Just one of several reasons Hillary Clinton must never be elected president of the United States.

Clinton moved to halt disclosure of CIA torture evidence, court told

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today.

The dramatic turn emerged as lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident abused in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, joined by lawyers for the Guardian and other media groups, asked the court to order the disclosure of CIA material.

It consists of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA knew, and what it told MI5 and MI6, about the treatment of Mohamed. Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, the judges hearing the case, have said that the summary contains nothing that could possibly be described as "highly sensitive classified US intelligence".

However, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has repeatedly told the court that the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK if the CIA material was published. The judges, as well as lawyers for Mohamed and the media, have challenged that assertion.

"Is it remotely credible that [the Obama administration] would stop intelligence-sharing?" Thomas asked yesterday, referring to Obama's recent decision to publish CIA torture documents in the US. "The judgment of the foreign secretary is the key," he added.

The court has heard how the Foreign Office and Miliband have solicited US help in keeping the CIA material secret. Today, it heard how Miliband met Clinton in Washington on 12 May this year.

In a written statement proposing a gagging order, Miliband told the court that she "indicated" that the disclosure of CIA evidence "would affect intelligence sharing". Pressed repeatedly by the judges on the claim yesterday, Karen Steyn, Miliband's counsel, insisted that Clinton was indeed saying that if the seven-paragraph summary of CIA material was disclosed, the US would "reassess" its intelligence relationship with the UK, a move that "would put lives at risk".

Labels: cia, clinton, coverup, mi5, mi6, torture, uk

Further evidence that Pakistan tortured suspects for Britain

Further evidence of the close involvement of British agents in the torture of British citizens in Pakistan has emerged during a series of interviews with Pakistani intelligence officers.

Researchers from the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) say several Pakistani officials have corroborated accounts of torture given by several victims. The officials not only made clear that their counterparts in British intelligence were fully aware of the methods they were employing during interrogations but claim the British agents were "grateful" it was happening.

In a statement issued today, HRW said senior Pakistani officials had told it "on numerous occasions" that British officials were aware of the mistreatment of a number of terrorism suspects from the UK, including Rangzieb Ahmed and Salahuddin Amin, who are now serving life sentences in the UK, Zeeshan Siddiqui, whose whereabouts is unknown, and Rashid Rauf, who is said to have died in a US missile strike after escaping from custody.

Labels: britain, look npr that word again, pakistan, torture, uk

We already knew Tony Blair's government allowed the CIA to use airbases in Britain and Northern Ireland during the transport of prisoners to secret prisons where torture was performed. Today we learn MI5 took a suspect from the UK to Pakistan, turned him over to Pakistani agents knowing they would torture him, then arrested him and took him to the UK when they were finished. And Tony Blair new about it.

Notice how British newspapers actually use the word "torture" to describe torture, something most American news outlets won't do.

Revealed – the secret torture evidence MI5 tried to suppress

The true depth of British involvement in the torture of terrorism suspects overseas and the manner in which that complicity is concealed behind a cloak of courtroom secrecy was laid bare last night when David Davis MP detailed the way in which one counter-terrorism operation led directly to a man suffering brutal mistreatment.

In a dramatic intervention using the protection of parliamentary privilege, the former shadow home secretary revealed how MI5 and Greater Manchester police effectively sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to a Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), whose routine use of torture has been widely documented.

This is the first time that the information has entered the public domain. Previously it has been suppressed through the process of secret court hearings and, had the Guardian or other media organisations reported it, they would have exposed themselves to the risk of prosecution for contempt of court.

Labels: britain, mi5, pakistan, torture, uk

A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration.

The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities.

The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq — stripping detainees, placing them in “stress positions” or depriving them of sleep — originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations.

According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising “to get ‘tougher’ with detainee interrogations.” Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques.

And from the Guardian:

A Senate inquiry published today directly implicates senior members of the Bush administration in the extensive use of harsh interrogation methods against al-Qaida suspects and other prisoners round the world.

The 232-page report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of torture, undercuts the claim of the then deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was the work of "a few bad apples".

The report says: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees."

The report, the result of an 18-month inquiry, reveals the administration rejected advice from various branches of the armed services against using more aggressive techniques. The military questioned both the morality and the reliability of information gained.

The report discloses that waterboarding and other techniques used were based on a faulty premise. The methods were lifted from a military programme known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) but the armed forces pointed out that this was intended to train troops in resisting torture rather than establishing whether these were useful interrogation methods

The report says that SERE instructors trained CIA and other military personnel early in 2002 on the use of harsher interrogation techniques but warned that information obtained might be unreliable.

Labels: rumsfeld, torture

Belatedly complying with a Freedom of Information Act request from the ACLU, the Obama administration has release four memos from the Bush administration giving the CIA permission to use certain torture techniques.

President Obama banned the use of these methods in his first week in office. That's the good news. But so far he has shown no incliniation to bring criminal prosecutions against the officials who wrote the memos or the senior employees at the CIA who ordered agents to use torture. The message is clear. Publicly, the president affirms torture is against the law, but he won't prosecute anyone for breaking that law. This sets a dangerous precedent and will embolden those in the CIA and the military who believe they are above the law.

You can tell the president what you think about this issue at www.whitehouse.gov

BBC News: CIA 'amnesty' dismays campaigners

Labels: obama, torture