Voice of reluctant dissent

2,710 US service personnel have now died in Iraq since the invasion, as of yesterday evening. Nearly 20,000 have been wounded. Attacks by insurgents on coalition forces are currently averaging 4 per hour. And that's more three years after CinC Dubya triumphantly declared that "major hostilities are over" on 1 May 2003.

Commander Cressida Dick, in charge of the operation that mistakenly shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes, is now Deputy Assistant Commissioner Dick.

The Health and Safety hearing into Mr de Menezes' death (the only legal proceedings concerning his killing) has been ajourned to give the Metropolitan Police more time to consider their plea. But although those proceedings are still pending, Dick has been promoted. It was her responsibility to authorise the Kratos shoot-to-kill policy, which resulted in Mr de Menezes being shot seven times without warning while he sat quietly on a tube train (see earlier post).

The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation into the shooting found that firearms officers thought she had cleared them to shoot, while Dick herself told investigators she intended for de Menezes to be arrested outside the tube station. Admittedly, she was failed by inaccurate intelligence about Mr de Menezes from the bungled surveillance operation, but whether or not it was her screw-up or someone else's is irrelevant. She was in charge, so she should share some of the responsibility. That may seem harsh, but that's the job; the outcome of her command actions cost an innocent man his life.

So there never was any evidence linking Saddam to Al-Qaeda prior to the 2003 invasion, according to a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate today. Did anyone really believe that there was? That suggestion was always in the same category as the Niger yellow cake claims. The war has been a fraud that has cost the lives of more than 2,500 service personnel, while earning billions for companies such as Halliburton through reconstruction contracts that have brought little benefit to the Iraqi people. Removing Saddam from power may have been laudable, but failing to plan for what happened next was inexcusable.

Despite no link between Iraq and Al-Q, however, in May 2002 Bush told his press aide Ari Fleischer that his intention towards Saddam was "to kick his sorry motherf*cking ass all over the Mid East". Shortly afterwards the CIA activated a plan codenamed Anabasis to recruit exiled Iraqi fighters and train them to sieze an Iraqi airbase. It was hoped that this would provoke Saddam into violating the no-fly zone and create the pretext for invasion. But implementing the final stages of the plan was eventually rejected by Gen Tommy Franks, who led the 2003 invasion. The CIA spent over $400 million on the operation, at a time when we now know there was no evidence linking Saddam to Al-Q -- and Bin Laden was, as he still is, at large.

Meanwhile, Bush has announced the transfer of 14 prisoners from secret CIA jails to Guantanamo. These include obvious villains and the move is clearly intended to justify Guantanamo's continued existence, reneging on the promise that Bush made to EU leaders that it would be closed down (though he never gave a timeframe for that anyway). Those transferred have also been guaranteed Geneva convention rights, again a move to legitimise Guantanamo, and the Bush administration is pushing that they be tried by military commissions. This is a blatant attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld (see earlier posts) that such commissions are not lawful.

C'mon people -- given these shenanigans, it's high time GW was removed from office. In fact, surely it's time to "kick his sorry motherf*cking ass all over the" East Coast, to borrow from his own eruditely expressed policy goal.

In our deciding our foreign security agenda, shouldn't we be most worried about a country where militant Islamic fundamentalism is rife, most of the remaining Al-Q leaders are hiding and which already has weapons of mass destruction? Obviously I'm not talking about Iraq. Or Iran. I'm talking about Pakistan.

Pakistan has only a fragile representation and tradition of democracy. President Musharraf siezed power in a coup d'etat in 1999 (making him the third President of Pakistan to assume the role through those means), though he transferred some power to the office of Prime Minister following parliamentary elections in 2002. To be fair, Musharraf has backed the introduction of bills in parliament to enshrine some basic human rights, though critics say he only adopts this stance to bolster support for his dictatorship in the West.

An recent example, however, is his support for the reform of Pakistan's medieval rape laws. Under the Hudood ordinance, a woman who has been raped has to produce four male witnesses to confirm that rape took place, otherwise she is guilty of adultery, for which the traditional punishment is death by stoning. And this is in the 21st century, not the 11th.

Proposed reforms to the Hudood ordinance have been vehemently opposed by some members of Pakistan's parliament, however. Sixty-eight members of the 344-strong assembly have threatened to vacate their seats if the reforms are approved. The leader of the Islamic Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal party has denounced the reforms as "deviating from the Holy Quran". The reforms include setting the female age of consent at 16, rather than just requiring a girl to have reached puberty but with no set age under Hudood.

Although Musharraf has a majority of support in parliament (and still keeps much power to himself), the number of Islamic fundamentalists in parliament could easily swell at the next election. The MMA won elections in the NW province in 2004. Since then Western foreign policy in the region has further antagonised many citizens. Support for the Taliban in western provinces bordering Afghanistan is now stronger than ever. If this faction were to gain a parliamentary majority and/or take power by other means, they would instantly become the world's first nuclear-capable fundamentalist Islamic state. Iran, in contrast, is probably at least ten years from that goal.

Historically, of course, Pakistan's main beef has been with India over Kashmir, but that issue might not be a high priority for such a new regime. Ok, their other neighbour China might attempt to curb them, given its concerns over Islamic nationalism within the PRC. But a militant fundamentalist administration in Pakistan could turn its agenda solely West rather than East, seeking to rally other Islamic states against Western Imperialism and consolidate fundamentalism among their citizens. The ultimate goal of many fundamentalists is the creation of a single Caliphate governed by Sharia law.

So while we've been spending billions in Iraq, I hope we've also been keeping a very close eye on what happens in Pakistan as the 2007 elections draw near. Because the situation there could turn very bad very quickly and make Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran look like sideshows.

Today sees the start of the prosecution of London's Metropolitan Police under Health and Safety laws over the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes last July. The first hearing is this morning in the City of Westminster magistrates court. With all the brouhaha about the latest foiled terror plot, however, there is no mention of this story yet on the BBC news website.

