Whose law did they think they were subject to?

During the war on terror, the US ran a program of extraordinary rendition, in which alleged terrorists were kidnapped, taken to foreign countries, and tortured for information. The British government colluded in this, both directly by assisting in kidnappings, and indirectly by providing questions for their torturing proxies to ask the victims. Now, their victims are suing. The British government's "defence" has been to claim that its spies weren't subject to British law when performing their official duties. The UK Court of Appeal's response? yeah, right:

UK intelligence services who allegedly asked the CIA to put questions to a detainee who was being tortured in “black sites” were subject to the law of England and Wales and not that of the countries in which he was being held, the court of appeal has ruled.

The three appeal judges were asked to decide whether Abu Zubaydah, who was subjected to extreme mistreatment and torture at secret CIA “black sites” in six different countries, has the right to sue the UK government in England.

[...]

In [Justice] Males’s written judgment, he said: “These are strong connections connecting the tortious conduct with England and Wales. They reflect also the parties’ reasonable expectations. While it is true that the claimant himself had no connection with this country, he could reasonably have expected, if he had thought about it during the 20 years in which he has been detained, that the conduct of any country’s security services having to do with him would be governed by the law of the country concerned. As for the services, they would reasonably have expected that their conduct here would be subject to English law.”

Which is obvious the moment you think about it. For a government to claim it is not bound by its own laws is simply absurd. But apparently nothing is too absurd when the British establishment is attempting to justify and excuse torture.

The path is now open for Abu Zubaydah to sue. And hopefully he will force the British government to admit its crimes and extract compensation for them. But the spies who colluded in torture and the Ministers who authorised that collusion shouldn't just be facing a civil suit - they should be facing criminal prosecution. And if the British government refuses to prosecute its own, well, there's a court in The Hague for that.

Justice for Afghanistan?

The International Criminal Court has launched a war crimes inquiry into America's war in Afghanistan:

Senior judges at the international criminal court have authorised an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, overturning an earlier rejection of the inquiry.

The ICC investigation will look at actions by US, Afghan and Taliban troops. It is possible, however, that allegations relating to UK troops could emerge in that process.

[...]

The ICC judges also approved that the scope of the investigation should include CIA black sites operated in Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, where detainees were taken.

The latter is significant, since it squarely puts criminals like Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and Yoo in the dock, alongside the murderers, rapists and torturers in the US military.

The US, of course, is losing its shit: while purporting to support international justice, they in practice oppose any suggestion of it being applied to them or their allies. The ICC is only supposed to investigate countries they bomb, not whether bombing is justified. But if it is to mean anything, then the ICC must conduct a robust and thorough inquiry into these allegations, no matter how the US retaliates. Otherwise, it will simply be a vehicle for victor's justice, and lose all credibility.

Good little vassals

The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security has published their report on whether the SIS and GCSB had any complicity in American torture. And its damning. The pull quote is this:

The Inquiry found both agencies, but to a much greater degree, the NZSIS, received many intelligence reports obtained from detainees who, it was subsequently revealed, had been subject to torture. On one occasion the NZSIS provided questions to the CIA to be put to a detainee. While the NZSIS was not aware that detainee interrogations involved torture, it was known that the individual was being held by the CIA in an undisclosed location.

As the report notes, this should have been a red flag for human rights abuse, but it wasn't treated as such (which ought to raise serious questions about the types of people working at SIS). Neither were the widespread public reports that the US was engaged in torture and disappearance, or the fact that partner agencies were launching inquiries into it. Instead, the SIS seems to have culled all mention of those facts from its files of media reports - as if they were deliberately turning a blind eye. The report also notes that the directors of the SIS and GCSB did not inquire with the Americans about the allegations, or seek assurances from them. And it is said explicitly and repeatedly that the reason for that is that those directors did not want to upset the Americans:

...Directors also noted the risk of compromising intelligence flows of vital importance to New Zealanders... if they had challenged their US counterparts...

...there was an unspoken general rule that one did not ask direct questions about the operations of Five Eyes counterparts...

...[the directors] felt constrained not to do anything which would have risked or reduced New Zealand’s role as part of the alliance or to the flow of intelligence...

