Post-9/11 inquiry in disarray after revelation that key hearings will be secret and victims will be unable to question intelligence agents The government’s plans for an inquiry into the UK’s role in torture and rendition after 9/11 is in disarray after human rights groups queued up to denounce it as a sham and lawyers for the victims said they were boycotting the hearings. Their anger was prompted by the publication of the detailed terms of references and protocols under which the inquiry will be run by Sir Peter Gibson, a retired judge. It showed that key hearings will be held in secret and the cabinet secretary will have the ultimate say over what the public will and will not learn. Individuals subjected to rendition and torture during the so-called war on terror will not be permitted to ask questions of MI5 or MI6 officers and the inquiry will not seek any evidence from foreign intelligence agencies, such as the CIA, about British involvement in the torture and abuse of detainees. The protocol states that the aim is to “establish a reliable account of what happened”, but critics point out that it also states that the inquiry “will not request evidence from the authorities of other countries or their personnel”. There are also doubts about how far the inquiry will go to uncover evidence about operations in which British troops secretly rendered detainees to prisons where they were likely to be abused. Even senior Tory MPs expressed concern that the inquiry may fail to draw a line under the affair, while a medical charity that treats victims of torture warned that the level of secrecy could result in victims being denied justice. “It’s just like Bloody Sunday – this is the first torture inquiry and there will need to be another in a few years,” said Louise Christian, solicitor for four men who were rendered to Guantànamo Bay in 2002. She said her clients would be playing no part in the inquiry. Announcing the inquiry 12 months ago, David Cameron said that he and Nick Clegg were “determined to get to the bottom of what happened” because the reputation of MI5 and MI6 had been overshadowed and the UK’s reputation as a country that respects human rights and the rule of law was at risk of being tarnished. The furious criticisms triggered by publication (pdf) of the terms or reference and protocols comes after months of behind-the-scenes lobbying by human rights groups who fear that the Gibson inquiry is intended to be a whitewash, rather than a genuine attempt to discover – and make public – the truth about the British government’s role in the abduction and torture of its own citizens, and others, in the months and years after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks. Some have already criticised the appointment of Gibson to head the inquiry, as he previously served as the intelligence services commissioner, overseeing government ministers’ use of a controversial power that permits them to “disapply” UK criminal and civil law in order to offer a degree of protection to British intelligence officers committing crimes overseas. The government denies there is a conflict of interest. On the other hand, Gibson and his inquiry team will have faced intense pressure from the intelligence agencies and senior civil servants, who will be anxious not only to avoid the airing of embarrassing state secrets, but to ensure that intelligence-sharing relationships with the US and others remain protected – even when those relationships have entailed the abuses at the heart of the inquiry. So restrictive are the terms under which the inquiry will be conducted, however, that Justice, the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists, warned that it was likely to fail to comply with UK and international laws governing investigations into torture. Eric Metcalfe, the organisation’s director of human rights policy said: “Today’s rules mean that the inquiry is unlikely to get to the truth behind the allegations and, even if it does, we may never know for sure. However diligent and committed Sir Peter and his team may be, the government has given itself the final word on what can be made public.” Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: “When is an inquiry not an inquiry? When it’s a secret internal review. The use of torture by great democracies was the most shaming scandal of the war on terror. Today’s disappointing announcement suggests ministers, not independent judges will decide what the public is entitled to know. It is very hard to see the point of wasting public money on such a sham.” Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal charity Reprieve, said the inquiry was heading for a whitewash, with the US authorities in effect deciding what the public should learn. “Virtually nothing will be made public that is not already in the public domain,” he said. “This is meant to be an inquiry into British complicity into torture and rendition, almost all of which was complicity with the Americans. Yet these terms give America a veto on much of what should be public.” Solicitor Gareth Peirce, who also represents several victims, described the inquiry as “a wholly inadequate response to the gravest of state crimes – torture”. She added that while the Ministry of Defence exposed the torture of Baha Mousa to public scrutiny “the intelligence services, in contrast, are being allowed to hide”. Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP for Chichester, who chairs the all- party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, said: “Sir Peter Gibson has stated that he will not be asking the US or other foreign organisations for information on rendition. Without this information, his examination of other aspects of rendition is likely to be incomplete. The plain and highly regrettable fact is that the UK government is not in possession of all the facts on its own involvement in rendition. This is what government departments have confirmed to me.” Keith Best, chief executive of the charity Freedom from Torture, said: “Effective survivor participation demands an open process. Every decision along the way that privileges secrecy will erode the inquiry’s capacity to deliver justice to victims of torture that Britain knew about or was otherwise complicit in.” Amnesty International said the government appeared to have “squandered the opportunity to address a mounting pile of allegations of involvement of its agents and policymakers in the torture and ill-treatment of detainees” in a way that ensures public confidence. There was no immediate response from the inquiry team to the criticisms it is facing. Guantánamo Bay Torture CIA rendition War crimes Human rights MI5 MI6 Global terrorism UK security and terrorism Shami Chakrabarti Ian Cobain Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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• Dutch minister condemns French plan as ‘illusory’ • Yield on Portuguese bonds soar after downgrade Eurozone finance ministers are sharply divided over how to handle the spiralling Greek debt crisis, Dutch finance minister Jan-Kees de Jager revealed as he attacked France’s plans for a new rescue package. Speaking in London after a meeting with the chancellor George Osborne, de
Continue reading …California set to put US gay and lesbian history on public school curriculum
July 6, 2011 No Comment
Governor Gerry Brown must make final decision on issue that has upset religious and conservative groups California is poised to become the first state in America to make the teaching of positive contributions made by gay and lesbian people to US history and society compulsory in public schools. The governor of California, Jerry Brown, must decide whether to incur the wrath of religious and conservative groups lined up against the move and approve a bill that has now cleared both houses of the state assembly. If signed into law, it would require the rewriting of school textbooks and redrawing of the social science curriculum to include lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender history – a move that could have wide ramifications given that California’s school roll of 6.2 million children is the largest in the country. Supporters argued that it would give gay teenagers role models and help combat homophobic bullying. It would redress the imbalance in state schools that are already required to teach about women, entrepreneurs and labour and minority ethnic groups including African-Mexican- and Native Americans. “We gain a greater appreciation for what it means to be an American,” John Pérez, the first openly gay speaker of the Californian assembly, told the San Francisco Chronicle. During debate about the bill, supporters gave examples of historical figures they said would be featured, including Friedrich von Steuben, a military adviser to George Washington forced out of Prussia because he was gay, and the British mathematics genius Alan Turing. Opponents, including all but one of the assembly’s Republicans, criticised the bill as unnecessary and objectionable. “Our founding fathers are turning over in their graves,” Republican Tim Donnelly told Associated Press. Some opponents , such as the campaigning website SaveCalifornia.com, are encouraging parents to take their children out of state schools. A similar bill was vetoed by the previous California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Brown, who took over the post earlier this year, has given no indication whether he will sign or veto the legislation. Once he receives the bill, probably this week, he will have 12 days to make his decision. California Gay rights United States US politics Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Eight former police officers accused of fabricating Lynette White murder case
July 6, 2011 No Comment