Mr de Menezes was wrongly identified as a terrorist suspect in a bungled surveillance operation after the July bombings, then tailed for 20 minutes while he rode a bus before eventually being shot dead by police after he boarded a tube train.

Mr de Menezes was not challenged by officers, did not run from them and was not wearing bulky clothing. He was sitting quietly in a tube carriage. One officer rushed in to restrain him while eleven rounds were fired at point-blank range, of which seven hit and killed Mr de Menezes.

His case raises so many questions about the competence of those involved and the effectiveness of their procedures. If he was such a threat, why was he allowed to ride the bus? Why was his identity not confimed, or erroneously confirmed, before the shoot-to-kill order was authorised? (Apparently a key surveillance officer was taking a leak at a crucial moment...).

But most important of all: the Crown Prosecution Service has decided that possible violations of Health and Safety regs are the only charges that can be brought in this case. In what supposedly just society can no-one be held culpable of more serious charges when an innocent and obviously unarmed man is shot seven times in the head at point blank range without warning?

God bless America. It's pretty rare you hear anyone say that these days outside the US, but the Supreme Court has rejected the Government's motion to dismiss Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

The Court has ruled that the military commissions proposed to try detainees do not have the power to proceed. One of the arguments central to the Opinion of the Court (you can read it in full here) is that the commissions are not acceptable because they deny defendants the basic right to see the evidence against them.

As a result, detainees will have to be tried either by courts-martial, civilian courts or be released, depending on their status as established by the Combatant Status Review Tribunals.

During his recent meeting with EU leaders, President Bush gave assurances that Guantanamo would be closed, though he did not provide a timetable. VORD's money is still on Dubya sending most detainees quietly back to the countries from which they came (or whose passports they hold) and only trying the obvious villains. So unfortunately this ruling still does not guarantee what we would recognise as acceptable legal process for detainees. It's probably back to Bagram for many.

But it is an example of the checks and balances that result from the separation of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches (damn, those Founding Fathers were smart). The Opinion of the Court also rips into the Detainee Treatment Act, which was hastily railroaded through the Senate (as described in an earlier post).

This ray of hope is too late, however, for those who commited suicide in the camp last month, an act outrageously described as a "good PR move" and "act of war" by officials.

The Opinion of the Court describes the 13-paragraph charging document that was eventually produced against Hamdan (following two-and-a-half years of detention and interrogation). Only two paragraphs refer to him specifically. He is accused of being Bin Laden's driver (which he has admitted) and thereby knowing about plans to attack the US, but he is not charged with devising or executing those plans. Way to go--$438 billion spent and we've got the chauffeur.

Three figures of note today. The death toll of US service personnel in Iraq has now reached 2,500. Meanwhile civilian casualties are estimated at between 38,000 and 42,000. And following a Senate vote yesterday, the total US spend on "the war on terror" now stands at $438 billion, of which 70% has been spent in Iraq. That's $306 billion on a conflict in a country where there was no credible intelligence establishing any links to Al-Qaeda prior to the invasion.

And after spending $438 billion, have we caught Bin Laden? No--and the Taleban still control large areas of Afghanistan. Instead we've spent most of the money in Iraq, where there were no WMDs or Al-Q leaders. And we seem to be ignoring one of the first rules of war: never reinforce failure.

Three items of note in today's Parliamentary business:

1) It has emerged that Cherie Blair signed a copy of the Hutton report that was auctioned to raise funds for the Labour Party.

The Hutton inquiry investigated the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly, who questioned intelligence claims about Iraqi WMDs. For the PM's wife to sign a copy of the report for auction to raise party funds is not just appallingly tasteless: the report cost the British taxpayer £2.5 million. Under the current rules, public money is not supposed to be used to fund political parties, but that is effectively what has happened here.

2) Members of the armed services who desert will automatically face life imprisonment under the new Armed Forces Bill--a provision that sends a clear message following several high-profile cases of personnel refusing to serve or return to Iraq.

3) Meanwhile, Ken Barrett, the terrorist who murdered solicitor Pat Finucane in Northern Ireland, has been released after serving less than 3 years for that crime. Barrett was one of the terrorists who shot Mr Finucane 14 times infront of his wife and three children during their Sunday lunch. Barrett was convicted in 2004 with the recommendation that he serve his full 22-year sentence. By transfering to a prison in Northern Ireland, however, he has qualified for early release under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement (architect: Mr T Blair).

So in one day, we have learned that the powers-that-be have auctioned a report into the death of a public servant to raise money for an election campaign, ordered mandatory life imprisonment for service personnel who dissent over Iraq and released a terrorist murderer after less than 3 years in jail. Three more nails in the coffin of our democracy.

In a speech to the 85th American Legion Convention in 2003, President Bush vowed that "if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorists".

Today the Times has revealed that France, Italy and Germany have paid $45 million in deals to free hostages held in Iraq. In my book that counts as "supporting terrorists".

That Germany cuts deals with Arab terror groups is no surprise at all. Germany, after all, released terrorists responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre in response to "demands" made in the subsequent staged "hijack" of a Lufthansa flight. This, of course, prompted the Mossad to launch Mivtza Elohim.

And late last year Germany quietly released Mohammed Ali Hamadi, a Hezbollah terrorist convicted of killing a US Navy diver during the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847. Hamadi's release has been speculatively linked to that of German archaeologist Susanne Osthoff, taken hostage in Iraq.

The desperation of seeing a loved one held hostage is something that I understand. But paying ransom demands to terrorists—don't be fooled by their disguise as "payments to intermediaries"—puts arms in their hands and funds their future operations. It also gives them victories to bolster their support and establishes a mandate for the further kidnapping of foreigners in Iraq (currently 250 and counting).

Despite his rhetoric to the American Legion, however, I doubt Dubya will rain missiles on downtown Berlin, Paris or Rome. Let's just hope they don't suffer the next 9/11 either as a consequence of their appeasement. After all, we're all allies together in the war on terror, right?