...they saw other risks, particularly the risk of compromising vital intelligence flows at a vital time, if they asked questions of their partner agencies...

...As one of the former Directors said, it was not realistic to think that New Zealand could have said “please explain” to the United States, the most powerful country in the world. Realistically the response would have been that New Zealand would again have been cut out of the recently resumed intelligence flow, at a time when it most needed it.

Its the same problem we've had all along: it turns out that the people at the top of "our" spy agencies are more loyal to America than they are to us. They're good little vassals to their foreign masters. And we were were paying them for that.

The inspector-General is very clear that the directors had a duty to assess the risks of torture and complicity and raise them with Ministers. They didn't. And that's a dereliction of duty right there. Not raised in the report, because it is outside the Inspector-General's jurisdiction: but equally important: where was the Minister? Because faced with those media reports in 2003, I'd have expected a popular and competent Minister to seek assurances from her agencies that everything was alright and that they were neither complicit in nor contaminated by criminal American behaviour. There's no evidence that she did. Even when interrogation reports of a "senior Al-Qa'ida detainee" were landing on her desk. So perhaps the spies weren't the only ones who were wilfully blind to this.

The report notes that it is "not possible to know" whether the SIS's questions resulted in the detainee - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - being tortured to extract responses to their questions. But to me, it looks like complicity. The legal framework has changed since then, and you'd hope that this review has made them more aware of the issues and their legal and moral duties. OTOH, given that everything these agencies do is secret, how would we ever know?

An insincere apology

In 2004, Britain helped the CIA kidnap Libyan dissident Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his family from Thailand. Belhaj and his pregnant wife were rendered to Libya, where they were imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime. Belhaj was tortured. MI6 knew and wanted this to happen. Now, UK Prime Minister Theresa May has purportedly "apologised" for the government's actions:

Theresa May has issued an unprecedented apology for Britain’s role in the “appalling” treatment of a Libyan dissident and his wife, who were victims of a rendition operation mounted with the help of MI6.

The prime minister wrote to Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his wife, Fatima Boudchar, to apologise unreservedly on behalf of the government for its failings over the case and missed opportunities to end their ordeal.

The attorney general, Jeremy Wright, read out May’s letter in the Commons as he announced that Boudchar, who was pregnant when the couple were kidnapped, would receive £500,000 compensation for the UK’s role in her treatment. Belhaj has neither sought, nor received, a financial settlement.

[...]

In her letter, May admitted the UK should have done more to reduce the risk that the couple could be mistreated, and had wrongly missed opportunities to help them once they were held in the prisons of the former Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.

She acknowledged that Britain should have realised sooner that its allies were involved in unacceptable practices, implying criticism of Libya for torture and the CIA’s practice of rendition.

If you believe May, this was all a terrible misunderstanding, poor British spies not really understanding what they were doing and what horrors they were sending Belhaj to. Bullshit. They knew all along, about both American and Libyan torture. They visited Belhaj in the prison where he was being tortured and questioned him. Pretending now that they didn't know about it is just Britain minimising its crimes, as usual.

An apology was what Belhaj was seeking, and he may be satisfied with this. But we should not be. The criminals who arranged his rendition, who knowingly sent him to be tortured in exchange for political favour with Libya, are still free. No-one has been held to account. And unless there is accountability for these crimes, there is no incentive for them not to be repeated.

But no doubt then we'll see an equally insincere apology and compensation from an establishment which has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Something to hide

Back in June, the UK's Crown Prosecution Service decided that they wouldn't be charging anyone over MI6's complicity in the kidnapping, rendition and torture of Libyan dissident Abdul Hakim Belhaj. There's obvious suspicion that they were lobbied into making that decision by the British government. But oddly, the cabinet Office doesn't want to talk about it:

The previous month Reprieve submitted a request to the Cabinet Office under the Freedom of Information Act asking whether any of its ministers or staff had met or corresponded with the CPS about the investigation.

The Cabinet Office said it would not answer the question as it “could neither confirm nor deny whether any relevant information is held”. The department judged that this refusal was justified in the public interest to protect the enforcement of the law.

