UK complained to US about terror suspect torture, says ex-MI5 boss

• Waterboarding of 9/11 suspect was 'concealed'
• Manningham-Buller criticises Bush staff

• Richard Norton-Taylor
• The Guardian, Wednesday 10 March 2010
• Article history

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller criticised George Bush and his administration, for torture of terror suspects Photograph: Graeme Robertson/Getty Images

The government protested to the US over the torture of terror suspects, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed last night.

She also said the Americans concealed from Britain the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 2001 attacks.

"The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," Lady Manningham-Buller told a meeting at the House of Lords.

She also admitted MI5 were slow to recognise that the US was torturing detainees. Asked if Britain protested, she replied: "We did lodge a protest." She declined to elaborate but it is believed that the protests were made at ministerial level.

Manningham-Buller was answering questions after delivering a lecture in parliament sponsored by the Mile End study group set up by Queen Mary, University of London.

She said that in 2002 or 2003 she questioned how the US was able to supply Britain with intelligence gleaned from Sheikh Mohammed.

"I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners and terrorists was that they never said anything," she said.

"They said the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it. It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times," Manningham-Buller said.

She criticised senior figures in the Bush administration, including the president himself, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary for their attitude towards the treatment of terror suspects. She added: "Nothing, even saving lives, justifies torture."

Referring to criticism of MI5, and notably evidence in the mistreatment of the UK resident Binyam Mohamed, she said in her speech: "The allegations of collusion in torture and lack of respect for human rights will wound [MI5 officers] personally and collectively and, in some respects, whether proven or not, will make it harder for them to do their job."

Last month, Lord Neuberger, the master of the rolls, said MI5's insistence in a court case that it was unaware of the harsh treatment of some detainees held overseas in CIA custody was unreliable.

Manningham-Buller confirmed that Britain was aware of mistreatment cases before she left office.

In an original draft of a ruling, Neuberger also criticised MI5's supposed lax attitude toward the mistreatment of detainees. Manningham-Buller's successor as MI5 director, Jonathan Evans, has rejected the claims, and warned that the courts risk being exploited by those seeking to undermine British counterterrorism work.

But Manningham-Buller said she believes the allegations of complicity in torture could disrupt the future work of MI5 staff.

She spent 33 years in British intelligence, and was head of MI5 between 2002 and 2007. She said British spies are proud to be quietly effective, unlike the "gung-ho UK" intelligence officers portrayed in TV dramas.

"One of the sad things is Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush all watched 24." Manningham-Buller said, referring to the popular TV show about a counterterrorist agent. She said future terrorist attacks would involve chemical, biological and radioactive weapons. "After the next terrorist attack, there will be calls for fresh legislation, which should be resisted. The criminal law as it stands is enough. We have masses of legislation that deals with terrorism."

She predicted the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which was heavily criticised recently for its failure to hold MI5 to account, would be turned into a fully-fledged committee in the House of Commons.

Justice department finds John Yoo and Jay Bybee guilty of poor judgment but not professional misconduct

• Ewen MacAskill in Washington
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 20 February 2010
• Article history

Detainees in a holding area at Guantanamo Bay. Photograph: Shane T McCoy/AFP/Getty Images

 

An inquiry by the US justice department last night reprimanded two senior Bush era lawyers who approved the use of torture at Guantánamo Bay. The department found the two lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, guilty of poor judgment but not professional misconduct.

The lawyers wrote controversial memorandums dating from 2002 after the 9/11 attacks that provided legal cover for the CIA to use torture and other harsh interrogation techniques. The conclusion of the report, which marks a significant softening of the original draft, will disappoint human rights organisations. Publication of the report has been delayed for months amid fierce internal debate. If the two had been found guilty of professional misconduct, it would have had consequences for their immediate careers and opened the way for legal challenges.

The techniques approved by the lawyers included waterboarding, which Barack Obama has described as torture but the former vice-president, Dick Cheney, insisted was not. Detainees accused of the 9/11 attacks such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were repeatedly subjected to waterboarding. Harsh techniques were used against others picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan and taken to Guantánamo.

The assistant attorney-general, Ronald Weich, found the two lawyers "exercised poor judgment in connection with the drafting of the pertinent memoranda". No disciplinary action is to be taken.

Weich said poor judgment "differs from professional misconduct in that an attorney may act inappropriately and thus exhibit poor judgment even though he or she may not have violated or acted in reckless disregard of a clear obligation or standard". Yoo is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Bybee is a federal appeals court judge.

