Tag: MI6

Torture claims investigation ordered by William Hague

Judge will investigate allegations that UK was complicit in abuse of detainees

Patrick Wintour, Nicholas Watt, Ian Cobain

William Hague arrives at Downing Street for a cabinet meeting. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

A judge will investigate claims that British intelligence agencies were complicit in the torture of terror suspects, William Hague, the foreign secretary, said tonight.

The move was welcomed by civil liberties campaigners and may put pressure on the Labour leadership candidate and former foreign secretary David Miliband, who was accused by Hague, while in opposition, of having something to hide.

Miliband has repeatedly rejected the accusation and broadly indicated that he or his officials may have been misled by foreign intelligence agencies about the degree of British complicity.

Hague’s remarks appear to have caught the Foreign Office by surprise, as no details were yet available on how the inquiry will be conducted, its terms of reference or when it will start work.

Hague will come under pressure to ensure the inquiry is public and comprehensive. He first called last year for an independent judicial inquiry into claims that British officials had colluded in the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantánamo detainee and a UK resident.

Mohamed claimed that he was tortured by US forces in Pakistan and Morocco, and that MI5 fed the CIA questions that were used by US forces.

Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, said tonight: “To restore trust in government, both here and abroad, and to get to the truth, the inquiry needs to be deep and broad and as open as possible. It should address, in particular, who authorised what and when and why, what the relevant legal advice said, and how it related to any change in US practice in 2002 and 2003.”

Tayab Ali, a London solicitor who represents a number of men alleging torture, said the inquiry presented “a significant and precious opportunity” for the British public to understand their country’s role in torture.

He Ali added: “It is essential that the inquiry is credible. It should be as open as possible, led by a judge and those affected should be properly represented. Anything less is likely to mean that the inquiry will fail in providing proper answers and holding those responsible to account for their actions.”

Hague’s statement redeems a pledge that both he and his then Liberal Democrat opposite number, Ed Davey, made in opposition. Hague told the BBC: “We have said again in the coalition agreement that we want a judge-led inquiry. So will there be an inquiry of some form? Yes, both parties in the coalition said they wanted that. Now what we’re working on is what form that should take.”

The coalition agreement published today by the government does not explicitly call for a judicial inquiry; it simply states: “We will never condone the use of torture.”

Hague criticised the Labour government last year for failing to provide straightforward answers after the high court upheld one of Mohamed’s claims. This was that the security services had put questions to him, through the US, even during a two-year period when they did not know where Mohamed was being held, according to Hague.

“So far ministers have stuck to the mantra that ‘we never condone, authorise or co-operate in torture’,” Hague wrote. “But this does not dispel any of the accusations. If anything, there is now a direct and irreconcilable conflict between such ministerial assurances and the account given by Mr Mohamed. That must be resolved.”

He added: “We cannot sweep these allegations under the carpet. Until the full facts are known, Britain’s name and reputation will be dragged through the mud – not least by the terrorists and extremists who will exploit these allegations for their own propaganda.’

“It is vital to remember that torture does not help us defeat terrorists; it helps them to try to justify their hostility to us.”

The inquiry to which Hague has now committed himself will need to find a way of offering immunity to anyone who comes forward to give evidence. Although immunity deals are rarely granted to those who are complicit in torture, lawyers who advised Tory shadow ministers in the run-up to the election concluded that it is possible. Such a deal would be of clear benefit to the two MI5 and MI6 officers who are currently at the centre of a Scotland Yard investigation into their alleged criminal wrongdoing.

An inquiry may also help to resolve the many civil cases being brought by victims of torture and rendition. Government lawyers are expected to offer out-of-court settlements worth millions of pounds after the court of appeal this month dismissed an attempt by MI5 and MI6 to suppress evidence of alleged complicity.

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2010/may/20/torture-william-hague-terrorism, 20 May 2010

May 28, 2010
45-minute WMD claim ‘came from an Iraqi taxi driver’

Tory MP and defence specialist Adam Holloway says MI6 got information from a taxi driver who had heard Iraqi military commanders talking about weapons

An Iraqi taxi driver was the source of the discredited claim that Saddam Hussein could unleash weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes, a Tory MP claimed today.

Adam Holloway, a defence specialist, said MI6 obtained the information indirectly from a taxi driver who had overheard two Iraqi militarycommanders talking about Saddam’s weapons.

The 45-minute claim was a key feature of the dossier about Iraq‘s weapons of mass destruction that was released by Tony Blair in September 2002. Blair published the information to bolster public support for war.

After the war the dossier became hugely controversial when it became clear that some of the information it contained was not true. An inquiry headed by Lord Butler into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the war revealed that MI6 had subsequently accepted that some of its Iraqi sources were unreliable, but his report did not identify who they were.

Today, in an interview with the Daily Mail, Holloway said the key piece of information about 45 minutes came from an Iraqi officer who was using a taxi driver as his own sub-source.

“[MI6] were running a senior Iraqi army officer who had a source of his own, a cab driver on the Iraqi-Jordanian border,” said Holloway, a former Grenadier Guardsman and television journalist.

“He apparently overheard two Iraqi army officers two years before who had spoken about weapons with the range to hit targets elsewhere in the Middle East.”

Holloway made his comments to coincide with the publication of a report he has written claiming that MI6 always had reservations about some of the information in the dossier but that these reservations were brushed aside when Downing Street was preparing it for publication.

According to the Mail, Holloway says in his report: “Under pressure from Downing Street to find anything to back up the WMD case, [MI6] were squeezing their agents in Iraq for anything at all.