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor accused of infecting Libyan children with HIV are to go on trial yet again in Tripoli next month. The six were sentenced to death by firing squad in May 2004, but the sentence was overturned. The medics say they were tortured into confessing and blame poor standards of hygiene in Libyan hospitals for the infection.

The medics were convicted despite a report by Professor Luc Montagnier, who first isolated the HIV virus, which showed that the infection had already begun before the medics started working at the hospital and continued to spread after they were arrested.

The medics have spent almost seven years in prison. The case against them was initially dismissed on lack of evidence, but prosecutors re-filed the charges. Libya has since sought damages from Bulgaria over the affair, in a parallel to Libya paying out damages to relatives of the victims of Pan-Am Flight 102.

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw argues that because Libya and Britain have re-established diplomatic relations, we have actually "gained leverage" in human rights cases such as this one. Whether or not he is right remains to be seen.

It may seem strange to some that Britain and Libya are buddies again. Sure, a member of their diplomatic staff shot dead PC Yvonne Fletcher from their London embassy and Libyan intelligence was implicated in the terrorist bombing of Pan-Am Flight 102. But they've promised that they have abandoned their nuclear weapons programme. And, despite our woeful record with regard to intelligence on WMD programmes in the Middle East, we believe them so all is apparently forgiven.

Why are we buddies again? Because the lifting of the EU embargo (triggered by Libya renouncing WMD ambitions) allows EU companies to start selling certain goods to Libya again. Goods like "equipment for maintaining civil order". It is a pity that the Libyan government is not spending money on improving hospital sanitation instead.

Maj Gen John Riggs and Maj Gen Charles Swannack Jr have added their voices to those of other former top brass calling for Rumsfeld to go. The tally of Army and Marine generals speaking out in criticism of the SecDef now stands at six: Maj Gen Charles Swannack, Maj Gen John Riggs, Maj Gen John Batiste, Marine Gen Anthony Zinni, Marine Lt Gen Gregory Newbold and Maj Gen Paul Eaton.

In a radio interview Maj Gen Riggs, a former division commander, said it was time for Mr Rumsfeld to go because he fostered an atmosphere of "arrogance" among the Pentagon's top civilian leadership. "They only need the military advice when it satisfies their agenda. I think that's a mistake, and that's why I think he should resign," he told National Public Radio (NPR).

Retired Marine Gen Anthony Zinni told CNN Mr Rumsfeld should be held responsible for a series of mistakes, beginning with "throwing away 10 years worth of planning, plans that had taken into account what we would face in an occupation of Iraq".

The White House, of course, continues to stand by Rumsfeld. And Gen Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has said that people "should never question the dedication, the patriotism and the work ethic of Secretary Rumsfeld".

But that is not what is being questioned (no doubt Himmler was a dedicated and hard-working patriot, at least to his cause). It is Rumsfeld's competence that senior military figures now doubt in public. In a recent NYT article, Maj Gen Eaton wrote that Rumsfeld was "incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically". But hey, surely the Commander-in-Chief also deserves some of the credit?

What do you do with a product that is failing to sell? You re-name it and re-launch it... Washington has done just that—the "War on Terror" has now been re-branded as "The Long War", with the aim of "preparing the public for a global conflict which it believes will dominate the next 20 years".

I don't doubt that Al-Q are an implacable enemy and that current strategy does not appear to be effective. But although twenty years may be the strategic assessment for "The Long War", it has an unfortunate resonance:

"People sometimes say to me: 'Be careful! You will have twenty years of guerrilla warfare on your hands!' I am delighted at the prospect... Germany will remain in a state of perpetual alertness." Adolf Hitler—29th August 1942

Far-fetched, perhaps? We have mandatory identity cards, detention without trial, use of torture to gain intelligence, new security agencies with sweeping powers and no real oversight... all that seems to be missing is a programme of genocide, though 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq may look like a start to some people.

Do you honestly think that those who served in the Gestapo etc were just "evil"? Or did they think they were doing the right thing, protecting their families and values against enemies whom they had been conditioned to fear, hate and dehumanise? I do not offer any excuse for their actions—just as we must never excuse ours.

Tyranny is an easy option for a government facing a crisis. "Just suspend democratic debate and give me the powers I need to sort this out..." But the temptation to sacrifice the principles of our society is as great an enemy as any terrorist threat. The war against that enemy is a perpetual one, not a "long" war. And I worry that we are losing it.

Today's Guardian carries an article by Ian Cobain exposing British detention camps where suspected Russian sympathisers were interrogated in the early days of the Cold War:

Photographs of victims of a secret torture programme operated by British authorities during the early days of the cold war are published for the first time today after being concealed for almost 60 years.

The pictures show men who had suffered months of starvation, sleep deprivation, beatings and extreme cold at one of a number of interrogation centres run by the War Office in postwar Germany.

Detention without trial, sleep deprivation, beatings and exposure to extreme cold... sounds very familiar. Guantanamo's Camp Delta has an illustrious pedigree. Cobain describes several cases in detail in a further article:

At least two men suspected of being communists were starved to death, at least one was beaten to death, others suffered serious illness or injuries

One inmate, captured while flying into Croydon with false British papers, certainly was a Communist spy. But it seems that the authorities were about as effective in identifying "enemy combatants" as they are today. One detainee was "a young German... interrogated because he had volunteered to spy for the British in the Russian zone, and was wrongly suspected of lying because of an official error over his medical records".

Four British officers were quietly court-martialed following an investigation into mistreatment of inmates at the time. Sixty years on, the attempts at cover-up and denial continue, even though it is doubtful whether any others involved could still be alive and drawing their pensions:

Almost six decades later the photographs were still being kept secret. Four months ago they were removed from a police report on the mistreatment of inmates at one of the interrogation centres, near Hanover, shortly before the document was released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

Although the file was in the possession of the Foreign Office, the pictures were removed at the request of the Ministry of Defence. They have finally been released after an appeal by the Guardian. The photographs were taken in February 1947 by a Royal Navy officer who was determined to bring the torture programme to an end. Pictures of other victims, taken by the same officer, appear to have vanished from the Foreign Office files.