The Obama administration is reluctant to reopen the row over waterboarding and Obama last year ruled against prosecution of CIA agents involved in torture techniques. He said it was a "time for reflection, not retribution".Other techniques that were approved included walling (in which the suspect could be pushed into a wall), wall standing, and sleep deprivation.

• Intelligence committee misled by MI5 evidence
• Demands for reform after appeal court revelations

• David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 February 2010 09.06 GMT
• Article history

Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5. Photograph: PA

It was in the middle of 2008 that Jonathan Evans, director general of MI5, delivered a bombshell confession to the previously compliant parliamentarians of the intelligence and security committee.

He told them, in strict secrecy as usual, that assurances of MI5 innocence previously accepted without demur by the politicians had in fact been false.

The committee, which was supposed to supervise MI5's policies, had already published a reassuring report on the basis of what it had been told. That report, based on testimony from Eliza Manningham-Buller, Evans's predecessor, informed the world that MI5 had been unaware of any ill-treatment dished out by its US allies to Binyam Mohamed.

The opposite was true. As the appeal court has now finally revealed, detailed briefings had been supplied at the time by Washington on the CIA's "new strategy" for softening up Mohamed and others, for which it demanded British help. This new American "war on terror" involved the use of prolonged sleep deprivation, shackling and threats that Mohamed would be "disappeared", applied to the point where his mental stability corroded and he apparently became suicidal.

These interrogation tactics, of systematic ill-treatment which might amount to torture, had supposedly been banned by Britain since 1972, when it came to light that the British army was using them on IRA suspects.

But far from denouncing or even criticising US behaviour, MI5 officers co-operated with it. The secret files, when they eventually emerged, revealed that an MI5 officer had travelled to Karachi to help with the interrogation of Mohammed. Other MI5 desk officers and "more senior" figures also knew the contents of the CIA files, according to judgments of the British high court. That these facts had been kept from the ISC was a demonstration of the committee's impotence. Critics say the ISC is a useless government poodle, and the Binyam Mohamed affair appears to strengthen their case.

Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie said yesterday: "The ISC is not … able to get to the truth. The chairman is a prime ministerial appointee. This has allowed a revolving door between chairmanship of the ISC and the government front bench. That door should be closed."

The MI5 head finally felt obliged to confess to the ISC in 2008 and hand over the documents, because disclosure orders obtained by Mohamed's lawyers and enforced by the courts had led to the discovery of 42 incriminating files.

All had originally been kept from the ISC, which, despite its supposed special access within Whitehall's "ring of secrecy", is powerless to compel disclosure of documents, even if its under-resourced members had any idea of what to ask for.

Public protests from the ISC about such impotence have been ignored by No 10 in the past. In this case, the ISC was forced to admit in 2009 that the "new information [which] had come to light about the Binyam Mohamed case … had been overlooked during the committee's original rendition inquiry".

No public explanation has been offered of why the files were originally suppressed. Nor has the public been told how and by whom they were eventually unearthed within the bowels of Thames House. These may be matters for any future judicial inquiry into a cover-up.

The anonymous MI5 officer who went to Karachi and subsequently gave evidence to the high court that nothing was known of US malpractice has been targeted as a potential criminal suspect. It has been announced that a police inquiry is being held into his behaviour. This has been used as a justification by ministers, MI5 and ISC itself to remain silent. But the investigation has produced no tangible results, more than 18 months later.

The ISC claimed in March 2009 to have conducted its own "detailed investigation" into the scandal, having been confronted with it, and to have sent a private letter to the prime minister as a result.

It managed to do this without interviewing any witness who alleged direct knowledge of British complicity in torture – neither campaigners such as Human Rights Watch, nor media investigators, nor any of the alleged victims themselves.

The ISC only saw witnesses in secret once again, from MI5, MI6 and the Foreign Office, and has failed to publish any of its purported findings.

Had it not been for the judges defying repeated heavy pressure from the executive and going public, British voters would have learnt little from the ISC's activities. The ISC has so far only provided them with false information in its 2007 report, followed by a lack of information in subsequent reports.

This is nothing new, critics say. Its heavily censored reports have long been derided as establishment whitewash.

Not appointed by parliament, gagged by the Official Secrets Act, and even forced to meet outside Westminster, the ISC's members are more emasculated even than conventional select committees. The chairmanship is usually awarded as a sop to a former government minister, currently Kim Howells. Downing St has enforced a 'convention' under which only its chair is allowed to give interviews.

