Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Thank you David Davis....for speaking out in Parliament earlier...Reported in The Guardian....How British Intelligence used Pakistani torturers to do their dirty work for them...

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."
Davis called on ministers to examine the in camera sections of legal argument before Ahmed's trial and all relevant police and intelligence agency records; publish current guidelines on interrogation of detainees held overseas; and establish if any intelligence officer was disciplined.
"The judge in the court case intimated that disciplinary action should be considered. Was this done? If not, why not?"
Davis also said there was a pressing need for an inquiry into Britain's involvement in torture. "The Americans have made a clean breast of their complicity, whilst explicitly not prosecuting the junior officers who were acting under instruction. We have done the opposite. As it stands, we are awaiting a police investigation which will presumably end in the prosecution of frontline officers. At the same time the government is fighting tooth and nail to use state secrecy to cover up both crimes and political embarrassments, to protect those who are the real villains of the piece, those who approved the policies in the first place."