Meanwhile documents about a secret interrogation centre which the War Office operated in central London between 1945 and 1948, where large numbers of men are now known to have been badly mistreated, are still being withheld by the Ministry of Defence. Officials say the papers cannot yet be released because they have been contaminated with asbestos.

"Contaminated with asbestos"... that's pathetic. I'm sure most journalists would gladly don mask, gloves and protective clothing to read them if that is indeed the case.

A Labour government that supported torture camps, on the excuse that they serve the greater good and the end justifies the means. Plus ca change... perhaps those embarassing parallels are real reason for contemporary attempts to keep this affair covered up.

The government of Uzbekistan must rank among the oddest of our bedfellows in the war on terror. Their detention and torture of political opponents on the pretext of that cause prompted Britain’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, to speak out. Needless to say he is no longer Our Man in Tashkent, or indeed Our Man Anywhere.

If Murray can overcome the attempts of his former employers at censorship, his book comes out later this year and may well be made into a film. The Guardian published an interview with Murray in 2004 that included some details of the cases that prompted Murray to speak out at a human rights conference:

Six hours after Jamal Mirsaidov met with the British ambassador, the limp and mutilated corpse of his grandson was dumped on his doorstep. The body was battered and one arm appeared to have been immersed in boiling fluid until the skin had begun to peel off. Mirsaidov is a literature professor in the ancient city of Samarkand. His mistake had been to write a letter to Tony Blair and George Bush alerting them to the daily torture meted out to dissidents in Uzbekistan, their new ally in the war on terror.

One of Murray's crimes has been to question the value of intelligence that western agencies have obtained from Uzbek interrogations under torture. He quipped that "we are selling our souls for dross", pointing out that SIS (aka MI6) do not have anyone within a thousand miles of Tashkent to independently assess the veracity of this source or the material generated by it:

At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

Murray may seem naive to some. But he set out his case in an article in The Independent in October 2005. And he has posted the documents from his exchange with his superiors about this issue on his own website here.

Earlier this week the US Supreme Court began hearing the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which challenges the legality of the military trials at Guantanamo. There seem to have been several court cases batting back and forth involving Guantanamo, so today I thought I'd take a look at the Guantanamo situation to try to make some sense of it and understand what this latest case is about.

Let's start at the beginning. Following the September 11 atrocities, the US Congress passed a joint resolution authorising the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks... or harbored such organizations or persons." This prompted the deployment of forces to Afghanistan to defeat the Taleban regime that harboured and supported Al-Qaeda.

During the military operations, the US established a detention centre for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Note that under the resolution above, enemy combatants are defined as "persons he [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks... or harbored such organizations or persons".

How come the US has a patch of Cuba to use? Following the Spanish-American War, in 1903 the US entered into a lease agreement with the then-new Republic of Cuba for 45 square miles on the coast. The lease states that "the United States recognizes the continuance of ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba over [the leased areas]", while "the Republic of Cuba consents that during the period of occupation by the United States... the United States shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas". Later, in 1934, a further treaty established that the lease would hold as "long as the United States of America shall not abandon… the naval station of Guantanamo". Under the terms of the lease, Guantanamo is therefore something of a legal no-man's land: the US does not have sovereignty over the territory, but exercises complete jurisdiction and control within it.

So who is being held at Guantanamo? Here are the successes:

A high-ranking member of the Taleban who tortured, maimed and murdered Afghani nationals in Taleban prisons
An Al-Q "senior lieutenant"
A member of Al-Q who took part in meeting discussing the Sept 11 attacks before they occurred
A member of Al-Q who produced propaganda including a video commemorating the attack on the USS Cole
11 people who swore oaths to Osama Bin Laden

Good job; they certainly fit the definition of enemy combatants and I'm damn glad they're not still running around out there. But what about the other 500 or so detainees? Members of Seton Hall University School of Law have recently produced an analysis based entirely on the US government's own documents. I don't agree with the assumptions behind some of their figures (read the report for yourself here), but the following are incontrovertible:

55% of detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the US or its coalition allies. 18% have no definitive affiliation with either Al-Qaeda or the Taleban.

Only 7% of detainees were captured by US or coalition forces. 86% were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan at a time when the US offered large bounties to anyone in the region for the capture of suspected enemies.

So how does one qualify as an enemy combatant? Here are some of the criteria that have been used to make that determination (drawn from Combat Status Review Tribunal documents, recently made available following a Freedom of Information Act request by Associated Press):

Associations with unnamed and unidentified individuals and/or organizations
Associations with organizations, the members of which would be allowed into the US by the Department of Homeland Security
Possession of rifles
Use of a guest house
Possession of a Casio watch
Wearing of olive drab clothing

(Possession of a rifle is one that cracks me up, considering that the US has the Second Amendment despite being a far less volatile place than Afghanistan).

Given these anomalies, it is at least possible that some of the detainees might actually be innocent of "planning, authorizing, committing, or aiding the terrorist attacks... or harboring such organizations or persons", i.e. have been erroneously determined to be enemy combatants. Several have maintained such innocence, such as Fawzi al-Odah, who was detained as a 25-year old Kuwaiti (he is now 29, having spent four years in Guantanamo).

Mr al-Odah maintains that he was in Afghanistan to help refugees and was captured by Pakistanis for US bounty. In a rare interview with a detainee, conducted by the BBC through his lawyer, he challenges the charges against him and describes his treatment, in particular force-feeding to break his hunger strike:

The American authorities say that you are being held because you are a dangerous enemy combatant. What do you say to that?
It is rubbish. Why don't they charge me then if they really think this is true? It's absolutely untrue. And I have never had a fair hearing. I left my home to teach and work for needy people on my official leave. I was caught out of the country and couldn't get back. I have never supported terrorism. I hate it. I have never done anything against the United States. I was simply sold by a Pakistani for money to the United States. Why are they afraid of giving me a hearing? I was simply unlucky. I was out of the country and couldn't get back home. Everything else is simply rubbish.