The committee has had only had a tiny secretariat of half a dozen clerks, and no investigative capacity of its own.

In March last year Gordon Brown promised reform. He said: "We will … enshrine an enhanced scrutiny and public role for the ISC. This will lead to more parliamentary debate on security matters, public hearings … and … greater transparency over appointments to the committee."

But nothing was done. Brown also promised to publish fresh guidance to bar MI5 from colluding in torture. Last autumn, the ISC protested that no guidance had materialised. A draft was then sent to the committee, but nothing has yet been published. Similarly, the ISC's latest annual report is still sitting in Downing St, awaiting censorship.

Another parliamentary committee has been tougher. Last august, the joint committee on human rights concluded the UK government was "determined to avoid parliamentary scrutiny" and said an independent inquiry was the only way to restore public confidence.

How the ISC was misled

There was a secret session of the ISC on 23 November 2006 at the Cabinet Office. The then head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, pictured, testified about MI5's role in the US interrogation of ­Binyam Mohammed that took place under her predecessor, Stephen Lander.

A heavily censored ISC report published in July 2007 showed Manningham-Buller and her team had claimed to lack knowledge that Mohamed was being ill-treated. The ISC – chaired by former Northern Ireland secretary Paul Murphy – was told: "A member of the security service did interview [Mohamed] once for a period of approximately three hours while he was detained in Karachi in 2002." The interrogator, later known as Witness B, was "an experienced officer" who conducted the interview "in line with the services' guidance to staff on contact with detainees".

The ISC recorded: "The security service denies that the officer told [Mohamed] he would be tortured as he alleges … He did not observe any abuse and … no instances of abuse were mentioned by [Mohamed]."

Murphy's committee reported that MI5 had "lack of knowledge at the time of any possible consequences of US custody of detainees." That statement now appears to have been untrue.

The six key questions posed by Human Rights Watch to the government

1. What steps as a ­matter of policy does the UK ­government, ­including all ­intelligence and security agencies, take to ensure that torture and cruel, ­inhuman or ­degrading ­treatment or ­punishment are not used in any cases in which it has asked the ­Pakistani ­authorities for assistance or co-operation?

2. What does the UK government do when it learns that torture or ill-­treatment has ­occurred in a ­particular case?

3. What conditions has the UK ­government put on ­continuing ­co-operation and ­assistance with Pakistan in counter-terror and law ­enforcement activities?

4. Has the UK ­government ever ­conditioned ­continuing ­co-operation or assistance with Pakistan on an end to torture and other ill-treatment?

5. Has the UK ­government ever withdrawn ­cooperation in a ­particular case or cases ­because of ­torture or ill-treatment?

6. What is the policy and legal advice in force to ensure that UK officials and agents do not ­participate or ­acquiesce in, or are ­complicit in torture or ill-treatment?

Lord Neuberger's excised observations have compelling public interest, court of appeal told

• Richard Norton-Taylor
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 13 February 2010
• Article history

Lawyers representing Binyam ­Mohamed, the civil rights groups ­Liberty, Justice, and Index on Censorship, and media organisations ­including the Guardian, the Times and the BBC, urged the court of appeal today to publish a key passage in its draft ruling that evidence of MI5 complicity in the mistreatment of the British resident must be released.

A paragraph drawn up Lord ­Neuberger, master of the rolls, was suppressed following the intervention of the government's lawyer, Jonathan Sumption QC.

In a letter sent to ­Neuberger without the knowledge of defence lawyers, Sumption said the paragraph suggested that MI5 officers "deliberately misled" parliament's intelligence and security committee, shared a "culture of suppression" and "does not in fact operate a culture that respects human rights".

In what Neuberger admits was an "over-hasty" response he excised the offending paragraph without giving lawyers representing other parties in the case the opportunity to respond to Sumption's objections.

The submissions sent to the appeal court today are confidential but human rights and media groups say the evidence reflects the criticisms Sumption complains about.

There is a ­compelling public interest in the full judgment observations being restored, they have argued, and the government has no right to suppress judicial criticism of MI5 officers.

If ministers were allowed to do so, the reputation of the judiciary would be harmed.

Richard Stein of the law firm Leigh Day, which represents Mohamed, said: "The whole case has been about who writes the judgments – judges or the government.The government seeking to influence a draft judgment is a very worrying development." Reprieve, the legal charity which represented Mohamed in the US courts while he was detained in Guantanamo, said: "If the government really wants to clear up the confusion over MI5's conduct in this case, they must release the policy that was in place at the time. Releasing a new, cleaned-up version will not reassure anyone about these persistent and damaging allegations."