As well as running the prime minister’s office, mandarins in the Cabinet Office advise the PM and other senior ministers on intelligence matters. They also co-ordinate the government’s response to sensitive issues relating to the UK’s spies.

The natural conclusion is that the Cabinet Office feels it has something to hide on this, something which would not survive public scrutiny. And the obvious thing they have to hide is that they unlawfully interfered in a prosecution decision to protect themselves and the establishment from facing justice for their crimes.

The establishment protects itself

In 2004, Britain helped the CIA kidnap Libyan dissident Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his family from Thailand. Belhaj and his pregnant wife were rendered to Libya, where they were imprisoned by the Gaddafi regime. Belhaj was tortured. MI6 knew and wanted this to happen. And yet the British government has spent over £600,000 trying to prevent him from seeking justice through the British courts:

The government has spent at least £600,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to prevent a civil case being brought against it by a husband and wife who allege that British intelligence was complicit in their detention, rendition and torture.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the extraordinary lengths to which the government is going to prevent the civil case against it, former home secretary Jack Straw, and former MI6 spy chief Sir Mark Allen coming to court.

[...]

[I]nformation released under FOI shows that by 10 September last year the government had spent £355,000 on internal legal advice and £259,000 on external advice as it sought to have the case dropped. Of this, £27,000 was spent on advice relating to Straw and £110,000 on advice relating to Allen.

The FOI data reveals that the government has been paying as much as £250 an hour to two senior barristers involved in defending the action. A number of junior barristers have also been charging between £45 and £120 an hour.

Given that the figures are 10 months old, there is speculation that the total cost of fighting the case – before it even comes near a court – could be well in excess of £10m.

Belhaj isn't seeking damages - he is seeking an admission of involvement and an apology. But actually admitting what everyone knows - that they are complicit in rendition and torture - would be deeply embarrassing to the British political establishment, not to mention expose senior members to (well-deserved) criminal prosecution. So instead they're spending public money to prevent that. Just another example of how Britain's criminal establishment governs in its own interests, not those of the people.

No justice for rendition

In 2004, Britain kidnapped Sami al-Saadi in Hong Kong and illegally rendered him to Libya. The same year, they helped the CIA do the same to Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his family in Thailand. Both men were tortured by the Libyan regime, and it is clear that MI6 knew and wanted this to happen. In fact, they questioned both victims after their torture. But despite this, the British government is refusing to bring charges against its spies:

Prosecutors are set to announce that they are bringing no charges following a police investigation into MI6’s involvement in the kidnapping of two families who were “rendered” to the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s prisons, despite protests by the victims and their lawyers that the evidence against the agency is overwhelming.

Documents that described the UK’s involvement in the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife, and fellow Libyan dissident Sami al-Saadi along with his wife and four young children, were uncovered during the 2011 revolution that led to the overthrow and murder of Gaddafi.

[...]

Scotland Yard officers who have spent four years building a case against the MI6 officers allegedly involved will be deeply dismayed by the decision.

So too will be Belhaj, Saadi and their families, who have said that they will regard any failure to bring charges as a damning indictment of British standards of justice.

This is as clear a case as you can get. There is a paper trail a mile wide linking this straight to MI6. Given that, its hard to escape the conclusion that this is just another example of the British establishment protecting its own from justice. But by doing so, they prove both that the UK is absolutely unreformable, and that people will have to seek justice for its crimes by other means. And when you are trying to fight terrorism, that is a very dangerous message to send.

As for Mark Allen and jack Straw, the apparent architects of this crime, there are a multitude of legal jurisdictions which claim universal jurisdiction for torture and are well connected to other countries via extradition treaties. Like America's Iraq criminals, they should be thinking twice about any foreign trips for the rest of their lives.

There must be justice for rendition

It looks like even Britain's elite has had enough of rendition, with a senior Tory MP demanding answers:

A senior Conservative MP has described the continuing cover-up of Britain’s complicity in the kidnapping and torture of detainees in the “war on terror” – and of who authorised it – as a shocking scandal that must be resolved without further delay.

Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, made clear that an answer to the key question – who knew about the secret operations – was getting closer.

[...]

Tyrie told the Guardian: “It is a scandal and shocking that, after nearly a decade of demanding answers, the public still don’t know the scope and limits of the UK’s complicity in kidnap and torture. Public confidence in the security services has been eroded as a consequence. We need them. It is now essential that the prime minister ensures that the ISC [parliament’s intelligence and security committee] are able to get to the bottom of this, and without delay. Only by doing so can a line be drawn under this sorry episode.”

But answers aren't enough - there must also be justice. The only way the UK can "draw a line under" (as the establishment loves to say) rendition is when everyone involved has been sacked and prosecuted. And that means not just the spies who selected targets, put them on planes, and asked them question in foreign torture chambers - but the Ministers who officially authorised those actions. The scandal will only end when Jack Straw and Tony Blair are in jail, where they belong.

Justice for rendition

In 2009, Italy convicted 22 CIA agents in absentia for their role in the kidnapping and rendition from Italy of a refugee. One of those agents was dumb enough to set foot outside the United States, and was arrested in Portugal last year to face extradition. Her appeals have finally been exhausted and she is to be extradited to Italy next week:

A former undercover CIA officer is to be extradited to Italy following her conviction over the 2003 extraordinary rendition of a terror suspect to Egypt.

Sabrina De Sousa, a dual US and Portuguese citizen, was arrested in Portugal last October and has since lost three appeals against being handed over to Italian authorities. Her extradition is scheduled for 4 May.

Good. It may only be one of those responsible, but some justice is better than none.

meanwhile, there's a suggestion that the Italian government will pardon her to keep on-side with the US. They shouldn't. De Sousa conspired to kidnap and torture a man. Pardoning would simply make the government complicit in her crime.

Of course they did

So, in addition to being torturers, it seems the CIA are also perverts:

The CIA took naked photographs of people it sent to its foreign partners for torture, the Guardian can reveal.

A former US official who had seen some of the photographs described them as “very gruesome”.

The naked imagery of CIA captives raises new questions about the seeming willingness of the US to use what one medical and human rights expert called “sexual humiliation” in its post-9/11 captivity of terrorism suspects. Some human rights campaigners described the act of naked photography on unwilling detainees as a potential war crime.

Naturally, they'd argue that its not a war crime because the Geneva Conventions don't apply to people America doesn't like "terrorists" (and innocent teenagers, German tourists, and anyone else the American shove into that dragnet). And naturally, they'd howl with outrage if anyone did anything like this to a US soldier. So they're hypocritical as well as criminal.

Supposedly this was done to document prisoners' physical condition while in CIA custody and to protect the CIA from being blamed for injuries inflicted by the torturers they passed them on to. But coming from an agency which explicitly uses sexual humiliation as an interrogation technique, that's less than convincing, and simply sounds like more self-serving bullshit.

Again, the people responsible for rendition need to be prosecuted, and the US needs to apologise to and compensate its victims. Refusing to do so isn't simply unjust - its also stupid, a standing inspiration for future terrorist attacks.

Britain is still covering up its role in rendition and torture

First Britain denied any role in the US policy of rendition and torture. Then it said there may have been some inadvertent mistakes. Then it held an inquiry to "draw a line" under the allegations, only to have it collapse due to an utter lack of credibility. And no wonder. Because while they were doing that, they were suppressing key evidence:

Key documents that could shed light on allegations of UK collusion in torture and rendition are being suppressed by the British government. The newly uncovered files include confidential exchanges between former PM Tony Blair and former president George Bush about treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. Possibly most significant are five other documents, communications between the former UK foreign secretary, Jack Straw, and former US secretary of state, Colin Powell, expressing interest and concern about the welfare and legal status of UK detainees at Guantanamo.

While the documents may relate to casual expressions of care for the welfare of UK citizens, former detainees have alleged that British officials have either been present at, or submitted questions for, “extreme” interrogation by US officials. The US government has been required to make public a large number of files which relate to British involvement in the treatment of prisoners in the years following the 9/11 bombings.