A fair court with fair procedures is what I have been asking for. That is all I have asked for from the beginning so that the truth can be known.

How would you describe your mental health?
I have given up. I am hopeless. I don't care about anything any more. I just want to be released. My health doesn't matter. Death in this situation is better than being alive and staying here without hope. Death would be better if it helped end this situation.

They told me: if you continue the hunger strike, you will be punished. First, they took my comfort items away from me one by one. You know, my blanket, my towel, my long pants, then my shoes. I was put in isolation for 10 days. Then, an officer came in and read me an order from General Hood [commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo Bay]. It said if you refuse to eat, we will put you on the chair - these are special, new metal chairs they have brought to Guantanamo - that you will be strapped up and down very tightly in the chair and that liquid food would be forced into me using a thicker tube with a metal edge. The tube would no longer be left in all the time, but would be forced in and pulled out at each feeding, and that this would happen three times a day. I told him: "This is torture." He said to me: "Call it whatever you like - this is the way it's going to be: we're going to break this hunger strike."

Before all this happened, what was your view of America?
I loved America. It freed my country from Saddam Hussein. My father fought with America against Saddam. I respected America. It stood for human rights and fairness around the world. America was the country we all looked up to.

What is your view now?
It has abandoned all of its own traditions and beliefs which were the cause of my respect for it.

There may understandably be some questions about what Mr al-Odah was doing in the region and he may have had a rifle in his possession when captured by Pakistanis. But the point is there has been no attempt to establish his innocence or otherwise through anything that we would recognise as an acceptable legal process.

In 2003, Mr al-Odah joined with several others in filing a complaint seeking to be informed of the charges against them, to be allowed to meet with their families and legal counsel and have access to courts or some other impartial tribunal. All these actions were legally construed to be petitions for writs of habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus (literally, "You have the body") is one of the oldest legal principles of our society, written into the Magna Carta of 1215: "No free man shall be seized, or imprisoned, or outlawed, or exiled, or injured in any way… except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land". A writ of habeas corpus directs a person, usually a prison warden, to produce the prisoner and justify the prisoner's detention. The US inherited habeas corpus as part of its common-law heritage on achieving independence.

The District Court dismissed the detainees' petitions for writs of habeas corpus, arguing that aliens detained outside a sovereign territory of the United States could not invoke such petitions. The Court of Appeals affirmed this ruling, arguing that the District Court lacked jurisdiction over such petitions and any other federal statutory claims that the detainees might make. In other words, they affirmed that Guantanamo is a limbo where US law does not apply, despite the US exercising "complete jurisdiction and control over and within said areas" under the terms of its lease.

The case then went to the Supreme Court--click here to see the Supreme Court docket of the case. Of note to me were the briefs submitted by 304 members of UK and European parliaments on the need to adhere to international law--good to see them actually doing something worthwhile! I should also add that over 500 US attorneys have donated their time pro bono to act on behalf of the detainees, so there may be some hope for our society yet.

In June 2004 the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favour of the petitioners, reversing the rulings of the District Court and Court of Appeals. Justices Stevens, O'Connor, Souter, Ginsberg, Breyer and Kennedy found in favour; Justices Scalia, Thomas and Chief Justice Rehnquist dissented. You can read the full Opinion of the Court here.

One point made by Justice Stevens in summarising the Opinion of the Court is that writs of habeas corpus apply to those holding prisoners, not the prisoners themselves. So the nationality of the prisoner is irrelevant, if US authorities are detaining them. And their whereabouts are also irrelevant, as Stevens asserts that while the detainees might be in the legal limbo of Guantanamo, those responsible for holding them can still "be reached by service of process", i.e. fall within the jurisdiction of the courts.

Empowered by the Supreme Court, the detainees duly filed their petitions for writs of habeas corpus, which would force those holding them to justify their detention in a civil court. A glimmer of hope for access to some form of acceptable legal process at last, it might seem. But... and here comes the good bit... in the meantime the Senate passed the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), signed into law as part of a defense spending bill. The DTA dismissed all habeas petitions of detainees, both future AND pending.

Ian Wallach provides an excellent blow-by-blow account of the proceedings at The Jurist. First up, on the morning of November 10, the Executive Branch brought motions suspending the detainee habeas actions that were pending in the District Court, asking to halt the proceedings until certain "procedural issues" were resolved. Not necessarily anything fishy about that. But in the evening of the same day, in a supposedly unrelated incident just before the Senate was about to break for the Veterans' Day holiday, Senator Lindsey Graham proposed an amendment to dismiss all Guantanamo habeas actions.

Arguing that "terrorists should not have the same rights as US citizens" (on the evening before Veterans' Day, when the US commemorates those who gave their lives in the service of their country), it is perhaps no surprise that the amendment was passed by 49 votes to 42. Of course no-one would dispute that assertion, but habeas corpus is not a right of US citizenship (all that matters is whether US persons are holding the prisoner), as the Supreme Court pointed out. In the Senate, opponents complained that there had been no Committee meetings to discuss the potential ramifications of circumscribing such a fundamental principle. But after some skirmishing, the amendment rapidly found its way to become part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, signed into law on December 30.

So the detainees cannot petition for writs of habeas corpus, despite the Supreme Court judgement. What other options are available to Guantanamo detainees seeking to obtain what we would recognise as acceptable legal process? About the only one left is to challenge the constitutionality of the process of military commissions that they face. And that is what the case brought on behalf of Salim Hamdan, which has now reached the Supreme Court, seeks to do.

In hearing Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in November 2004, DC District Court judge Robertson ruled that the Guantanamo military commissions violated international law. In July 2005 this ruling was overturned on appeal, with the senior judge involved ruling that the commissions could serve as the "competent tribunal" that the US is obliged to hold under article five of the Third Geneva Convention (although the Bush administration has always maintained that the Convention does not apply to enemy combatants in the war on terror). So the Supreme Court is now reviewing the case. These things may seem very legally convoluted and dull, but if you don't pay attention you could wake up one day to find yourself living in a totalitarian state.

