UK Torture Probe Shows US Coverup Of Abuse

Scott Horton, primo accountability blogger, points out that the Brits are being pushed into a serious torure probe:

In Britain a criminal probe is now underway into the torture of an Ethiopian who had been granted protected status and was then held for years in Guantánamo. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has also authorized a formal official inquiry. Now, a former Conservative shadow minister has invoked privilege by disclosing details of the British government’s complicity in a torture-by-proxy scheme on the floor of parliament. . . .

. . . Britain’s turn to torture has a very clear provenance. It comes from fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with the United States. The Bush Administration’s torture philosophy and tools spread on contact through the British intelligence system. With evidence of the Bush Administration’s torture policies mounting, and with some British intelligence agents giving eyewitness accounts of the torture of prisoners in American custody, the Blair Government adopted a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” policy. Its instructions to intelligence agents working with the Americans seem to have turned on shoddy legal advice that misapprehended the gravity of the crime of torture under international law and the formal obligations imposed to stop it.

Horton concludes that

. . . the conduct of the British agents likely made them conspirators or aiders and abettors in the crime of torture under international legal standards. All of which demonstrates the peril of cooperation with the Bush regime, given its criminal policies. But note all the judicial, legal, and parliamentary wheels turning in Britain, all flowing from engagement with the United States. What is happening in the United States itself? To our lasting shame, the answer is: nothing.

(Emphasis added)

Read his full post here.

Chuck Fager

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