Litigation continues across multiple US departments over the possible release of mainly intelligence-derived documentation. But 12 documents found in the US State Department’s search, not derived from intelligence, were also withheld. These relate to interventions by British politicians and officials over the treatment of detainees and interrogation techniques. In court papers, the State Department reported: “After reviewing the documents, the UK Government’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office requested that all 12 documents be withheld in full from public disclosure.”

[Emphasis added]

Which naturally invites the question: what are they trying to hide? Especially as they also hid most of these documents from their own whitewash inquiries. The obvious implication is that if they were revealed, not even a handpicked establishment stooge would be able to look the other way and avoid allocating blame.

The other thing it highlights is just how central lies and cover-ups are to the British establishment's method of government. When they're caught, they tell everyone that that's all there is to find, while they desperately sweep everything under a different rug. And then when that gets found, they repeat the same lies and "reassurances". And somehow, people keep falling for it. Because, despite the fact that they've lied before, repeatedly, those nice old men in suits wouldn't lie this time, would they? Britain really does get the government it deserves. Though with an unfair electoral system and a society rapidly descending into tyranny, its difficult to see how they could change it, even if they wanted to.

Justice for rendition

In 2003, Abu Omar was kidnapped in Italy by the CIA. He was rendered to Egypt, where he was tortured. The rendition became public in 2005 and the Italian justice system was eventually forced to act; in 2009 22 CIA agents were convicted in absentia for their role in Omar's kidnapping and torture.

One of them was Sabrina De Sousa, a dual Portuguese-US citizen. She was detained in Portugal in October on a European Arrest Warrant, and a Portuguese court has just ruled that she should be extradited to Italy to serve her sentence:

A Portuguese court has ruled that a former C.I.A. agent should be handed over to Italy after being found guilty by an Italian court of taking part in the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003, one of the renditions ordered by the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The former agent, Sabrina De Sousa, holds dual American and Portuguese citizenship. Ms. De Sousa has denied any wrongdoing or involvement in the kidnapping, which took place while she was working undercover for the C.I.A. as a diplomat in Milan. She will appeal this week’s ruling, her lawyer, Manuel Magalhães e Silva, said by email on Friday.

Good. And hopefully the other 21 will soon be following her to face justice for their crime.

WTF Australia?

Two weeks ago, the Australian government was refusing allow a refugee who had been raped while under their "care" in Nauru to be flown to Australia for an abortion. Last week, they finally relented and flew her to Sydney - but when she asked to see a doctor and a counsellor, as is her right under New South Wales' abortion law, they decided that she had "changed her mind" and secretly rendered her back to Nauru:

The federal government has secretly flown a pregnant refugee out of Australia to escape a court injunction, chartering a jet to take her back to Nauru and the detention centre where she was raped.

In an extraordinary effort that appears to be an attempt escape the reach of Australian courts, the government on Friday swiftly moved the 23-year-old Somalian, who is pregnant as a result of being raped on Nauru, from Villawood detention centre in Sydney.

And they did this while her lawyers were in court trying to enforce her right to medical care. Its a deliberate attempt to escape the jurisdiction of the Australian courts, and shows an absolute contempt for the rule of law.

Using forced pregnancy and rendition to terrorise refugees is wrong. Australia used to be a better country than this. Australians should hang their heads in shame.

Justice for Maher Arar

In 2002, Maher Arar was detained in the USA while on a stopover returning home to Canada. The Americans then labelled him a terrorist and rendered him to Syria, where he was tortured at their behest. Now, Canada has formally charged one of his torturers:

Canada has charged a Syrian intelligence officer with torturing Maher Arar, the Canadian whose 2002 rendition to Syria by U.S. authorities became a cause célèbre.

The criminal charge against Col. George Salloum is reportedly the first of its kind in Canada and marks a formal acknowledgment that Arar was tortured after the U.S. handed him over on suspicion of terrorist links. An earlier official Canadian inquiry declared Arar innocent of any such links.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who brought the charge against Salloum, are calling for him to be extradited to Canada. Salloum allegedly oversaw Arar’s torture in Syria’s notorious Sednaya prison.