Trial follows jailing of three innocent men for the 1988 murder of the 20-year-old Cardiff woman, who was working as a prostitute Eight former police officers fabricated a case against three men wrongly convicted of the brutal murder of a woman working as a prostitute, a jury was told on Wednesday. The officers “acted corruptly together” to manufacture the case against the men they suspected killing of Lynette White in Cardiff in 1988. Nicholas Dean QC, prosecuting, said the case was “almost entirely a fabrication” and the accusations were “largely the product of the imagination and then the theories and beliefs of police officers”. The case is believed to be the biggest trial of police officers in British legal history and could last six months. The most senior officer in the dock was a superintendent when he retired and two others were chief inspectors. At the start of the prosecution’s opening, the jury was taken back to February 1988 when White’s body was found at an “unfurnished and squalid” flat above a bookmakers in the docks area of Cardiff. The 20-year-old had been “brutally stabbed and slashed”. Hundreds of people were questioned but by mid-November 1988, nine months after the killing, the investigation had got “almost nowhere”, Dean told Swansea crown court. Suddenly in December 1988 White’s boyfriend, Stephen Miller, and four other men – Yusef Abdullahi, Tony Paris and cousins Ronnie and John Actie – were arrested and charged with her murder. In November 1990 Miller, Abdullahi and Paris were found guilty of the killing while the Acties were acquitted. But Dean said all five were innocent. “Indeed they were more than just innocent, they simply had nothing at all to do with the killing,” he said. The three men who were found guilty were freed on appeal in 1992 and in February 2003, 15 years after the killing, another man was arrested for White’s murder. Former police officers Graham Mouncher, Richard Powell, Thomas Page, Michael Daniels, Paul Jennings, Paul Stephen, Peter Greenwood and John Seaford deny conspiring to pervert the course of justice. They are accused of agreeing to “mould, manipulate, influence and fabricate evidence”. Four other men are “likely” to face trial on the conspiracy charge at the end of these proceedings, the jury was told. Mouncher also denies two charges of lying while on oath during the trials of the five men. Also in the dock are civilians Violet Perriam and Ian Massey, who each deny two charges of perjury. They are accused of telling “clear and deliberate lies” during the trials. Dean said the “starting point” was the shocking murder in a “pretty rough” area of Cardiff. White was discovered after a friend reported that the door of the flat was locked and she feared White might be inside. Police broke in and found the body. The investigation was always going to be problematic. “Faced as they were by the murder of a prostitute in an anonymous and squalid flat, the police were confronted by real difficulties,” Dean said. “Working the streets as she did, Lynette White would have had contact with many men who were strangers.” Dean said police had to consider White’s boyfriend, Miller, who used the money she gave him from her earnings as a prostitute to fund his drug-taking, as a possible suspect. “But otherwise the most obvious murderer was a customer, a man who might be local to the docks or Cardiff generally but who could just as easily be a visitor,” said Dean. The prosecutor reminded the jury that forensic science techniques were not as advanced as they are now. “Today the murder scene would present a goldmine of scientific clues,” said Dean. “Blood was spread around the flat and some of that blood was found to belong to someone other than Lynette White.” But scientific tests did not provide the vital clue. It was a statement given by Perriam, a receptionist at a health club, that led to a “breakthrough” in November 1988. She is accused of falsely claiming that she saw John Actie and others “at or near the scene of the murder”. Dean said the “fiction” that was to emerge was “absolutely extraordinary”. “It involved no less than five men murdering Lynette White in that small flat. It was a story that did not begin to explain how Lynette White or any of the men came to be together nor why any one of them, let alone five acting together, should participate in a brutal and savage murder of a girl most of these men barely knew.” Dean said it was not known why Perriam had allegedly given false evidence. “It might be that Mrs Perriam was primed and prompted by police officers to help them out when the investigation had reached an impasse,” he said. The trial continues. Crime Wales Police Prostitution Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Brooks summoned to meeting with Scotland Yard to be told her journalists had spied on behalf of murder suspects As editor of the News of the World Rebekah Brooks was confronted with evidence that her paper’s resources had been used on behalf of two murder suspects to spy on the senior detective who was investigating their alleged crime. Brooks was summoned to a meeting at Scotland Yard where she was told that one of her most senior journalists, Alex Marunchak, had apparently agreed to use photographers and vans leased to the paper to run