Britain 'complicit' in human rights abuses at Camp Delta

(Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi)

By Jerome Taylor

Published: The Independent, 28 March 2006

Britain has been complicit in the human rights abuses committed by US authorities at Guantanamo Bay prison camp, according to a report released today.Drawing on exhaustive interviews with detainees and evidence from security services, the dossier gives the complete picture of the British government's cooperation with the US over a camp it now says should be closed.The report, Fabricating Terrorism - British Complicity in Renditions and Terror, is a scathing indictment of the British government's "systematic violations of international law" over its co-operation with the US authorities in the detention of British citizens and residents at the US-run facility in Cuba. The research, compiled by the human rights group Cage Prisoners, plots British involvement in the cases of 13 current or former Guantanamo detainees - either British citizens or residents. All the detainees in the report consistently testified that UK authorities were aware of their plight and unwilling to intervene despite the knowledge that they were either at risk of torture or said they had been tortured.There is no suggestion British authorities played any part in torturing the detainees but the report does argue consistent co-operation between the US and UK has led to an "international chain of abuse" that flies in the face of the British government projecting itself as a leader in the field of human rights.One of the most serious cases surrounds the rendition, imprisonment and alleged torture of Benyam Mohammed al-Habashi, an Ethiopian national with British residency, who was arrested in April 2002 as he tried to leave Pakistan. Benyam was later "rendered" to Morocco and Afghanistan before arriving in Guantanamo in September 2004. Mr al-Habashi claims that, while in a secret detention facility south of the Moroccan capital Rabat, he was brutally tortured by his interrogators as they asked questions that could only have been supplied by the British.In December last year, Jack Straw was forced to admit that MI6 had interrogated Mr al-Habashi in Pakistan before he was sent to Morocco but insisted the security services "did not observe any abuse".Clive Stafford Smith, Mr al-Habashi's lawyer, argues that the nature of his client's imprisonment in Morocco makes the British government complicit in his torture. "The British government was complicit in some of the abuses that took place against Benyam... to the extent that the Government told the Moroccans information that they would use against him in the torture sessions." Now on hunger strike, Mr al-Habashi is one of 10 Guantanamo detainees waiting to be tried by a US Military Commission.Two British residents, Omar Deghayes and Shaker Aamer, both still incarcerated in Guantanamo also say they were questioned by British authorities before their rendition and imprisonment in Guantanamo. Similarly, many of those who have since been released without charge also accuse London of knowing well in advance that they were being transported to Cuba.The latest findings show mounting evidence of consistent involvement and presence of UK officials in run up to the transfer of many British citizens and residents to Guantanamo. "In nearly every single case," the report says, "British intelligence was fully aware of the status of these individuals and still allowed for their transfer."Geoffrey Bindman, the chairman of the British Institute of Human Rights, argues that each case study shows a worrying level of UK collusion. "If substantiated," he writes in the report's forward, "they demonstrate an intolerable level of collaboration and collusion between the UK and US authorities in the abuses which have taken place at Guantanamo and elsewhere through the 'outsourcing' of torture."They also demonstrate a pathetic reluctance on the part of the UK government to stand up for the rights of its citizens and permanent residents against illegal and unacceptable treatment."The government has argued it is unable to intervene on behalf of those British residents still left in Guantanamo such as Mr Deghayes and Mr Aamer because they do not hold British passports.Asim Qureshi of Cage Prisoners said he hoped the report would help alert British citizens to the dangerous policies that are being carried out in their name. "Rendition and torture do not help build security but instead only compromise the standing and security of the British Government in the international community."

ends.

http://www.cageprisoners.com

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH: With the Army in a new abuse scandal and no exit strategy from Iraq in sight, UK troops head into another war zone

This report made the Independent's front page on the 13th February 2006. The reason? As Britain prepared to send yet more troops to Afghanistan, the country had overtaken Iraq in the sheer numbers of people killed each day.

Looking at comparable statistics for the start of the year, it was clear Britain was sending troops into a country that was now even more violent than the maelstrom of Iraq.