Its executive director, Clare Agar, said: "It is offensive to suggest that by fighting torture through the British legal system, Reprieve and others are giving succour to our enemies."

Media groups, including the ­Guardian, were today given leave to appeal against a high court ruling obtained by the ­government, that ­evidence in a civil suit for ­compensation brought by ­British citizens and residents must not be revealed to them or their lawyers.

Richard Norton-Taylor

Government persuaded Lord Neuberger to delete damning references to MI5 'culture' of suppressing evidence

Read the letter that reveals the draft ruling

• Ian Cobain
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 February 2010 11.54 GMT
• Article history

Binyam Mohamed, left, and foreign secretary David Miliband. Photograph: PA

The government launched a successful last-minute bid to persuade the court of appeal to erase the most damning details of MI5's complicity in torture from its decision in the Binyam Mohamed case – but has been unable to suppress a letter that details some of the contents of the original draft ruling.

On Monday, Jonathan Sumption QC wrote to the court warning it that the paragraph in question was "likely to receive more public attention that any other parts of the judgments".

This, Sumption pointed out, was because the paragraph would state that MI5 did not operate in a culture that respected human rights or renounced "coercive interrogation techniques".

The letter also reveals that the judgment, before being rewritten, said that this was particularly true of the MI5 officer known as Witness B who gave evidence in the case – and that this man's conduct was characteristic of MI5 as a whole.

Furthermore, the letter shows, the judges had originally ruled that MI5 officers had "deliberately misled" the Intelligence and Security Committee, the body of MPs and peers supposed to oversee its work, on the question of coercive interrogations, and that this "culture of suppression" reflected its dealings with the committee, the foreign secretary and the court.

Finally, the letter makes clear that the court ruled MI5's culture of suppression "penetrates the service to such a degree" that it undermines any government assurance based upon information that comes from MI5 itself.

The master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, told the court this morning that he had discussed Sumption's request with the lord chief justice, and decided to amend the relevant section "quite significantly". However it transpired that Sumption's letter had not been circulated to all the other parties. "I have received a number of letters from interested parties complaining about the way the amendment was made."

The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, wrote to the court after the Sumption letter came to light, as did Liberty.

Judges were entitled to change their draft judgments, the master of the rolls said, but "it was over-hasty of me" to do so without giving others the opportunity of making representations.

He would therefore give parties who wished to object until 4pm on Friday to make representations, when he would decide whether to reinstate his judgement.

By Helen Kennedy

Monday, February 8th 2010

A crazed G.I. was arrested for waterboarding his 4-year-old daughter because she wouldn't say her ABCs.

Cops said Army Sgt. Joshua Tabor, 27, who served 15 months in Iraq, admitted to punishing his daughter by holding her down on the kitchen counter in suburban Washington State and repeatedly pushing her head backward into a full sink.

"He explained she's deathly afraid of water," said Todd Stancil, police chief in Yelm, Wash.

"He would lay her down on her back and push her head into the water right up to her eyeline. He was open about it. He did it all the time. To him, that was an acceptable form of punishment - because she wasn't able to say the alphabet."

Stancil said neighbors told cops that he also ran water over the flailing girl's face, taking her to the edge of drowning, but Tabor denied that.

"It was hot! The water was hot!" the girl said, according to the police report.

Tabor, who was arrested Jan. 31, will be arraigned Feb. 16.

"We originally booked him on third-degree assault, but if he did put the water over her face, that would constitute a more tortuous type of crime," Stancil said. "We are looking into those allegations."

Waterboarding, in which water is poured into an immobilized target's nose and mouth, was used by the CIA on prisoners in Iraq until President Obama banned it in January 2009.

Tabor is out on $10,000 bail and restricted to his base, Ft. Lewis, in Tacoma, Wash.

He was arrested after his girlfriend called the cops at 2 a.m. to say he was drunkenly stalking around the neighborhood brandishing his Kevlar helmet and threatening to break windows.

The girlfriend then told cops Tabor beat his daughter. Cops found the little girl hiding in the bathroom.

"She had just multiple bruises all over her body, from the ears to the legs," Stancil said. "She said, 'Daddy did this.'"

The child had only been in her father's court-ordered custody for two months.

Her father had barred her from contacting her mother's parents, who had raised her. When police put the worried grandma on the phone, the little girl cried from happiness, the police report says.