surveillance on behalf of Jonathan Rees and Sid Fillery, two private investigators who were suspected of murdering their former partner, Daniel Morgan. The Yard saw this as a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice. Brooks was also told of evidence that Marunchak had a corrupt relationship with Rees, who had been earning up to £150,000 a year selling confidential data to the News of the World. Police told her that a former employee of Rees had given them a statement alleging that some of these payments were diverted to Marunchak, who had been able to pay off his credit card and pay his child’s private school fees. A Guardian investigation suggests that surveillance of Detective Chief Superintendent David Cook involved the News of the World physically following him and his young children, “blagging” his personal details from police databases, attempting to access his voicemail and that of his wife, and possibly sending a “Trojan horse” email in an attempt to steal information from his computer. The targeting of Cook began following his appearance on BBC Crimewatch on 26 June 2002, when he appealed for information to solve the murder of Morgan, who had been found dead in south London 15 years earlier. Rees and Fillery were among the suspects. The following day, Cook was warned by the Yard that they had picked up intelligence that Fillery had been in touch with Marunchak and that Marunchak agreed to “sort Cook out”. A few days later, Cook was contacted by Surrey police, where he had worked as a senior detective from 1996 to 2001, and was told that somebody claiming to work for the Inland Revenue had contacted their finance department, asking for Cook’s home address so that they could send him a cheque with a tax refund. The finance department had been suspicious and refused to give out the information. It is now known that at that time, the News of the World’s investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, succeeded in obtaining Cook’s home address, his internal payroll number at the Metropolitan police, his date of birth and figures for the amount that he and his wife were paying for their mortgage. All of this appears to have been blagged by Mulcaire from confidential databases, apparently including the Met’s own records. Mulcaire obtained the mobile phone number for Cook’s wife and the password she used for her mobile phone account. Paperwork in the possession of the Yard’s Operation Weeting is believed to show that Mulcaire did this on the instructions of Greg Miskiw, the paper’s assistant editor and a close friend of Marunchak. About a week later, a van was seen parked outside Cook’s home. The following day, two vans were seen there. Both of them attempted to follow Cook as he took his two-year-old son to nursery. Cook alerted Scotland Yard, who sent a uniformed officer to stop one of the vans on the grounds that its rear brake light was broken. The driver proved to be a photojournalist working for the News of the World. Both vans were leased to the paper. During the same week, there were signs of an attempt to open letters which had been left in Cook’s external postbox. Scotland Yard chose not to mount a formal inquiry. Instead a senior press officer contacted Brooks to ask for an explanation. She is understood to have told them they were investigating a report that Cook was having an affair with another officer, Jacqui Hames, the presenter of BBC Crimewatch. Yard sources say they rejected this explanation, because Cook had been married to Hames for some years; the couple had two children, then aged two and five; and they had previously appeared together as a married couple in published stories.”The story was complete rubbish,” according to one source. For four months, the Yard took no action, raising questions about whether they were willing to pursue what appeared to be an attempt to interfere with a murder inquiry. However, in November 2002, at a press social event at Scotland Yard, Brooks was asked to come into a side room for a meeting. She was confronted by Cook, his boss, Commander Andre Baker, and Dick Fedorcio, the head of media relations. According to a Yard source, Cook described the surveillance on his home and the apparent involvement of Marunchak, and evidence of Marunchak’s suspect financial relationship with Rees. Brooks is said to have defended Marunchak on the grounds that he did his job well. Scotland Yard took no further action, apparently reflecting the desire of Fedorcio, who has had a close working relationship with Brooks, to avoid unnecessary friction with the News of the World. In March Marunchak was named by BBC Panorama as the News of the World executive who hired a specialist to plan a Trojan on the computer of a former British intelligence officer, Ian Hurst. Rees and Fillery were eventually arrested and charged in relation to the murder of Morgan. Charges against both men were later dropped, although Rees was convicted of plotting to plant cocaine on a woman so that her ex-husband would get custody of their children, and Fillery was convicted of possessing indecent images of children. Cook and his wife are believed to be preparing a legal action against the News of the World, Marunchak, Miskiw and Mulcaire. Operation Weeting is also understood to be investigating. News of the World Rebekah Brooks Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers Channel 4 Television industry Police Nick Davies guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …It’s a scene movie directors would pay millions to create: a 10,000-foot-tall dust cloud advancing over a city, swallowing it whole. That was the reality in Phoenix last night, as a massive dust storm swept over the city like a wave, reports the AP . Radar data showed that the…