By Kim Sengupta and Jerome Taylor

Suicide bombings and firefights, Western troops under attack, sectarian clashes between Shia and Sunni, foreigners taken hostage. Days of escalating violence have left dozens of people dead and more than a hundred injured. This is not Iraq but Afghanistan, a conflict which has now overtaken on the grim league table of body counts - 89 killings in the last eight days in Afghanistan compared with 54 in Iraq during the same period.It is into this maelstrom that the Royal Marines - the first batch of 5,700 British troops being sent to Afghanistan - will begin deploying this week in a mission lasting at least three years at a cost of pounds 1bn. With no exit strategy from Iraq in sight, British forces are entering another deadly conflict. Tony Blair's insistence that there should be no sizeable withdrawal from Iraq until the security situation appreciably improves means that contingency plans for a large-scale reduction in numbers have had to be shelved. But last week John Reid, the Secretary of State for Defence, appeared to pave the way for a "significant" withdrawal from Iraq even if the country continued to face serious problems.Senior commanders are deeply concerned about fighting a "war on two fronts". General Sir Mike Jackson, the chief of the Army, has written to Lieutenant General David Richards, the British commander who will lead Nato forces in Afghanistan, asking if he has enough troops to cope with the spiralling turmoil. Lt Gen Richards is believed to have asked for another infantry battle group, about a thousand men, but this is not feasible with the continuing commitment in Iraq.Lord Guthrie, the former chief of defence staff, said: "The British Army is already dangerously overstretched and maintaining a force even of this size over the years will be difficult."There are now lethal similarities in the methods used by the insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. Nato commanders acknowledge that terrorist techniques are being imported from Iraq to Afghanistan and Islamist fighters are entering the country in ever-increasing numbers from Pakistan.The place where this is most evident is the province of Helmand, where most of the British forces will be deployed, and where a resurgent Taliban and their al-Qa'ida allies have killed almost 100 US and Afghan troops in the past few months - the total number lost by British troops in the Iraq war.Senior British officers have expressed concern about the apparent lack of clear direction.Ministers have said that one of the main roles of the British troops would be to help eradicate Afghanistan's massive opium crop. But the task force would be deployed under a Nato mandate which does not allow eradication.British commanders say they are also aware that Helmand is potentially more hazardous than Basra, where British forces have not actively engaged the Shia militias who have infiltrated the police force in large numbers.The situation, they believe, will be more akin to central Iraq where American forces have borne the brunt of the resistance.The similarities in the patterns of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan were highlighted in a week of strife. In the latest incident two Nepalese aid workers were kidnapped at gunpoint in the centre of the capital, Kabul. Two days earlier eight Afghan soldiers were killed by two roadside blasts in the Afghan province of Kunar. Initial reports say that at least one of the bombs was of a new infra-red type used recently in Iraq to kill British and US soldiers.Senior US and British officials have claimed that the sophisticated Improvised Explosive Device were supplied by the Iranians to Shia insurgents in Iraq.The attacks were in Kunar, near the Pakistani border. Six soldiers died in one blast followed by a second killing two more. Mohammed Hasan, the deputy police chief in the region, said: "The situation here is very bad. We have come under attack throughout the night."Sixteen American soldiers were killed in Kunar last year when their helicopter was shot down. Last month, a village across the Pakistani border was hit by a US missile strike in an attempt to kill Ayman al-Za-wahiri, the deputy to Osama bin Laden in al-Qa'ida Eighteen people were killed.Also yesterday four Canadian soldiers attached to Nato forces in Afghanistan were injured by a roadside bombing in Kandahar province. The Taliban claimed responsibility.In Herat, in western Afghanistan, police opened fire as hundreds of Sunni protesters tried to attack the consulate of Shia Iran.This followed bitter sectarian clashes in the city during the Shia festival of Ashura in which 11 people were killed.Meanwhile, in Iraq nine people were killed in a sectarian attack, a car bombing outside the Shia Iskan al-Shaabi mosque in the Doura district of Baghdad yesterday.A leading Sunni cleric, Adel Khalil Dawoud, was dragged from his house by armed men wearing police uniforms. His brother, Azawi Dawoud, blamed militia supporters of the Shia religious and political leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, for the abduction.In Afghanistan, Shia and Sunni exchanged gun fire during the stand-off in Herat. Governor Sayed Hussein Anwari said: "This is not the kind of thing we are used to Afghanistan. We do not have this type of trouble between Shia and Sunni. This is caused by people trying to provoke mischief."Ishmail Khan, Governor Anwari's predecessor who was moved by the government of President Hamid Karzai from his power base in Herat to Kabul was yesterday meeting local Shia and Sunni leaders. But Khan Alakozai, president of the Herat chamber of commerce said: "The situation will get worse unless government can control it."Thirteen people were killed on Tuesday by a suicide bomber in Kandahar, a common weapon in Iraq, but relatively unknown until quite recently in Afghanistan.

ends.

