Scotland Yard detectives plan to interview prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as part of an investigation into a Mi6 officer, ITV News can reveal.
The detectives are investigating whether a Secret Intelligence Service officer witnessed the alleged inhumane treatment of detainees by the US military. It’s understood British police officers are asking the United States government for permission to carry out the interviews.
If they are given permission to speak to Guantanamo prisoners it would be a dramatic development in an investigation that has been quietly underway for a year and a half. It’s understood the request was made around a month ago. If the United States refuses permission then it could be accused of standing in the way of an important British police inquiry.
Little has been revealed about that inquiry up until now. The case was referred to the Attorney General by Mi6 itself, who passed it to the police. It involves events at the Bagram US base in Afghanistan in January 2002. Detectives from the Specialist Crime Directorate are trying to track down many of the nearly 50 prisoners who were at Bagram during that month.
Scotland Yard detectives seem to want to establish whether a Mi6 officer who was at the base broke British law after witnessing the way prisoners were treated. Detectives have already interviewed a number of former Bagram detainees.
ITV News has been shown details of an interview the police conducted with one man held at Bagram at the time. He alleges prisoners were subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment, if not torture. Sami el-Hajj was a cameraman for Al Jazeera when he was arrested in Pakistan. This is some of what he told British police in an interview in London in May this year.
“The soldiers came and kicked me and threatened to shoot me if I moved. I could hear the shouting of others. They left me on the ground, repeating the same questions, “Why have you come to fight us?” I was telling them that I was a journalist not a fighter but they continued to hit me saying that I was a liar”
He describes being strip searched, and threatened with guns and dogs. This is some of the description he gave to detectives of events at the base during that time:
“The light was on 24 hours a day. The blankets were not nearly warm enough given the weather, and all night I could hear prisoners suffering from the cold. Prisoners were beaten up.”
“If the prisoners talked, for example, or looked around, they would be hung up by their wrist as punishment shackled to the top of the cage wall, near to the door. They might be left there, depending on the guard, for 3 hours, 8 hours. There was a Sudanese man who was left there for 6 days.”
“Other abuses that I was told happened to other prisoners in Bagram included tying the person’s hands behind his back, and pushing his face into a bucket of water so he would feel he was drowning. An Afghani person told me this happened to him. This was done to him during an interrogation.”
Sami el-Hajj told detectives that he and a number of others who were at Bagram in January 2002 were transferred to Guantanamo Bay. El-Hajj was released after 6 years but others are still there. This is why Scotland Yard now want permission to go there and talk to some of the prisoners. El-Hajj claims for example that one man who is still in Guantánamo Bay was threatened with rape at Bagram and was given a toothbrush and told to clean the cage where they were held.
There is no suggestion that the Mi6 officer under investigation witnessed any of this mistreatment. Crucially it’s understood that the officer immediately filed a report alerting his bosses that he may have seen something. In January 2002 it’s thought he conducted an interview with a detainee at the base. He then sent a note back to London raising concerns about the way that prisoner was treated. The next day a reply was sent from London saying ‘It appears from your description that they may not be being treated in accordance with the appropriate standards’. He was told he did not need to intervene but that he should raise it with a suitably senior US official ‘if circumstances allow’.
That legal advice has been criticised by the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee. It is also reported that whilst the officer remained in Afghanistan for a further three weeks, he did not witness ‘any further instances of this kind’.
But one issue detectives appear to be looking into is whether it would have been possible for the officer to spend 3 further weeks in Afghanistan without seeing further abuses, and what action he took. It’s not clear whether he returned to Bagram during the three weeks after ‘the incident’ he had reported. Sami el-Hajj has told detectives the alleged abuse was “not hidden from anyone, it was all in the open. It was known to everyone who went through the hangar at that time.”
The detectives seem determined to follow the evidence as best they can, even if that means travelling to Guantanamo Bay to find witnesses. Tonight Scotland Yard refused to comment on the investigation, a spokesperson saying “We are not providing a running commentary on this investigation. Not prepared to discuss further.”
The context of all this is important. January 2002 was just a few months after the September the 11th attacks and the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. Professor Michael Clarke, Director General of the Royal United Services Institute told ITV News: “In early 2002 all Western Security Services were under pressure because of the 9/11 events and what was happening in Afghanistan. Remember too that the security services were on to some pretty nasty plots against Britain.
He says, ‘I think the security services would admit that though they had procedures and though they followed procedures they were under pressure and the way they followed those procedures was a bit rough and ready in the early days. It changed after that but in 2002 it was probably a bit less than they would have wanted’
A major public inquiry into allegations of that the British ‘turned a blind eye’ to torture, chaired by Sir Peter Gibson, has been delayed because of the ongoing police investigation. There have been complaints from solicitors and organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty that much of the Gibson inquiry will be held in secret. Though it’s thought the findings will be made public.
The Chief of Mi6, Sir John Sawers has made clear that his officers do not condone torture. And sources say that the intelligence services are now extremely careful about how they deal with countries where standards do not comply with British law. But the question of how to interact with the intelligence services of countries that might use such methods is debated in some quarters. Some say that too strict an approach would prevent the British government from protecting it’s own citizens. Others argue that any complicity in torture or inhumane treatment undermines basic British values.
The Gibson inquiry could help to answer some of those questions. But it’s now clear that first the police want time to establish what happened in the past. In the end British law as it stands may provide the clearest answer as to what is morally acceptable for British intelligence officers abroad and what is not.
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Tags: crime, guantanamo, Keir Simmons, Politics, scotland yard