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Extraordinary Rendition

My Lords, as we have heard, there is overwhelming evidence that the UK, while protesting its continuing support for human rights, is still concealing its own part in this illegal practice. All of us here will agree that potential terrorists have to be subjected to rigorous interrogation within the bounds of human rights law, but in the interests of anti-terrorism, in the months after 9/11 the UK, as a key coalition ally, ignored much that was going on in Bagram airport and other US bases in the region. Whatever we say on our own behalf, we seem to move in tandem with the United States. It was years before our Ministers began to comment publicly about Guantanamo, except in the well-known cases of British citizens. When President Bush accepted that Guantanamo was no longer a going concern, our Prime Minister and the Attorney-General followed suit. It was a relief to all that the Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions were not properly constituted courts, after months of pretence and pussyfooting. Ministers can depend on information and advice from their civil servants; the rest of us can believe only what we are told by friends and sources we trust. Let me recall briefly the case Binyam Mohammed al Habashi, an Ethiopian asylum seeker who came to Britain in 1994 and was granted leave to remain. For several years he lived in north Kensington. He was picked up in Karachi in April 2002 and then began a cycle of interrogation by Pakistan intelligence, the FBI, MI6 and others who suspected he was an al-Qaeda terrorist. He was taken into US custody for rendition to Morocco where he was beaten and tortured over an 18-month period before being taken to Guantanamo. During one interview, Binyam said that the MI6 officer was nice to him and gave him a cup of tea, saying he was innocent and that he would soon be sent home. Yet there is strong evidence that during the time he was in Morocco his torturers were relying on and probably conniving with British intelligence. The torture included many known and less known unpleasant techniques, including the cutting of his genitals with a scalpel. It is inconceivable that MI6 was unaware of his rendition and torture, and highly likely that its intelligence contributed to it. He has been languishing in Guantanamo ever since. On those rare occasions when governments or law enforcement agencies admit their mistakes, they still pretend to be on the side of the angels and do so reluctantly. The EU Justice Commissioner, as we have heard, admitted for the first time last month that rendition takes place on European soil, and yet the UK is still in denial. The Minister said rather surprisingly at Question Time recently that he did not accept that there has been extraordinary rendition, especially in relationship to Guantanamo. The noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said during the debate on the Police and Justice Bill that, "““there is no credible evidence that United Kingdom airspace or territory have been involved in unlawful rendition””.—[Official Report, 4/7/06; col. 217.]" How can anyone be reassured that there is no risk of torture? These statements on their own, however accurate, actually imply the contrary. They show that there is enough uncertainty about the UK’s moral position to require a more open debate based on better analysis and detailed enumeration of the facts. It is helpful that the Government are now considering their reply to the reminder of the Joint Committee on Human Rights of the UK’s obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture, but the Foreign Affairs Select Committee has been asking these questions for months and is always told that intelligence has all the information. Surely this is no way to conduct business in a fully functioning democracy.