In 2006 we had enough evidence to arrest Rangzieb Ahmed on suspicion of terrorism.
Instead we spied on him whilst he prepared to go to Pakistan.
Then we convinced the Pakistani gov to arrest, and torture him based on our suspicions.
We sent them a list of questions to ask him on our behalf.
After 13 days we sent people to question him.
There are even suggestions that when this was about to come out, MI5 attempted to bribe him into shutting up. With both cash and a shortened sentence.
This was all hidden under the secrets act, but David Davis (a conservative MP but yet I now love him) used his parlimentary immunity to put it into the public domain (along with confirming at least
15 other cases:
Quote:
Davis told MPs : "For each case, the government has denied complicity, but at the same time fiercely defended the secrecy of its actions which has made it impossible to put the full facts in the public domain, despite the clear public interest to doing so."
Ahmed, he said, "was astonishingly not arrested but was allowed to leave the country … the British intelligence agencies wrote to their opposite numbers in Pakistan, the ISI, to suggest that they arrest him". Davis went on: "The intelligence officer who wrote to the Pakistanis did so in full knowledge of the normal methods used by the ISI against terrorist suspects that it holds."
Davis said Ahmed was "viciously tortured by the ISI. He [Ahmed] claims among other things, he was beaten with wooden staves, the size of cricket stumps,whipped with a three-foot length of tyre rubber and had three fingernails removed from his left hand. There is a dispute between British intelligence officers as to exactly when his fingernails were removed, but an independent pathologist confirmed it happened during the period when he was in Pakistani custody."
The article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/08/mi5-torture-evidence-david-davis:
Please read the full statement I can't think of anything more important to read today
(You really should read both these articles before voting).
Have we become so uncivilized that we think outsourcing torture is ok? Do the ends justify the means?
My own view (before I duck out) is that the UK is an experiment. An experiment based on high fucking principles, and when we throw those principles away, no matter how just the cause, we're writing our own epitaph. We have freedoms and liberties, we have free speech, we are equal, we are innocent till proven guilty. Torture is both pointless (torture me and I will say anything, anything true or false) and a huge ethical crime. No amount of evidence justifies it. Especially when you haven't even convicted your suspect. Our freedoms do not make us safe. The 7/7 bombs could have killed me if I didn't oversleep, but it's the price we pay. I would rather our nation fall whilst trying to be a fair and just and free nation, than become the thing we are 'fighting' to protect ourselves.
My Government has sickened me today.
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