Hamdan was Osama Bin Laden's driver but denies being a member of Al-Q. Well, maybe that's true and maybe it's not. Don't get me wrong: I hate terrorism with a passion you could scarce imagine. But are ALL those detained in Guantanamo actually terrorists? I simply don't know and you don't know either. And in our society it is not good enough to take somebody else's word for it. Justice has to be seen to be done, otherwise we go the way of closed kangaroo courts favoured by Stalin and his ilk. Hell, even Tony Blair has admitted that Guantanamo is "an anomaly and should come to an end".

But if the Supreme Court dismisses the Hamdan case, it seems the detainees will have exhausted all the avenues by which they might hope to obtain what we would recognise as acceptable legal process. In that situation, they will have to rely solely on the military commissions to determine their innocence or otherwise. Admitting innocence after so many years of detention could be costly, not necessarily financially but in terms of the ideological high ground in the war on terror. So what exit strategy, if any, is there for the Bush administration with regard to the Guantanamo situation? Three options would seem to be:

(1) Keep them all in legal limbo at Guantanamo until they die. Looks like subjecting them to life imprisonment without trial, but remember the DTA prevents any petition for writ of habeas corpus. Hopefully not seen as an attractive choice but you never know.

(2) Process all the detainees through the military commissions; this will result in sentencing of obvious villains, but could also see the release of many detainees. Those released will then understandably go public with details of conditions and treatment in the camp etc, which really won't help the ideological war we are supposed to be fighting.

(3) Process the obvious villains through the military commissions so that successes can be seen, but quietly hand the rest over to governments in Afghanistan and Iraq, either because they were captured there or because they hold passports from those countries (e.g. in the case of Bisher al-Jawi—see previous posts). Those governments can then either further detain or dispose of them as they see fit, hopefully out-of-sight and generally forgotten but certainly outside our responsibility.

Anyone like to offer odds on option (3)?

The UK government has finally admitted that Bisher al-Rawi, currently languishing in Guantanamo following extraordinary rendition, was indeed in contact with Abu Qatada at the behest of the Security Service (aka MI5).

Christopher Greenwood QC, acting for HMG, told the High Court that "facts in his case, which could not be gone into in open court, had led [Foreign Secretary] Mr Straw to conclude that representations should be made on his behalf to the US government". Pity that HMG previously "would not confirm or deny" a relationship with Mr al-Rawi during his tribunal at Guantanamo (see previous post).

Lawyers for Mr al-Rawi have consistently argued he had contact with Qatada "expressly approved and encouraged by British intelligence". Mr al-Rawi maintains intelligence staff had told him they would help him if he ever ran into trouble.

But I wouldn't hold my breath if I were Mr al-Rawi. It was "help" from the UK government that got him banged up in the first place, as telegrams produced in the High Court have now revealed:

Mr al-Rawi and Mr al-Banna were arrested at Gatwick airport in November 2002, BBC2's Newsnight has learned. British intelligence then sent US authorities a telegram saying one of them had been carrying an object that could have been used as part of an improvised explosive device.

The men were later released after MI5 found the device to be an innocent battery charger - but this time the US authorities were not informed. The following week the men continued their journey - a business trip to Gambia, west Africa.

British intelligence then sent the US authorities a second telegram reminding them of the previous telegram, giving the men's flight details and saying they were associates of radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada.

The telegram said: "This information is being communicated in confidence... should not be released without the agreement of the British government. It is for research and analysis purposes only and should not be used as the basis for overt or covert action."

And that nice little disclaimer of course allows the Foreign Office to correctly state that "we can confirm that the UK did not request the detention of the claimants in The Gambia and did not play any role in their transfer to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay". True, we didn't ask them to do it. But if I saw that my neighbour's house was on fire, I'd start to put it out without waiting to be invited. And that's effectively what we told the US about these men.

So what happened? Three possible scenarios to consider:

(1) Did we sell Mr al-Rawi up the river to hide the embarrassing fact that HMG was actually in contact with Qatada while he was "on the run" in the UK in 2001? Not apprehending Qatada at that time caused predictable outrage in the tabloid press. Qatada has since been convicted of terrorism in his absence by a court in Jordan and described by a Spanish judge as Al-Q's ambassador to Europe, so it would perhaps have been far worse had it emerged HMG was in contact with him, even if the intent at the time was to see if he might be pursuaded to co-operate.

(2) Or was it just an overzealous Security Service officer keeping the US informed, without knowing the full details of Mr al-Rawi's involvement with the Service?

(3) Or was it overzealous US authorities who failed to read between the lines of the last telegram, whose statement that "this information should not be used as the basis for overt or covert action" could have been an oblique hint that Mr al-Rawi was one of our assets?

Whichever option, the only possible verdicts are either malicious intent or institutional incompetence. Neither are particularly inspiring conclusions to draw about the functioning of the organisation tasked with protecting our democracy.

And now Mr al-Rawi's treatment makes a fine example in any attempts to recruit desperately-needed humint resources to tackle Al-Q. I guess we'll have to fall back on the old faithfuls of coercion and blackmail to get people to work for us, rather than appealing to any humanity or moral outrage over terrorism that they might have. Why oh why are we shooting ourselves in the foot?

Blogs are a common forum for anonymous confession. So here’s mine: I supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Not because I thought they had WMDs (I’m not that stupid!), but for the purpose of regime change. Long story—let’s just say that I had a personal grudge where Saddam was concerned. So don’t get me wrong, I’m not a "bleeding-heart liberal": I know full well that the freedom we enjoy is not something that was once won in the past, but something that has to be actively protected time after time to persist and flourish. But the most dangerous threats to those foundations of our society are often insidious rather than overt.

Since 2003--realising that there was no plan for post-invasion Iraq, let alone an exit strategy--I find myself asking WTF is going on and why can’t the many people who feel this way seem to be able to do anything about it? Bush was re-elected; Blair was re-elected. It seems all we can do is keep faith in our democracy and try to raise awareness of what is going on as much as possible. It's often said truth is one of the first casualties in any conflict. That may be so, but when you piece together as many sources as possible, you get the best picture you can.