This is good news, and hopefully Salloum will be extradited to face justice. But at the same time, there's an obvious question: shouldn't Canada also be charging the American spies who rendered Arar and arranged his torture? Or do they get a free pass because they're American?

Not just a crime - a mistake

In 2004, Britain kidnapped Sami al-Saadi in Hong Kong and illegally rendered him to Libya. The same year, they helped the CIA do the same to Abdul Hakim Belhaj and his family in Thailand. Both men were tortured by the Libyan regime, and it is clear that MI6 knew this would happen. As a result, MI6 is being investigated by the police for conspiracy to torture.

But the British rendition of these men wasn't just a crime - it was also a mistake:

A secret UK-Libyan rendition programme in which two Libyan opposition leaders were kidnapped and flown to Tripoli along with their families had the effect of strengthening al-Qaida, according to an assessment by the UK security service, MI5.

Prior to their kidnap, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi had ensured that their organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), focused on the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi, the classified assessment says. Once handed over to the Gaddafi regime, their places at the head of the LIFG were taken by others who wanted to bring the group closer to al-Qaida.

[...]

Two years after MI5 made this assessment, Libi announced the LIFG had formally joined forces with al-Qaida. He became a leading member of the merged organisation and is believed to have orchestrated a series of suicide bomb attacks across Afghanistan, including one in 2007 that killed 23 people at Bagram airfield north of Kabul during a visit by then US vice-president Dick Cheney. Libi was killed in a drone strike the following year.

Naturally, the British spies kept quiet about their terrible, criminal mistake. The only reason we know about it is because they gave a copy to Gaddafi's torturers, which was found after their overthrow. Also in those documents was a list of 1600 questions the British wanted the Libyan "interview team" to ask Belhaj and Saadi while they were being tortured. That should be of great interest to the police.

Justice is more important than international relations

Yunus Rahmatullah is a Pakistani citizen. In 2004 he was disappeared by British forces in Iraq. The British then gave him to the Americans who rendered him to Afghanistan and kept him there without charge or trial for ten years, during which he was tortured. He was finally released in May this year, and is now seeking justice through the UK courts. Now, the courts have ruled that potential damage to foreign relations is no barrier to the case proceeding:

The high court has dismissed the government’s claim that Britain’s relations with the US would be damaged if a Pakistani citizen who says he was tortured by British and American troops was allowed to sue for damages in court.

British courts would be failing in their duty if they did not deal with the claims even if that involved the court finding that US officials acted unlawfully, Mr Justice Leggatt ruled on Wednesday.

“If it is necessary to adjudicate on whether acts of US personnel were lawful … in order to decide whether the defendants violated the claimant’s legal rights, then the court can and must do so,” he said.

He added: “For the court to refuse to decide a case involving a matter of legal right on the ground that vindicating the right would be harmful to state interests would seem to me to be an abdication of its constitutional function.”

Not to mention an outright denial of the principle that the government is also subject to the law.

This case has a long way to go yet, but if past behaviour is anything to go by the British will settle once it becomes clear that they actually show up in court, in order to avoid an actual court ruling that they tortured people or collaborated in torture. Why? Because such a ruling would then expose British politicians, spies and generals to criminal charges. And apparently the whole point of the British legal establishment is not to ensure that torturers are prosecuted, but to prevent that from happening.

No wonder no-one believes in the British state: its a scam to protect the powerful. Always has been, always will be.

Justice for rendition

After the US launched its war on terror, Poland played host to a CIA "black site". Prisoners were kidnapped by the US, rendered to Poland, and tortured there. Now, the ECHR has found the Polish government guilty of unlawful detention and torture for their collaboration in these crimes:

Poland became the first EU country held to account for its involvement in the CIA's extraordinary rendition programme on Thursday when the European court of human rights found it guilty of the unlawful detention and torture of two men at a secret prison in the north of the country after 9/11.

In two damning judgments, the court also ruled that the Polish government had failed to conduct a proper investigation into the episode, and ordered it to pay €100,000 (£79,000) compensation to each of the men, who are currently held at Guantánamo Bay. The rulings are the first in a series of cases being brought against European states, with Lithuania and Romania also facing accusations that they allowed the CIA to open secret prisons on their territory.

