Shaker Amer's Challenge: Will Blair Amnesty Help Chilcot?

Shaker Aamer before a hunger strike in 2013. He was reportedly released from Guantanamo Oct. 29 after almost 14 years without charge or trial. | Photo: Close Guantanamo

In the ‘war on terror’ the right to truth is unlikely to be realized, as governments deflect accountability behind national security shields.
Allegations of British complicity in torture during the ‘war on terror’ have left an uncomfortable but, unfortunately, hushed continuing question mark hanging over Labour policy during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recently, however, voices have been raised more loudly than usual. Earlier in December, Shaker Amer, the last British citizen to have been held in Guantanamo Bay, spoke openly about the ways in which he was brutalized by U.S. interrogators in front of men who told him they were from MI5, the British security agency.

Amer was held and, he says, tortured, by U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan and then Guantanamo Bay for a total of 14 years. He was cleared for transfer from Guantanamo in 2007, indicating that, for the last eight years – more than half his total period of detention – U.S. authorities have had no intention of bringing him to trial. However, like so many others, he remained imprisoned. In October 2015, he was finally released. Another 48 individuals currently held in Guantanamo have been cleared for release but remain imprisoned.

In the weeks and months since Amer’s transfer back to the U.K., we have watched him slowly re-acclimatize to life in London with his children and wife. The years he lost to prison cells – without ever having the opportunity to face trial – have been portrayed in sprightly stories highlighting the ways in which the world has changed while he was locked away. For example, we have had stories describing Amer’s confusion of smart phones. He was imprisoned when Facebook was born in 2004. He was still imprisoned when it was made publicly available in 2006. While we re-post happy or moving memories of events in recent years past on our smartphone, amidst celebrating holiday cheer, Amer is calling for justice; justice for 14 years lost to confinement without justification or reason.

A recent issue of The Spectator magazine cartooned a young, seemingly British private school student on the lap of a stereotypical Santa figure captioned “For Christmas I’d like the Chilcot Report.” Amer supports an independent judge-led inquiry into allegations of British complicity in torture. Yet, the Chilcot Report, which looked into these allegations in relation to Iraq, for the period 2001 up to the end of July 2009, has been blocked from release since its completion in 2011. So, we continue to wait while the U.S. government and British politicians decide what we will and will not see and read.

Rather than support International Criminal Court investigations into the perpetration of possible British war crimes, perhaps unusually, Amer has suggested that former Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair, be granted an amnesty for telling the truth about what happened under the Labour years of British involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and in the so-called ‘war on terror’ generally.

Amer believes that under the protection of an amnesty from prosecution, Blair will be more likely to be open about his knowledge of torture. The right to truth is a radically important component of justice. Yet, in the U.K., the work of inquiries into wrongs committed in Iraq remain marred in secrecy, or face damning critiques for “whitewashing” the role of U.K. forces in rendition.

Truth is not found in abundance. Secrecy is. In a number of cases involving allegations of torture in the context of counter-terrorism, consecutive British and U.S. governments have attempted to withhold information from victims, their families, and the public, citing national security concerns.

In November, the English and Welsh Supreme Court heard pre-trial matters in the case of Abdul-Hakim Belhaj and Other v. Jack Straw & Head of Counter-Terrorism at MI6 Sir Mark Allen, The Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5). Abdel Hakim Belhadj and Fatima Bouchar were one of two families rendered to Libya in March 2004, in a deal between the CIA and MI6 on the one hand, and the Gaddafi regime on the other (the other being Sami al-Saadi and his family). They are seeking damages. The government says it is immune from having to face legal consequences for their actions. They would prefer a quiet out of court settlement, where the truth would not be disclosed in open court. This is insufficient for the Libyan couple who want to hold former and current U.K. officials publicly to account for their alleged complicity in the claimants’ torture and illegal transfer to Libya’s Gaddafi regime. The British government has fiercely resisted the right of the Libyan couple to even bring their claim, burying them in pre-trial litigation, aimed at effectively denying the claimants their right to justice, truth, and an effective remedy.

There is a long history of British governments failing to come clean about their involvement in past abuses. In October 2009, five elderly Kenyan individuals brought a claim for damages for personal injuries and torture – often perpetrated in concentration camp-like facilities – and caused by employees and agents of the British and Colonial Administration in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising between 1952 and 1961. The British government drew out the claim – again on technicalities. During the case, one claimant passed away and another claimant discontinued his claim. The case was finally subject to a settlement, announced 6 June 2013 where current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, recalled deaths on “both sides” – those protecting colonialism, and those seeking their most basic independence from exploitation.

The circumstances under which the Belhaj and the Mau Mau cases were able to proceed are also exceptional. Documents found in a government security building in Libya after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi – known as the Tripoli Documents – show that British Security Services knew of the Belhaj’s detention and arranged with the Libyan and U.S. services to render Belhadj and Bouchar back to Libya where they were tortured.

The Mau Mau case led to the discovery and release of thousands of formerly secret files held by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at its archives. These secret files had been evacuated out of Kenya before independence as they were deemed too sensitive to be allowed to fall into the hands of an independent Kenyan Government. Professor Anderson found some papers in the archives. Combined with litigation, this discovery forced an opening – where light could be shed on previously unseen documents. These documents described in detail the systemic torture of detainees in Kenya, and the knowledge of those abuses by British Government officials in London and Nairobi.

Most governments will conceal the abuses of their predecessors – past and present – for as long as humanly possible. Those in positions of power who may have committed – or at least known about the perpetration of – grave human rights abuses seek to take their secrets to their graves. Many have been successful. In the face of governments screeching ‘national security’ at the top of their lungs, to prevent victims of rendition and torture from accessing justice, in the face of government officials asking previous colonies to effectively “get over” past abuses, the right to truth becomes fictional. In the UK, the Chilcot report still has not been released, and it may be some time before the truth about the extent of human rights violations perpetrated by the U.S., British and their allies in the context of the ‘war on terror’ is exposed.

Source URL