Foreign secretary claims security would be harmed by disclosing CIA files on UK involvement in abuse of terror suspects abroad

• Richard Norton-Taylor and Afua Hirsch
• guardian.co.uk, Sunday 13 December 2009 18.41 GMT
• Article history

Undated handout photo of Binyam Mohamed. Photograph: PA

Efforts will be stepped up tomorrow to suppress evidence of British involvement in the unlawful treatment of a UK resident, Binyam Mohamed, who says he was tortured in Pakistan, Morocco, and Afghanistan before being secretly rendered to Guantánamo Bay.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, is appealing against six high court judgments ruling that CIA information on Mohamed's treatment, and what MI5 and MI6 knew about it, must be disclosed.

In a case which lawyers on all sides agree is unprecedented, counsel for the Guardian and other media organisations, Mohamed and two civil rights groups, Liberty and Justice, will argue tomorrow that the public interest in disclosing the role played by British and US agencies in unlawful activities far outweighs any claim about potential threats to national security.

Miliband's lawyers will tell Britain's three most senior appeal court judges, led by the lord chief justice, Igor Judge, that if the CIA material is disclosed the US might cut off the supply of intelligence to the UK, thus harming national security.

Since losing in the high court, David Millband has instructed one of the country's most expensive advocates, Jonathan Sumption QC, to represent his position. Sumption, who recently withdrew his application to become a justice of the supreme court after reports of "hostility" from other judges, is reported to earn up to £3m a year and is described by experts as one of the bar's "most formidable" opponents".

Sources say the decision to instruct Sumption comes amid growing concern within the government at the high court rulings, which officials had confidently expected to be in their favour.

In their six judgments, Lord Justice Thomas and Justice Lloyd Jones repeatedly challenged Miliband's claims. It is the first case in which the high court has questioned head-on claims by a government that evidence must be withheld on grounds of national security.

At the heart of the dispute is a seven-paragraph CIA document that the British government insists must remain secret. The two high court judges, who have seen the document, insist it does not contain any sensitive intelligence material. "What is contained in those seven redacted paragraphs gives rise to an arguable case of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment".

The judges stated after hearing arguments put by Miliband's lawyers: "It was in our view difficult to conceive that a democratically elected and accountable government could possibly have any rational objection to placing into the public domain such a summary of what its own officials reported as to how a detainee was treated by them and which made no disclosure of sensitive intelligence matters."

They added: "Indeed we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials, or officials of another state, where the evidence was relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be".

The two high court judges continued: "The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security is inimical to the rule of law," they ruled.

"A vital public interest requires ... that a summary of the most important evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in wrongdoing be placed in the public domain ... Championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, is the cornerstone of democracy," they added.

The CIA information includes an account given to British intelligence "whilst [Mohamed] was held in Pakistan ... prior to his interview by an officer of the security service", the judges revealed earlier this year. The officer, known only as Witness B, is being investigated by the Metropolitan police for "possible criminal wrongdoing".

Miliband's claim that Britain's intelligence relationship would be jeopardised "lacks credibility on its face", the judges added.

The Guardian and other newspaper and broadcasting media groups argue that there is no wider public interest to be taken into account in the case than "open justice, the rule of law and democratic accountability".

Miliband was accused in the high court of wanting to suppress information about CIA activities even though details had already been disclosed by the Obama administration. Evidence that Miliband still wanted kept secret related to the question why "it was impossible to believe that President Obama would take action against the United Kingdom", the judges said.

Lawyers acting for the foreign secretary point to a letter sent by the CIA to MI6 in April, saying that if British judges ordered the information at issue to be disclosed the US might reassess its intelligence-sharing relationship with the UK. "The evidence that disclosure would cause serious harm to national security is overwhelming," Miliband's lawyers claim.

They point to a law lords ruling last year that the Serious Fraud Office could not pursue corruption allegations over arms sales by BAE Systems, Britain's biggest weapons maker, to Saudi Arabia because the Saudi government had threatened to stop intelligence-sharing with Britain. The case, in which Sumption also represented the government, has been described by critics as weakening the UK's reputation for observing the rule of law.

Finally I have indisputable documentary evidence that the British government had a positive policy of using intelligence from torture in the War on Terror, and that the policy was personally directed by Jack Straw.

Here are the minutes of the meeting at which I was told this:

Download file

All references to the CIA and MI6 have been literally cut out, but the meaning is still perfectly unmistakeable particularly given the heading of the minute.

