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Bisher al-Rawi

My constituent, Bisher al-Rawi, lives in New Malden, Surrey, but he is currently in camp 5, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has been imprisoned there by the Americans for over four years, without charge or trial, and has been subjected to continual degradation and torture. That would all be bad enough, but there is undeniable evidence—we have the telegrams—that MI5, and therefore the UK Government, was complicit in Bisher’s illegal arrest, complicit in his rendition, and complicit in his long, illegal detention. As MI5 must have known about the psychological torture techniques of the United States, I believe that the UK has been complicit in his torture, too. Whatever Bisher may or may not have done—I believe that he is innocent—he has suffered a huge injustice, and has been denied basic human and legal rights. His likely innocence only makes that injustice even more intolerable. Ministers have been aware of Bisher’s case all along. I first contacted the Foreign Office in late 2002, when Bisher’s brother-in-law came to see me, and when Bisher was still in the Gambia. There have been many letters and many meetings with Ministers since, yet throughout the UK Government have failed to admit their complicity and have denied any moral responsibility for Bisher. Instead, Ministers have chosen to hide behind the fact that Bisher is ““only”” a British resident, having come to the UK, aged 16, 23 years ago, fleeing with his family from Saddam Hussein. Although his family became British citizens, Bisher and his family decided that he would retain Iraqi citizenship so that his family might one day be able to reclaim their Iraqi property. As a result, the British Government have always refused to make formal representations for him—until last March. Faced with a court hearing in which it would emerge that Bisher had worked for MI5, the Government did a volte-face and agreed to represent him. However, the problem is that it does not seem as if the Government are trying that hard for Bisher, or if they are, that they are any good at making representations to the United States—our closest ally—as Bisher remains in Guantanamo. Indeed, if anything, his situation is worse. Immediately after the Government agreed to ask for Bisher’s return, he was thrown into the top-security isolation camp 5 for refusing to answer questions that he has been asked hundreds of times before. All three of his attorneys, who have seen Bisher in the past few months, agree that his mental health is deteriorating fast. I will tell Bisher’s story tonight, but I start with three questions. First, why have the Government failed to secure Bisher’s release, after promising that they would do so back in March? Secondly, how are the current discussions with the United States on Bisher’s release proceeding, and is there a timetable for his release? Thirdly, will the Foreign Office now request that the Prime Minister himself urgently raises Bisher’s case with the US president, direct, to help to secure Bisher’s immediate release and return to the United Kingdom? I shall rewind, and give Bisher’s full story but, first, I wish to pay tribute to his family, who have shown a great deal of courage during this difficult period. I pay tribute to his lawyers, both American and British, who have worked with huge determination and intelligence to try to secure Bisher’s release. I pay tribute to the late Mark Jennings, who worked in my office before leaving to work tirelessly for Bisher’s release. Bisher al-Rawi was born in 1967 to a well-to-do Iraqi family. His great-grandfather, a Prime Minister of Jordan in the 1920s, helped to write the country’s constitution and was a fervent backer of democracy. His late father, Dr. al-Rawi, a successful Iraqi businessman, was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein for 18 months. He was tortured during that period but, ironically, given Bisher’s circumstances, a court in Saddam’s regime ordered his release, and the family fled to the United Kingdom. In the UK, Bisher had a privileged and very English upbringing, He was privately educated in Cambridge before being sent to Millfield public school. He went on to read material engineering at University college London. He was loved by all his family and friends, and he was exceedingly popular. How did Bisher come to the notice of the authorities? He got to know the radical Islamic cleric, Abu Qatada, who is alleged to have links with al-Qaeda. Indeed, Abu Qatada has been variously described as a truly dangerous individual and a key figure in al-Qaeda-related terror activities, although he denies such allegations. Deportation proceedings against him are pending, but I can state categorically that he has never been charged with any wrongdoing. It appears that my constituent has been illegally imprisoned for four years solely on the basis that he was an associate of Abu Qatada. I should therefore like to ask the Minister for Trade why the authorities have never charged Abu Qatada with any terrorist activity. Is Bisher guilty by association with someone who has never been charged with any crime? Will the Minister confirm that Bisher helped MI5 by serving as a translator and carrying messages between it and Abu Qatada? In an astonishing statement in 2005 to his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, in Guantanamo, Bisher recounted how he worked with MI5. He claimed to have worked with a number of agents, whom he names as Alex, Matt and Martin. He described a large number of meetings and telephone calls, in which he used a mobile phone provided by MI5, that took place over a period of months. MI5 lost track of Abu