[...]

The two unanimous rulings found that the rendition programme was completely illegal, as its rationale had been "specifically to remove those persons from any legal protection against torture and enforced disappearance and to strip them of any safeguards afforded by both the US constitution and international law".

The court at Strasbourg said it was inconceivable that the rendition aircraft could have landed in Poland, and that the CIA could have operated the prison on Polish territory, without the Polish authorities being aware. "It is also inconceivable that activities of that character and scale, possibly vital for the country's military and political interests, could have been undertaken on Polish territory without Poland's knowledge and without the necessary authorisation being given at the appropriate level of the state authorities."

A finding of government guilt and collaboration is great, but its not enough. The officials responsible for that collaboration must now face trial for conspiracy to torture - as must the torturers themselves.

More contempt from the British establishment

Last week the British government claimed that files which would expose the use of Diego Garcia as a US torture facility had been "lost" due to "water damage". But it turns out that they lied:

Crucial logs revealing flights to a British overseas territory when it was allegedly used as a secret US prison are in the possession of the police, the Observer has learned.

The revelation has raised concerns about why, despite repeated demands, details of the flights have not been shared with lawyers and MPs, who for years have been investigating the role played by Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian ocean, in the CIA's extraordinary rendition programme.

A Whitehall official was photographed last week carrying documents marked "sensitive" confirming that the logs recording details of planes landing and taking off at the atoll have been handed to detectives. The documents, a series of printed emails and handwritten notes made by the official, reveal internal Foreign Office discussions about the line to take in response to questions about the British territory raised by lawyers and MPs.

This can only be interpreted as a deliberate attempt at a cover-up - and one which has extended to an outright lie to a parliamentary select committee.

Its just another reminder of the utter contempt the British establishment has for the public, for the law, and for democratic institutions and control - and of why the UK needs to rid itself of them.

How convenient

The other day we learned that the Home Office had conveniently "lost" 114 files on alleged child abuse by senior members of the British establishment. But its not just them: it turns out that the Foreign Office - which was caught last year running its own illegal secret archive - has "lost" files on rendition and torture:

The government's problems with missing files deepened dramatically when the Foreign Office claimed documents on the UK's role in the CIA's global abduction operation had been destroyed accidentally when they became soaked with water.

In a statement that human rights groups said "smacked of a cover-up", the department maintained that records of post-9/11 flights in and out of Diego Garcia, the British territory in the Indian Ocean, were "incomplete due to water damage".

The claim comes amid media reports in the US that a Senate report due to be published later this year identifies Diego Garcia as a location where the CIA established a secret prison as part of its extraordinary rendition programme. According to one report, classified CIA documents state that the prison was established with the "full cooperation" of the UK government.

Against that background, "water damage" probably means "we threw them in the ocean". And the reason is obvious: because these files would prove absolutely British complicity in US torture, exposing both the government and then-Ministers to civil and possibly criminal charges.

Its another perfect example of how the British establishment protects itself - and of why the UK needs to rid itself of them.

Britain spies on lawyers

And while we're on the subject of torture and rendition: it seems the British government is eavesdropping on lawyers for a man they rendered to torture in Libya:

Lawyers acting for a prominent Libyan dissident who was tortured after he was seized in a joint British and US operation have said they believe their communications are being intercepted by GCHQ, the government's electronic eavesdropping agency.

They are seeking an urgent injunction from the investigatory powers tribunal, which hears complaints about the activities of the security and intelligence agencies. They lodged a complaint after revelations about GCHQ's mass surveillance programmes, leaked by Edward Snowden, were published in the Guardian.

[...]

The government's lawyers have declined to give written assurances that communications between Belhaj and his lawyers have not been intercepted.

Which is basically an admission of guilt. After all, it wouldn't exactly be hard for them to say "no, we're respecting the law, and the principle of legal privilege, and not spying on people who are suing us in an effort to advantage our case". The fact that they refuse to say that tells us all we need to know - and makes a mockery of any claim that Britain's victims will receive justice from British courts.