Fabricating Terrorism

British Complicity in Renditions and Torture

Foreword by Geoffrey Bindman

I have had the privilege of spending several months as teaching fellow and visiting professor at two leading American law schools. This experience taught me enormous respect for the legal system developed by the founding fathers of the Constitution and the great legal scholars who have followed them.

In essence, of course, that system had its basis in the British constitution, going back to Magna Carta in the year 1215. Until the current presidency, it meant the rule of law: personal liberty was sacred except for those proved in a fair legal process to have broken the law.

The Bush administration has thrown overboard nearly a thousand years of history by introducing a new concept of pre-emptive action, which in the name of countering terrorism justifies detention, torture and bombing on the basis of guesswork about what could happen, abandoning the need for evidence or fair legal processes.

Some argue that the supreme duty to protect its citizens justifies a government in taking even these extreme measures. The tragedy is that they have had the opposite effect, increasing hostility and violence while doing nothing to do reduce the threat to its citizens. This has been clearly demonstrated by several studies in the United States (see for example "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right", by Benjamin and Simon, Times Books, 2006)

The tragedy for the United Kingdom is that its government has been seduced by the rhetoric of the "war on terror" into giving support to failed and inhuman US policies. In doing so it has undermined its own professed commitment to human rights and the rule of law. The case histories recounted in this report are appalling illustrations of brutal and inhuman treatment. If substantiated, they demonstrate an intolerable level of collaboration and collusion between UK and US authorities in the abuses which have taken place at Guantanamo and elsewhere through the "outsourcing" of torture. They also demonstrate a pathetic reluctance on the part of the UK government to stand up for the rights of its own citizens and permanent residents against illegal and unacceptable treatment.

It is nevertheless important to note that there have been encouraging signs of resistance both in the USA and in Britain to these misguided attempts to undermine the rule of law. At least some US judges are beginning to challenge the administration's efforts to deny access to the courts to prisoners at Guantanamo and to conceal its oppressive conduct from the public. In Britain it is heartening that there are courageous judges who have rejected the use of evidence obtained by torture and outlawed the indefinite detention of immigrants without trial in places such as Belmarsh.

It is also encouraging that an all-party parliamentary group has been established to examine the issue of extraordinary rendition, a major theme of this report. I hope this report will be read carefully by ministers and will have the impact it deserves. It is a damning indictment which will provide a useful resource for the parliamentary group. I expect it to fuel the momentum for a full and independent investigation of the compelling evidence which the authors have so diligently accumulated.

Geoffrey Bindman is chairman of the British Institute of Human Rights

03/28/06 Full report PDF Format