
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."<br><br>
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:<br><br>
"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."<br><br>
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 <i>and</i> the American governments.<br><br>
<br><br>
Andy is the author of
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/">The
Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal
Prison</a>. His website is:
<a href="http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/">
http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/</a> <br><br>
<hr>
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