Obama Should Lift the Veil of Secrecy on Heinous Bush War Crimes and Threats Against the UK
| Lies and secrecy trump justice and accountability in the US and the UK. While Obama spouts rhetoric about transparency and torture being wrong, his DOJ continues to cover Bush's ass in torture cases. Obama's administration needs to life the veil of secrecy on this heinous Bushite torture case or they will be guilty of covering up war crimes at Gitmo . I included this from The Guardian in an early February posting: "Evidence of how a British resident held in the Guantánamo Bay detention camp was tortured, and what MI5 knew about it, must remain secret because of serious threats the US has made against the UK, the high court ruled today. "The judges made clear they were deeply unhappy with their decision, but said they had no alternative as a result of a statement by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, that if the evidence was disclosed the US would stop sharing intelligence with Britain. That would directly threaten the UK's national security, Miliband had told the court. "This afternoon David Davis, the Conservative MP and former shadow home secretary, said ministers must urgently respond to the allegations that Britain was complicit in torture. He demanded a Commons statement from the government on the ruling, calling it 'a matter of utmost national importance'. "Davis said: 'The ruling implies that torture has taken place in the [Binyam] Mohamed case, that British agencies may have been complicit, and further, that the United States government has threatened our high court that if it releases this information the US government will withdraw its intelligence cooperation with the United Kingdom.' " 'The judge rules that there is a strong public interest that this information is put in the public domain even though it is politically embarrassing.' "The ruling, by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, was the latest from a long-running and unprecedented series of court hearings into the abduction of Binyam Mohamed, who was seized and held incommunicado in Pakistan in 2002 before being secretly rendered to Morocco, where he says he was tortured." Now, the inimitable Jonathan Turley adds more to the story: "Two British High Court judges have released a very disturbing decision that finds that former detainee Binyam Mohamed was offered his freedom by the United States in exchange for his promise not to reveal his own torture at Guantanamo Bay. Equally disturbing is the statement from the English government that it cannot release proof of the torture because of objections from the United States government. If the Obama Administration is continuing this position, it is not only blocking prosecution of war crimes but the release of evidence of such war crimes to other nations. I discussed this and other developments on this segment of Rachel Maddow’s show. "Mohamed is an Ethiopian who moved to Britain as a teenager and was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He claims he was tortured Pakistan and in Morocco. He was then transferred to the United States, which also tortured him. "All charges against him were dropped last year. He refused our Faustian bargain. Lord Justice John Thomas and Mr.. Justice David Lloyd Jones said that there was evidence to show Mohamed was tortured, but that the documents could not be made public because of the objections by the United States. Presumably, if the Obama Administration lifted such objections publicly, the British government would not have a basis to withhold the material. |
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