Foreign Office link to torture cover-up

[friendly_iconoclast]

Source: Guardian Unlimited (UK)

Foreign Office link to torture cover-up
Paul Harris in New York and Mark Townsend
The Observer, Sunday 15 February 2009

The Foreign Office (FCO) solicited the letter from the US State Department that forced British judges to block the disclosure of CIA files documenting the torture of a British resident held in Guantánamo Bay, the Observer can reveal.

The letter said that the release of papers relating to Binyam Mohamed would damage future intelligence sharing between the two countries.

A former senior State Department official said that it was the Foreign Office that initiated the "cover-up" by asking the State Department to send the letter so that it could be introduced into the court proceedings.

The revelation sparked fresh claims that the government is trying to suppress torture evidence relating to Mohamed, who is expected to be released this week after four years and flown to RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire.

The former senior State Department official said: "Far from being a threat, it was solicited ." The Foreign Office asked for it in writing. They said: 'Give us something in writing so that we can put it on the record.' If you give us a letter explaining you are opposed to this, then we can provide that to the court."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/15/foreign-office-guantanamo-torture

[Peace Patriot]

1. Aha! Now this starts to make sense. Thank you for posting!

IF what the State Dept. is saying is true--big if, I know--then this shocking incident, involving the vile treatment of our ally, England (the U.S.--both Bush and Obama--blackmailing England into covering up torture evidence) takes on a very different color. I could hardly believe it, when I first read of it, and it was the Bushites--bad as they are--telling England that the U.S. would stop sharing intelligence with them (i.e., threatening them with more bus bombings, etc.) if an English court disclosed merely a summary of the treatment of this prisoner, which the judges said contained no national security information. I figured the Bushwhacks were covering something up, but still--what a thing to say to a close ally in a public forum? It was outrageous. Fast-forward past Obama's inauguration. Someone in Clinton's State Dept., mere weeks after her appointment, re-issued the same letter. I figured, either, a) Clinton hadn't had time to put her name of the door, let alone review a matter like this, the court needed an answer and some civil servant re-issued the old letter; or b) something had gone VERY WRONG in U.S./U.K. relations under Obama, or perhaps between Obama and Clinton.

I can't imagine any sane administration issuing such a threat to England. Anyway, it really didn't occur to me that it was British intelligence/the P.M. requesting the threat and messing with their own justice system in this way. I imagine that the judges involved, who are already angry, are livid now, and will sock it to the government in any way they can. And it will be interesting to find out what British intelligence/the P.M. is covering up.

Again, hard to know who's telling the truth. Maybe this is U.S. State Dept. spin. (It's not as if Democratic State departments don't lie.) The plot thickens.

[Senator]

2. Nod -- (Torture) -- Wink -- (Coverup) -- Dirty Hands Across The Seas n/t

[EFerrari]

3. Criminal conspiracy.

[midnight]

4. All this cover up.

[Liberal Elitist]

5. Labour still Bush's poodle...

I did hope things would change for the better when Blair left, but that was hopelessly optimistic.

I'm thinking of voting for the fucking Tories because of this, and because of the pathetic way Gordon Brown defended his choice of Crosby as Deputy Chair of the Financial Services Authority despite the fact that the FSA had serious concerns about HBOS, the bank where Crosby was CEO, and where Crosby had sacked a whistle-blower who tried telling their Board that the business was out of control

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Remember you have other choices, like the Lib Dems

and not all Labour MPs or candidates are toe-rags (and many Tories are). It depends on who has a chance of winning your own constituency, really. It'd be a shame to elect a bad Tory rather than an OK Labour MP.

[BunkerHill24]

6. .................

I was going to say; What ever happened to western values?

Can we now tell the rest of the world that our values are better than theirs?

[Solly Mack]

8. Mutual CYA

until one part decides to point fingers...then friendship gets ugly

(He did it! No, he did it. Well, he told me to do it! Did not!)

[libodem]

9. The US dragged England into something ugly

The Bush administration did so much wrong, so fast, that it is going to take a lice comb to tease all this out. I continue to wonder about the foreign-born-naturalized, Americans or even the aliens who had over-stayed their visas, were detained and interrogated after 9/11. A lot of lives were wreaked and disrupted. People whom hand lived her most of their lives were uprooted and deposited in countries they had not lived in for many years. I'm still concerned about some of the huge round-up type of busts that would spontaneously erupt and hundreds of people would be grabbed. Who knows if everyone picked up was actually a child-molester, a gang member, an illegal immigrant, a drug dealer? There were never any follow-up news reports about who, what, where, why? Who knows what happened to some of the men who were bussed out of New Orleans, after Katrina. I remember seeing a detention type of camp in some place like Utah or Wyoming? I'm rambling off the subject, but you get my drift. Material to investigate abounds.