By Alexandra Halsey-Storch
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe
LONDON, England–On Wednesday, January 18, Justice Secretary Ken Clarke announced that England would discontinue an investigation, initiated by Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, to look into the country’s involvement with the United States’s extremely controversial extradition and rendition program. The decision to cease Cameron’s “Detainee Inquiry” came shortly after the statement announcing that the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service would instead “launch a criminal investigation into claims that Britain’s domestic intelligence service, M15, and overseas spy agency, M16, were complacent in the illegal rendition of terror suspects to Libya. These “fresh allegations” were made by Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a Libyan Islamist and his attorneys at Leigh Day & Co.
Cameron’s Detainee Inquiry was to be led by a retired appeals court judge, Peter Gibson, who was appointed to investigate whether British agents had collaborated with foreign security services, namely the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”), in a supposed effort to obtain information from suspected terrorists being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in so doing engaged in abusive and torturous tactics. Additionally, the inquiry was to investigate allegations made by several British citizens of Pakistani descent who claimed that “they were abused in custody” while in Pakistan “with complicity from British officials.”
Scotland Yard has already investigated the Guantanamo Bay detainee’s cases and although Peter Gibson “regretted the inquiry would not be completed” he “agreed it was not practical to continue for an indefinite period.” Further, he hopes that the investigations that have been done will not be for naught and anticipates that the information that has already been collected “will materially assist the future inquiry that the government intends to establish.”
On the other hand, however, according to Belhadj’s attorneys, the Detainee Inquiry “was ill-conceived from the beginning, the government reserved the right for the final say on what material would be published and did not allow for cross-examination or any other way of testing the evidence from members of the UK security services, which was to be given secretly. Additionally, only “as much of the report as possible” would have been accessibly to the public, rather than the entire investigation.
Human Rights activists have taken a similar stance. Clare Algar, an executive director of Reprieve, stated that the inquiry, “simply did not have the power or independence to get to the truth.” She went on to say that the organization “looks forward to working with the government to ensure that an inquiry with real clout and independence is established.”
Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia director, Nicola Duckworth, agreed with Algar’s sentiments, saying that the inquiry was never fit for purpose, and fell short of the UK’s international human rights obligations to fully and independently investigation allegations of UK involvement in torture and ill-treatment.” Duckworth went on to iterate that Amnesty International “hopes that the government seizes the opportunity presented by the mounting allegations of UK involvement , the ongoing criminal investigations into specific cases, and the report of the Detainee Inquiry’s work to date, to establish a human-rights- compliant inquiry that ensures real accountability.”
According to the BBC, the new police investigation came about as a result of claims made by Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a commander of the former rebel forces in Libya and Sami-al-Saadi. “The allegations raised in the two specific cases…are so serious that it is in the public interest for them to be investigated now rather than at the conclusion of the Detainee Inquiry.” It is likely that the British government will also need the police investigation to build its defense in the legal action which Belhadj and his attorneys have initiated against the government.
Belhadj says that he was tortured in Libya after being arrested in 2004 while in Bangkok, Thailand. The arrest allegedly occurred during a CIA and M16 operation which was conducted to help Muammar Gaddafi “round up his enemies.” Belhadj says he tortured for six year. Belhadj was not allowed to bathe and was “subjected to protracted investigations.” He also says that his pregnant wife was held in Libya for four months and released only just before she gave birth. Belhadj claims that he told British intelligence services about the torture when they visited him in Libya; they did nothing to prevent future harm.
“Those who contributed to this, those who have harmed us, and the people who elected them—they committed this crime while pretending to protect human rights—we want to see them brought to justice,” commented Belhadj.
The allegations have been consistently denied by both “current and former heads of M15 and M16 and British authorities say they would never use, or encourage others to use, torture to gain information” despite years of accusations suggesting that they did in fact assist in the “ill treatment of detainees, often at the hands of U.S. authorities after the September 11 attacks on the United States.”
In yet a similar case, Sami-al-Saadi has made like allegations, claiming “British collusion in rendition and is demanding damages for the torture he suffered in one of Gaddafi’s prisons.”
For more information, please visit:
Reuters–UK Scraps Torture Inquiry While Police Probe Libya Cases–January 18, 2012
BBC–UK Inquiry Into Rendition and Torture Collusion Scrapped–January 18, 2012