And here is the absolute smoking gun of Jack Straw's involvement::

Download file

Straw has been lying about this for five years. He dismissed my evidence on this to the Parliamenary Joint Committee on Human Rights as "Entirely untrue".

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/10/either_craig_mu.html#comments

Straw ruined my career over my opposition to torture intelligence, after I had been appointed Ambassador by his predecessor, Robin Cook, who was rather more well disposed towards human rights. It is wonderful that it is Robin Cook's Freedom of Information Act which I have used to finally prove beyond any doubt that slippery Straw was up to his neck in approving intelligence from torture.

Minutes available as a JPEG here:
http://www.edavies.nildram.co.uk/2009/11/torture/

What is your government doing to people behind this fence? Your tax dollars are helping keep you in the dark about it. (Press TV photo)

The U.S. has blocked the release of photos showing clear evidence that the United States is responsible for torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. We think someone with access to the photos should simply leak them on the web, saving tax payers a load of cash and letting people know just what it is our twin occupations are really about. We are calling on anyone who has access to the images to leak them and anyone else to copy this message and post it in order to increase the chance of it reaching anyone who might have access.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates won’t allow new photographs showing prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq being abused by Americans military personnel. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken the issue to court, and is suing for the release of 21 color photos under the Freedom of Information Act. Ultimately, this lawsuit will win, but why waste the taxpayer dollars to hide from tax payers what they’re funding in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Federal courts already rejected the White House arguments that the photos must be kept from public view. In respponse to this, Congress — which is largely populated by people who supported both invasions, knowingly swallowing vast doses of false information as if it were fact — gave Gates new power to keep them private.

We know the U.S. military and its many contractors are involved in torture and humiliation of detainees, actions in violation of both U.S. and international law. Evidence has been published in the past and it was shrugged off under the “few bad apples” plea. We know this isn’t the case and these new photos are yet still more tangible proof of that.

If you have access to these photos, release them. If you don’t have access to these photos, please cut and paste this call anywhere you can and let’s create a viral plea to someone with the power to be a whistle blower. Don’t wait for the courts.

Lawyer alleges collusion between Britain and US over ill-treatment of prisoners, including sexual humiliation

• Jenny Percival
• The Guardian, Saturday 14 November 2009
• Article history

The Ministry of Defence confirmed last night that it is investigating 33 cases of alleged abuse, including rape and torture of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers.

One claimant alleges that he was raped by two British soldiers, while others claim they were stripped naked, abused and photographed. Female soldiers are also alleged to have taken part in abuse.

A pre-action protocol letter was served on the Ministry of Defence last week by Phil Shiner, the lawyer representing the Iraqis, according to the Independent.

In the letter to the MoD, reported in the newspaper, Shiner said the allegations raised questions of collusion between Britain and the US over the ill-treatment of Iraqis. "Given the history of the UK's involvement in the development of these techniques alongside the US, it is deeply concerning that there appears to be strong similarities between instances of the use of sexual humiliation," said Shiner.

Responding to the allegations, Bill Rammell, the armed forces minister, said: "Over 120,000 British troops have served in Iraq and the vast majority have conducted themselves to the highest standards of behaviour, displaying integrity and selfless commitment. Only a tiny number of individuals have been shown to have fallen short of our high standards. Allegations of this nature are taken very seriously, however allegations must not be taken as fact and investigations must be allowed to take their course without judgments being made prematurely."

The Guardian reported in September that the Royal Military police had launched a criminal investigation into allegations that British soldiers repeatedly raped and mutilated an 18-year-old Iraqi civilian who was working as a labourer at Camp Breadbasket in Basra, the scene of other abuse allegations.

The man who wishes to remain unnamed alleged that two soldiers raped him, subjecting him to a 15-minute ordeal, then slashed him with a knife. He was treated in hospital for cuts and the military police are understood to have secured the medical records. The victim said he was so traumatised he tried to kill himself.

Shiner also represents Baha Mousa, 26, an Iraqi who died after being taken into UK military custody. Mousa and nine other civilians were arrested at a hotel in Basra in September 2003. The father-of-two died the following day, having suffered 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.

Corporal Donald Payne became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime when he pleaded guilty at a court martial in September 2006 to inhumanely treating civilians. He was dismissed from the army and sentenced to one year in a civilian jail.

At the ongoing public inquiry into Mousa's death, a former British soldier admitted for the first time that he saw Payne and Private Aaron Cooper kicking and hitting the Iraqi shortly before he died. Garry Reader told a hearing on Monday how he had tried to resuscitate Mousa.