Qatada, and it was Bisher who told it that he knew where he was before acting as a go-between. In his statement to Clive Stafford Smith, Bisher explained how difficult that period was, as he was criticised by both MI5 and Abu Qatada. Bisher requested an MI5 lawyer, as he was worried that he would be incriminated by MI5. An MI5 lawyer using the name Simon assured Bisher that he did not run any risk, and that MI5 would assist him if he got into trouble as a result of his association with Abu Qatada—some promise from MI5. Around July 2002, Bisher said that MI5 broke off the relationship, and he did not hear anything more from it until he met its agents again in Guantanamo. That leads me to the next stage of the story—Bisher’s arrest in Gambia. In the second half of 2002, Bisher became involved with a business idea that his brother, Wahab, put together for a mobile peanut processing plant in Gambia, together with a team of friends, including a British citizen, Abdullah El-Janoudi, and Jamil Al-Banna, who is a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather). She is in the Chamber, and she has campaigned hard, both for her constituent and, with me, against the injustices of Guantanamo. Because of proceedings that are under way, she is unable to intervene in our debate. On 1 November, Bisher and Jamil went to Gatwick airport to fly to Gambia to join Wahab. They were detained at Gatwick, and were held in Paddington Green police station on the grounds that a supposedly suspicious electronic device had been found in Bisher’s luggage. Their homes and computers were searched, but nothing was found. Eventually, they were released, and the police confirmed that the suspicious device was a battery charger available at outlets of Argos. However, during this period MI5 was contacting the US authorities, telling them that Bisher and Jamil were intending to travel to the Gambia, and that Bisher was an ““Islamic extremist”” who had been found with a ““suspicious device””—the battery charger. Months later, when Bisher was undergoing his combatant status review tribunal in Guantanamo, the Americans used allegations about the ““suspicious device”” as evidence that he was an enemy combatant. On 8 November 2002, Bisher and Jamil once again went to Gatwick, having been told by MI5 that there was now no problem with their trip. At the same time, MI5 was informing CIA agents in the Gambia of their names and flight details, so they were arrested at the airport, questioned by the Gambians and handed over to the CIA. After four weeks of questioning, the two British citizens, Wahab and Abdullah El-Janoudi, were sent back to the UK. Bisher and Jamil, however, were detained and then rendered to Afghanistan by the CIA on 8 December 2002. After a truly dreadful period in the so-called dark prison, the two men were transferred to Bagram airfield near Kabul, and after another two months of questioning and abuse, to Guantanamo. I give only a brief account of this awful time to prove one key point: that British secret services were utterly complicit in the arrest and rendition of Bisher and Jamil, as several independent inquiries into rendition have found, including one conducted by the European Parliament. Let me ask the Minister the following questions. Why was Bisher not detained permanently in London prior to travelling to the Gambia, if the UK Government suspected him of being a terrorist? Will the Foreign Office confirm the authenticity of the telegrams produced during the judicial proceedings, which were supposedly sent by MI5 to the American authorities in the Gambia in November 2002? When did the British Government become aware that Bisher had been rendered to Kabul, Afghanistan, and what, if any, action was taken? Given the tortures suffered during this period, let me ask two further questions. Did the British Government or their secret services know that Bisher and Jamil had been delivered to the Americans to be tortured? On the Americans and torture more generally, are the British Government aware that when the US signed the UN convention against torture in 1994, it did so with four carefully detailed diplomatic ““reservations”” focusing on one word in the convention’s 26 printed pages? That word was ““mental””. Are the UK Government aware, therefore, that the US retains, in its eyes, the legal power to commit psychological torture? Since that initial period in the Gambia and Afghanistan, Bisher has been a long time in Guantanamo. He has frequently endured periods of abuse—lights on 24 hours a day to make it difficult to sleep. On one occasion he used the 15 sheets of toilet paper that detainees are given each day to cover his eyes. They were taken away from him for misuse. He suffered abuse with artificial temperature extremes. One week the air conditioning is shut off to expose detainees to heat that rises to 95°; the next week the air conditioning is blasted at maximum to leave the detainees shivering. On one occasion, Bisher used his prayer rug to cover himself because he was so cold. It was taken away, again for misuse. UK officials know about the abuse because Bisher’s lawyers have given them a deposition. Can the Minister tell me whether the British Government have taken any action to persuade the Americans to desist from the psychological torture of Bisher and other detainees? Perhaps the most important question is why the US has kept Bisher in Guantanamo for so long. Judging from the records in Bisher’s combatant status review tribunal, a Mickey Mouse procedure ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, and judging by Bisher’s interviews with his lawyers, the only thing about Bisher in which the US is really interested is Abu Qatada. I believe they