TSUNAMI: An eye to a solution - how one blind man brought hope to tsunami survivors.

(Photo: Jerome Taylor)

This is an old report I made while working out in India in late 2005/2006. I had taken a break from freelancing to travel with some friends to the Keralan coast for Christmas and had originally wanted to spend the holiday weekend in the holy city of Kanyakumari - the southernmost point of India. Favouring a more relaxed break on the Keralan backwaters my friends persuaded me otherwise.

Thank god they did. Early on Boxing Day morning, the Asian Tsunami swept across Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and a host of East African nations killing upwards of 180,000 people. Four hundred people drowned in Kanyakumari.

In the days and weeks that followed, hordes of journalists descended upon Tamil Nadu, the Indian state hit hardest by the tsunami, to report on one of the worst natural disatsers of the past century. But in amongst the undescribable horror I came across Saswot Sourav, one of the most remarkable people I have ever met.

By Jerome Taylor in Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu
Published: The Week, India


Saswot Sourav, popularly called Saswamiji, is like any other relief worker in the tsunami-hit Mamallapuram, except for one difference—he is blind. He heads the Saswot Foundation, an NGO, which helped victims of the Gujarat earthquake and the Orissa flood.
There is a light that enters your heart when he speaks. His formula is simple: love and lots of it.
Now Saswot is in Tamil Nadu offering a mix of practical, financial assistance and emotional inspiration using his own remarkable story of overcoming the odds.
Much of the funding for the foundation comes from abroad—mainly from westerners he has met and won over with his charm.
The car crash that left him orphaned at the age of ten also left him blind. A wandering ascetic, S. Mohaprakash, who he met at a railway station in Bhopal, brought him up for 12 years and taught him that, through helping others, he could overcome his personal tragedy.
Later, he worked with Mother Teresa and Baba Amte, and then set up his own foundation as a "grassroots volunteer who loves to serve women and children, the sick and injured and those with broken hearts".
Optimistic and full of fervour, he focuses on boosting the morale of the suffering through love and humour. He seems to infuse each villager he meets with the confidence that the tsunami tragedy can be overcome. "The villagers feel that if a blind man can do it then anyone can," says Saswot, who lives in Mamallapuram.
An American woman, Brice, came to Mamallapuram as a tourist but soon found herself helping Saswot with fundraising and aid distribution. "There is a light that enters your heart when he speaks," she says. "His formula is simple: love and lots of it." Mark, a Californian aid worker, says: "He is inspirational, certainly, and the kids love him."
Saswot was on the Mamallapuram beach when the tsunami struck on December 26. He knew that little time could be lost. "I refused to leave," he recalls. "That night I set to work. I went to the local shops and bought what I thought would be needed. There was no time to haggle."
In the first week, Saswot delivered tents, food, water, medicine, clothing and over 1,000 water filters to tsunami-hit areas of Cuddalore, Karaikal, Nagapattinam and Pondicherry. He now concentrates on supplying aid to isolated villages in the Mamallapuram area, where many foreign tourists have set up base.
The Saswot foundation is a one-man show, and he is reluctant to delegate work. Watching a blind man make his way through Chennai to buy toys and supplies for schoolchildren, or bargaining over the price of fruit that he cannot see, can soften the hardest of sceptics.
It is this stubborn resolve that, he argues, gets him through. "I don’t like to waste time," he says. "I do what needs to be done, get in there and then leave."
He admits that he has certain disadvantages, especially when it comes to getting things at a fair price. "You would think that people would take pity on a blind relief worker," he says. "Unfortunately that’s not the case. Negotiating is little use when you can’t see what you’re buying and many people I deal with know this." Despite the hardship, Saswot feels that the pros outweigh the cons. "The important thing is to do the work, not sit there trying to save money. Away from the markets and on the ground, my blindness can only help inspire people."
At P.U.E. Elementary School in Kanchipuram district, Saswot has hosted a sports day for the children, providing food, cups for the winners and an assortment of toys. "Food is important, but more vital is morale," he says. "Those affected have to be convinced that the tragedies they face can be overcome."
As his car pulls away, the schoolchildren continue to sing: "We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall overcome the tsunami disaster, hand in hand together."
The Saswot formula seems to be working.

ends.

http://www.the-week.com/25apr10/currentevents_article9.htm