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Parents of Wilfahrt – who was killed after repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – campaign against state gay marriage ban On Sunday, Jeff and Lori Wilfahrt will travel to Hawaii to join other US military families welcoming back the third platoon of the 552nd military police company from Afghanistan. For the Wilfahrts, the unit’s return from its deployment near Kandahar will be a sad and poignant occasion. Their son Andrew Wilfahrt, a member of the unit, was the first openly gay US soldier to die in combat since Barack Obama repealed the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in December last year. Two months after homosexuals were officially allowed to serve, Wilfahrts was killed when an improvised device exploded under a bridge in Afghanistan. “Even though we are acclimatised to his absence now,” his father Jeff Wilfahrt told the Guardian, “it will still tear our hearts out.” Andrew Wilfahrt’s story is an extraordinary one. Despite coming out to his parents at 16 and campaigning for gay rights at his high school, he decided he wanted to join the army when he was 29. He told a friend he wanted to join up so that a soldier with a wife and family would not have to. At first he hid his sexual identity, sticking a picture of himself with a close woman friend “curled up against his chest” in his locker. “When he joined in 2009 there was a big question mark,” Jeff Wilfahrt said. “He didn’t know how people would react to him. So he deepened his voice and built up his body, because before he was a real skinny guy. And he spoke in a more masculine manner.” Fiercely intelligent, Andrew Wilfahrt scored top marks in the army’s aptitude test. He was also a former peace activist who enjoyed classical music. “He was very compartmentalised in his life,” Jeff Wilfahrt said. “He would not talk about his military life. He went by the book of military discipline and was very careful what he said.” Soon after being posted to his unit in Hawaii, his father believes Wilfahrt had told some fellow soldiers of his sexuality. Soon most of them were aware. Talking to his mother last November he told her: “Mom, everyone knows. Nobody cares.” Wilfahrt joined up after taking discreet advice from a gay ex-Marine on what he might expect as a homosexual in the US armed forces. That Marine, interviewed earlier this week by the news channel CNN and identified only as “Dan”, said Wilfahrt had told him he wanted to be a soldier to protect someone with a family. “He wasn’t making a statement. He was doing it for everybody else,” Dan told the television channel. “He will forever be my hero because he joined for the right reasons. He was a silent part of the gay community, but it’s just unspeakable how big an impact he’s had now.” Jeff Wilfahrt remembers the night his son told them of his decision to join the military. “It was an evening meal in mid-December. I was encouraging him to get his butt into gear and apply for colleges in the spring. We said we would find a way to pay for his tuition in the fall. “He raised his head and said, with a shit-eating grin, that he was going to join the army. My wife was very concerned but I was pleased.” It was still, however, a surprise for the parents of an out gay man. “He was not that big on the ‘gay community’,” Jeff Wilfahrt said. “He loved men but he didn’t feel he had found a depth to his [male] relationships and wanted something more.” That something more was a “comradeship” he found among his accepting comrades in his military police unit. Andrew Wilfahrt said he could speak more openly with them than he could his gay friends back home. “He didn’t act particularly gay,” recalls his father. “I mean he didn’t flaunt it though … some of the outfits he walked out of this door wearing!” And since his death his parents – who describe themselves as “lefties” – have dedicated themselves to attempting to prevent their own state of Minnesota, home to conservative presidential hopefuls Michelle Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty, from enacting new legislation defining marriage as being only possible between a woman and a man, high-profile activism that Jeff Wilfahrt admits his son might have felt uncomfortable with. On 27 February – two months after Obama signed the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Wilfahrt’s unit was crossing a bridge that it had passed a “hundred times before.” This time, though, an improvised explosive device detonated underneath the bridge, killing Wilfahrt. Another American was injured. Wilfahrt’s family believe their son shielded him from the full force of the blast. “We would be so proud if Minnesota became the first state to reject a law defining marriage in terms of bigotry,” added Jeff Wilfahrt on Wednesday night. “It would be a memorial to our son.” Gay rights US military Minnesota United States Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk
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Trust chairman to cut pay of next director general in bid to stop criticism of corporation’s executive salaries The BBC Trust chairman, Lord Patten, said he would ban bonuses and perks for senior management and cut the pay of the next director general to below the £668,300 earned by incumbent Mark Thompson. In his first public speech since becoming chairman, Patten tried to draw a line under a long-running “toxic” row which has seen the corporation frequently criticised for the amount of licence fee payers’ money it spends on its top executives. The peer and former Conservative cabinet minister said on Wednesday the BBC will become the first organisation to publish a “pay multiple so the public can see exactly how the pay of those at the top of the BBC compares to the rest of the organisation.” He went on: “And when the time comes – I hope no time soon – to appoint the next director general, I would expect to adopt the same approach as for other executives and secure the right candidate at a lower multiple.” The move is likely to prove popular with BBC rank and file staff, who feel the issue of top salaries has polluted perception of the corporation. Patten said: “This action on pay is important. Because the BBC must do right by the licence fee payers who pick up the bill and by all the staff that work throughout the organisation at every level.” Addressing the Royal Television Society, Patten said he wants to be more open about how much top executives earn by incorporating economist Will Hutton’s review on public sector pay which said that no executive should receive more than 20 times the salary of the lowest paid. He also promised the number of senior managers at the corporation will be reduced from 3% of the workforce to around 1% by 2015 and their private health insurance will be phased out. The issue of executive pay and bonuses has dogged the BBC for the last few years . To try and stem anger from politicians and BBC staff facing cuts, Thompson has never taken his bonus and since January 2009 all key executives have waived their bonuses and frozen their pay. Earlier this year they also gave up a month’s salary. Separately, in an interview in the New Statesman to be published this weekend, Thompson appeared to suggest the BBC had the issue in hand, noting that “pay has come down significantly.” He went on: “The BBC is trying to straddle the reality of finding people with what the public expects of public-sector pay. You will see more movement in the months to come.” Patten in his remarks made it clear he believed “there is further to go – both in making further reductions and securing public confidence”. He argued the publicly funded BBC “needs to distance itself” from the commercial market, explaining: “Public trust suffers whenever there is evidence of corporate behaviour that doesn’t fit the ideal.” Following criticism about the convoluted BBC complaints procedure in a Lords communications committee report, Patten announced the creation of a chief complaints editor. He also said that, “the trust should be more clearly focused on its role as a strategic governing body” and the BBC “needs to provide a service to digitally literate 20-year-olds just as much to old-fashioned newspaper-reading 70-year-olds.” Patten said he does not want BBC commercial arm BBC Worldwide privatised but says he wants it to “work more closely with other UK broadcasters and producers”. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . Lord Patten BBC Television industry BBC Trust Radio industry Mark Thompson Tara Conlan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Osama bin Laden’s three widows and six children are still in Pakistan, and the country has now decided to bar them from leaving. Initially, Pakistan intended to repatriate the women to their countries of birth, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. But an independent commission investigating the US raid that killed bin…
Continue reading …The relationship between Hamid Karzai and the Afghan parliament has reached breaking point, and so have the tempers of some lawmakers. Two female members of parliament came to blows yesterday as the chamber discussed kicking the president out of office, the New York Times . One woman threw a shoe, her…
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