So what is going on? Let’s start with "Iraq’s Missing Billions", a Dispatches documentary broadcast on C4 last week:

At the start of the Iraq war, around $23bn-worth of Iraqi money was placed in the trusteeship of the US-led coalition by the UN. The money, known as the Development Fund for Iraq and consisting of the proceeds of oil sales, frozen Iraqi bank accounts and seized Iraqi assets, was to be used in a "transparent manner", specified the UN, for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq". For the past few months we have been working on a Guardian Films investigation into what happened to that money. What we discovered was that a great deal of it has been wasted, stolen or frittered away.

"American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone," says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption. "In a free fraud zone you can steal anything you like. And that was what they did."

I'm not suggesting there was systematic, officially-sanctioned theft, just incompetence that allowed individuals to get away with it (in fact $9 billion of Iraqi oil revenue cannot be accounted for). But that's still embarassing to the provisional authority. And perhaps co-incidentally, perhaps worryingly, a few days after telling US authorities about the film they were making, troops raided the home of its presenter, Ali Fadhil, physician and Foreign Press Association journalist of the year. Here’s his account of what happened:

I tried to explain that I'm a reporter. They didn't care, and they just told me to shut up. Minutes later, they took me downstairs, and they walked me down with tied hands. I was looking to the house. There was about 20 soldiers in the house. They were smashing furniture, looking everywhere, I don't know for what at that time. And after that, they took me to the living room, where they were also searching. They told me to sit on a chair, and one of them came and he hooded my face. And then he brought a dog who was barking on me. It was barking on me, and he threatened me if I talk one word the dog was going to bite me.

Having taken him into custody, the US authorities quickly admitted their mistake and paid compensation for the damage caused to the house. However, some film materials went missing or were destroyed during the raid.

Channel 4 asked for it from the U.S. embassy, and recently, before a few days, we received a letter from Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, for an apology for what happened, and he denied that there is any tape taken from my house.

Next up, let’s look at the cases of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, currently being detained in Guantanamo Bay:

Ultimately, both men were transported to Guantanamo, a trip so harrowing that a government informer, who was posing as a prisoner and had to be transported and treated the same as other prisoners, stated in a television interview that, at the time, he wished someone would shoot him. Forced to wear darkened goggles, face-masks and earphones, chained at the ankles, handcuffed behind their backs with thin plastic that caused incredible pain, and, in some cases, lasting damage, starving and sick prisoners who had been deprived of sleep were forced to maintain a sitting position, legs forward and chained without moving for nearly 24 hours.

If they moved they were beaten, kicked, hit with blunt objects. The government informer lasted barely one month in the intolerable conditions in Guantanamo before demanding freedom. During the first month at Guantanamo in which both were kept in strict solitary confinement, the pair were interrogated six hours per day and kept in the interrogation room for 14 hours per day, sometimes in freezing temperatures to induce hypothermia, one of the many techniques approved for use by the Bush administration. In some cases they were short-shackled, hands behind heels, for the entire time.

Remember, kids: no blood, no foul. And this was following two weeks in a prison in Kabul and two months at another in Bagram, where such restraint does not apply. How did they end up in Kabul? They were not arrested in the UK, where they were resident, but seized by US authorities during a visit to Gambia and then transported to the Kabul prison by "extraordinary rendition". So why are these men in Guantanamo? Here’s the case against them:

Although both men never were anywhere near Afghanistan or Iraq, never were involved in any wrongful activity, never possessed a weapon of any kind, they were powerless to defend themselves against the charge that they had associated with Abu Qatada, "a known al-Qa'ida operative".

Well yes they did, while living in the UK, but have always maintained that they were encouraged to do so at the behest of the Security Service (aka MI5), acting as go-betweens in contact between the Service and Qatada when he was "in hiding" in the UK. The detainees of course pointed this out during their tribunals, prompting the tribunal president to seek confirmation from the British government.

Later in the proceeding, the president issued the following clarification: "The British Government didn't say they didn't have a relationship with you, they just would not confirm or deny it. That means I only have your word."

I'm not saying Mr al-Rawi and Mr el-Banna are necessarily whiter-than-white. I'm saying that I don't know, because they have not had the opportunity to make their case under anything that we would recognise as an acceptable legal process. And regardless of whatever passport they might hold, they have a right to that if we are detaining them and not to be tortured in the meantime (or at all, as it generates false positives that drain resources in checking them out; if you gave me Tony Blair for two weeks, I could give you a videotaped and signed confession that he was a member of Al-Q). But here's what their lawyer, Brent Mickum of Washington law firm Keller and Hackman, has to say about the case against them:

My security clearance allows me to review all of the classified evidence in the cases, including all the evidence the tribunal relied upon to conclude that Mr al-Rawi and Mr el-Banna were enemy combatants. There is no evidence in the record, classified or unclassified, which supports the military's determination that these are enemy combatants.

Back in Iraq, here’s some of the account of Jasim Mohammed Khalaf, a journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, who spent 12 days in detention in Iraq following a case of mistaken identity:

The next morning, they told us to put the bags over our heads again. In a windowless truck, they took us to a military airfield from where, a few hours later, they flew us to Kirkuk. Upon arrival, they took us to a narrow hall for some medical tests. After that we had to put on an orange prison uniform. They took photos of us. Then we were separated. I was confined in a solitary cell no bigger than two-by-one metres. And so were the others. My cell had a light bulb but no natural light.

I was confined in this solitary cell for four days. I suffered an enormous amount of stress due to the humiliation and isolation: we weren't allowed to talk with the other detainees, even when we went to the toilet. That was the only time we were allowed to leave our cells. The place was inhospitable, and the silence drove us mad. The Americans always yelled at us and called us names. Their threats included taking our blankets or forbidding us from using the toilets.