want Bisher to incriminate Abu Qatada and hope that Bisher will help them communicate once more with Abu Qatada. Beyond Abu Qatada, the US seems to have no interest in Bisher at all. Indeed, few people, if any, in MI5 or, as I have been told, the US State Department now consider Bisher to be a serious security risk. So why are they keeping Bisher? We have been told that the Bush Administration want to close down Guantanamo Bay, and we have been told that the British Government are against Guantanamo Bay, so why keep Bisher? The situation is even more confusing when one considers the Government U-turn last March. Faced with a hearing in which Bisher’s work for MI5 would come out—no doubt MI5 agents would have been asked to give evidence—the Treasury solicitor agreed to make formal representations for Bisher to the United States, something that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), the then Foreign Secretary, had told me on more than one occasion that he was not prepared to do. I welcomed that U-turn, but it prompted a serious question: why did the UK Government not make the request at an earlier date? Why, given all the evidence including representations by me and the family, did the British Government have to wait until March 2006 and the pressure of a court hearing before they decided to make representations for Bisher? Now that the Government have started to make those representations, why has there apparently been so little progress? Why are the Government not making representations for all the British residents, and why are they not making them now and fervently? I hope that the Minister will answer a few questions about the representations that the Government have tried to carry out. Will he tell me when the request for the release and return of Bisher al-Rawi, which was promised on 22 March 2006 by the Treasury solicitor, was first made? On how many subsequent occasions has that request for Bisher’s return been followed up by either Ministers or officials, on which dates and with what effect? What have been the main elements of the US response to the UK’s request for Bisher’s release? Above all, what is the latest development and expectation for any ongoing discussions with the Americans on Bisher? After the Government said that they would make representations, I waited a few months and then met a State Department representative in Washington last year to find out how the representations were going. I was shocked to learn how inter-agency rivalries, especially between the State Department and the Defence Department, were a real problem. I learned that the Pentagon, not the State Department, was calling the shots. Indeed, the State Department was extremely uninterested in representations from our Foreign Secretary and made it pretty clear that the Defence Department was even less interested. The Pentagon has some very bureaucratic procedures for considering a detainee’s release, all of which are based around a detainee’s file. Clearly, a detainee will not be released by the Pentagon if their file contains any grounds for continuing detention. Much of the contents of Bisher’s file would have come from MI5, which is why I followed up my meeting with the State Department with a meeting with the Minister last July. I made the unusual request for the Minister somehow to get MI5 to review all the evidence and information provided by the UK to the US about Bisher, so that any mistakes sitting in Bisher’s file, such as the mistake about the battery charger, could be rectified. At the time, the Minister did not give me a full assurance that he would do so, but I ask the Minister tonight whether it has been done. Have the UK Government ever sought to correct, clarify or withdraw any inaccurate allegations contained in the information provided to the United States by MI5 in respect of Bisher? If not, why not? If so, when and to what effect? If such a request has not been made, will the Minister assure me that it will be done immediately? If the Minister cannot give me such an assurance, I hope that he will understand my alarm. According to the lawyers who have met Bisher over the past few months, Bisher’s health is deteriorating fast. A recent legal declaration by one of Bisher’s lawyers states:"““In my opinion, his extended isolation and harsh conditions of confinement are causing him severe mental distress and may have a lasting negative psychological impact. I am particularly concerned by the deterioration I have observed over time. To put it simply, my greatest fear is that Mr Al Rawi, if not released immediately from prison will no longer be Mr Al Rawi.””" Can the Minister tell me how those health concerns are affecting negotiations about Bisher? What efforts have been made to have UK consulate and medical officials visit him, and indeed the other British residents? What reports on Bisher’s health have been given to the Minister? When I reflect on this sorry state of affairs, I reflect on the need to wage a battle against terrorism to ensure that its evil does not go around the world. I look at Bisher’s case and think what signal it sends to Muslims and Arabs who want to help in the fight against terrorism—absolutely the wrong signal. Bisher is an example of someone who wanted to help the British secret services and to help to prevent terrorism—and this is how he has been treated. I cannot think of a worse way of trying to tackle terrorism. For Bisher and his family, it is time that this injustice was ended. It is time that the British Government made amends for the many failings to date, especially by MI5. It is time that the Prime Minister made a personal request to President Bush to secure the release of Bisher al-Rawi from Guantanamo.