Later that night, the American captain in Hawija warmly greeted me and apologised for the mistake they had made. My arrest had been a simple identity mix-up. The captain asked how they could compensate me. I told him the best reward would be that this would never happen again. He promised that it would not, and made a note in my file that I am not the man on the wanted list.

Meanwhile, the US Naval Criminal Investigative Service are investigating the involvement of US marines in the deaths of 15 civilians following a roadside bomb at Haditha in November 2005, which killed Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas. With coalition casualities at around 2,500 and rising, the troops we sent to Iraq regularly see their colleagues and friends murdered in such ruthless and horrific terrorist attacks while bravely serving their countries. I can’t even imagine what that must be like.

U.S. military officials familiar with the investigation say that after entering the house, the Marines walked into a corridor with closed doors on either side. They thought they heard the clack-clack sound of an AK-47 being racked and readied for fire. Believing they were about to be ambushed, the Marines broke down the two doors simultaneously and fired their weapons. The officials say the military has confirmed that seven people were killed inside the house--including two women and a child. The Marines also reported seeing a man and a woman run out of the house; they gave chase and shot and killed the man. Relatives say the woman, Hiba Abdullah, escaped with her baby.

According to military officials, the Marines say they then started taking fire from the direction of a second house, prompting them to break down the door of that house and throw in a grenade, blowing up a propane tank in the kitchen. The Marines then began firing, killing eight residents—including the owner, his wife, the owner's sister, a 2-year-old son and three young daughters.

As a result of coalition troops being understandably on high alert during patrols, the advice of BBC veteran reporter John Simpson is as follows:

If you see a US patrol, you should brake sharply and keep away from it. The gunners on the vehicles kill people every day for getting too close to them. Every Iraqi has a horror story about a friend or relative who misunderstood an instruction, often in English, and was shot at.

Former US Marine Jimmy Massey has spoken out against the civilian casualties in Iraq and the Catch-22 mission they create for the coalition to win hearts and minds:

One day we would go into a city and set up road blocks where civilian casualties would take place, and then the next morning we would undertake a humanitarian mission. How do we expect people who’ve seen their brothers and mothers killed to turn around and welcome you with open arms?

In Afghanistan—which we liberated them from the Taleban and supposedly set on the path to democracy by encouraging the creation of a new constitution—a man has been on trial for his life for the crime of converting to Christianity from Islam:

An Afghan man is being tried in a court in the capital, Kabul, for converting from Islam to Christianity. Abdul Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and could face the death sentence under Sharia law unless he recants. He converted 16 years ago as an aid worker helping refugees in Pakistan. His estranged family denounced him in a custody dispute over his two children.

Although the case has yet to be concluded, here’s what the trial judge had to say:

"The Prophet Muhammad has said several times that those who convert from Islam should be killed if they refuse to come back," says Ansarullah Mawlafizada, the trial judge. "Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance, kindness and integrity. That is why we have told him if he regrets what he did, then we will forgive him," he told the BBC News website.

Well, you certainly can’t credibly add "freedom" to that list of Islamic virtues on the basis of this case. Did brave men and women of our armed services really give their lives to establish Sharia law? I know some might argue that it’s the new Afghan constitution—it’s what the people of that country wanted. Sorry, but just because some apparently democratic process generated it doesn’t necessarily make it right. It fails to recognise basic human rights such as freedom of thought and expression.

But hang on—we’ve locked people up for years without trial in Camp Delta, handed detainees over for torture in other countries, cut every legal corner in hope of gaining intelligence for the war on terror and shot people for not speaking English. And when innocent people have been involved, our argument has been that you can’t make an omelette without breaking legs. As a result, any attempt at moral outrage over cases like the one in Afghanistan invites cries of "pot-kettle-black".

Just because the road in "the war on terror" may be harder if we have to play by the rules on which our society was founded is no reason not to take it. In fact we have every reason to stick to the path, if we want any hope of leading the world by example. If we sacrifice the principles that separate us from those who seek to destroy our society, then we have already handed them victory. Tony Blair claims to understand this, stating in a recent speech that "this is not a clash between civilisations, but a clash about civilisation":

"In my judgement, the only way to win is... to defeat it by values and ideas set in opposition to those of the terrorists."

Well, we seem to be going about that strategy in a peculiar way. True, our values and ideas do separate us from the terrorists. But what about our actions--does that distinction make any difference to the innocent people who have been killed? I'm sure their families will be comforted that there was no malicious ideology behind the deaths of their relatives.

I completely agree with Mr Blair's assertion that stability cannot be promoted by doing nothing. But it does not necessarily follow that what we are doing is therefore the right thing. I don't have the answers, but I do think we need to open our eyes to what is happening and be prepared to change or adapt our plans if necessary. That's not a lack of resolve; it's responsible leadership.

Here’s the bottom line: I don’t want to see my loved ones killed in a terrorist attack or die in one myself. But I’d rather sacrifice myself and my family than the fundamental principles on which our society was founded. Yeah, easy enough for me to say from the comfort of my chair, I know. But I really do believe that risk is the true price of freedom. And if we’re not prepared to pay it, then we leave ourselves wide open to totalitarianism. Wake up and smell the jackboots: the levers are already being put into place that could be exploited by a determined and malicious individual in the future. Look at the pensioner bundled out of the last Labour Party conference for heckling, under the pretext of "antiterror legislation".

So, putting it all together, what have we got? US companies make millions out of Iraqi reconstruction, while our troops face an impossible mission. Attempting to tackle that mission has generated a ravenous hunger for intelligence, resulting in some wrongful arrests, detention without trial, tacit compliance in torture by other nations. Those actions in turn create resentment that boosts sympathy and support for the insurgency and Al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, not one of Al-Q’s top brass has been captured and, despite a new constitution, Afghanistan is poised to execute someone for their religious beliefs. Back home, legislation hastily conceived through fear is making life easier for any would-be despot in the future. In short: hell in a handbasket. Way to go, Bush and Blair. And for those in the UK, who is the greater fool—the fool who got into the mess or the fool who followed him like a spaniel?