“In the [MI6] analysts’ footnote to their report, it flagged up that part of the report describing some missiles that the Iraqi government allegedly possessed was demonstrably untrue. The missiles verifiably did not exist.

“The footnote said it in black and white. Despite this the report was treated as reliable and went on to become one of the central planks of the dodgy dossier.”

Holloway claims that MI6 was not to blame for the fact that the footnote was ignored. “It seems that someone, perhaps in Downing Street, found it rather inconvenient and ignored it lest it interfere with our reasons for going to war,” his report says.

The report is due to be published on the first defence website.

Butler concluded that, although the claims in the Iraq dossier went to the “outer limits” of what the intelligence available at the time would sustain, there was no evidence of “deliberate distortion”.

Today Sir John Scarlett, the key figure responsible for the preparation of the dossier, will give evidence to the Iraq inquiry. Scarlett was chairman of the joint intelligence committee at the time and he went on to become head of MI6.

He is expected to be asked about the dossier, although he is unlikely to provide detailed information about MI6 sources in public. The inquiry has said that, if witnesses want to discuss confidential issues relating to national security, they can do so in private.

The September dossier did not specify what weapons Iraq could deploy within 45 minutes. Intelligence officials subsequently revealed that it was meant to be a reference to battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles.

But, when it was published, some British papers interpreted the dossier as meaning that British troops based in Cyprus would be vulnerable to an Iraqi attack. At the time the government did not do anything to correct this error.

Guardian

December 8, 2009
Inquiry into MI6 chief on Facebook

The Liberal Democrats are calling for an inquiry into whether the new head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, should be allowed to take up his post after his wife apparently published personal details and photographs on the Facebook website.

Lady Shelley Sawers disclosed potentially compromising information, including the location of the London flat used by the couple and the whereabouts of their three children and of Sir John’s parents on the social networking site, The Mail on Sunday has reported.

The details, which were removed after the newspaper contacted the Foreign Office, also revealed the couple’s friendships with actors Moir Leslie and Alister Cameron.

Lady Sawers’ half-brother, Hugo Haig-Thomas, a former diplomat, was said to be among those featured in family photographs on Facebook.

Mr Haig-Thomas was an associate and researcher for controversial historian David Irving, who was jailed for three years in Austria in 2006 after pleading guilty to Holocaust denial, the paper reported.

Lady Sawers put no privacy protection on her account, allowing any of Facebook’s 200 million users in the open-access “London” network to see the entries, the paper said.

Senior politicians said the security lapse raised concerns about Sir John’s ability to take up his post as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in November, giving him responsibility for Britain’s overseas spying operations.

Edward Davy, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, called on Gordon Brown to launch an inquiry into the matter.

ITN

July 5, 2009
US intelligence rivalry flares over British connection

John Stokes

The CIA station in London is at the center of a bitter fight between different branches of the US intelligence community in Washington DC.

For years, the CIA has had the right to appoint the station chief who runs US intelligence operations in London and liaises with MI6 and GCHQ. Now, the National Security Agency is arguing that they and not the CIA should run intelligence operations in the UK because they have more people on the ground and the work they do has far greater value to both countries.

NSA have found useful allies in both Admiral Denny Blair, the Director of National Intelligence and General Jim Jones, the National Security Adviser who have been very receptive to the argument that intelligence form should follow function and reflect the realities of the 21st century.

Last month, Blair wrote a memo to US intelligence chiefs saying that in future the DNI would appoint Heads of Stations overseas. It was a clear directive from the man who runs all US intelligence and is appointed by the President and Congress to do so. However, Leon Panetta, who heads the CIA and is the former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton, wrote his own letter to top CIA officials saying they could disregard Blair’s note.

Panetta is a famous Washington bruiser and is well known for his take no prisoners style but such a confrontation has infuriated Blair who sees it as a direct challenge to his authority and battle has been joined. For once, Panetta may have misjudged the political winds as Congress is pushing hard for real intelligence reform and the CIA has fewer friends and less influence on Capitol Hill these days.

It is no coincidence that those pushing for change in the Obama administration have a military background and that the NSA is run by one of their own, General Keith Alexander. It’s also true that for decades NSA has chafed under CIA’s apparent seniority and the two agencies have been arch rivals for generations. As recently as the Bush administration a major joint operation between CIA and NSA which all involved agreed was vital to the future of US security was stopped after a senior CIA official refused to implement the project which he thought gave unnecessary influence to NSA.

The information revolution has placed further strains on the relationship. Twenty years ago, there was a clearer division of labour with NSA intercepting data on the move (email, faxes, phone calls) while the CIA targeted data at rest (documents, burglaring buildings). But recently the CIA has made a major push into the data gathering business arguing that the ones and zeros of the computer age are data and thus are fair game whether at rest or on the move.

There are thousands of Americans based in Britain who work for NSA and work closely with GCHQ. By comparison, the CIA station, based in the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, is important but a mere shadow of the NSA’s presence. Reality on the ground suggests that NSA will win this fight.

Spectator

10th June 2009

June 10, 2009
Is Real James Bond On Facebook?

By Sky News SkyNews – Sunday, September 28 01:29 pm

Spies are using social networking website Facebook to try to recruit real-life James Bonds.

The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) has begun advertising on it as part of a campaign to find potential MI6 agents.

The adverts have been launched in an attempt to reach a large and wide variety of people, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

MI6 began recruiting openly in April 2006, using mainly radio and newspaper advertising campaigns.

It also recruits through its website, where candidates can fill out application forms online.

“The Secret Intelligence Service’s open recruitment campaign continues to target wide pools of talent representative of British society today,” the spokeswoman added.

“A number of channels are used to promote job opportunities in the organisation.

“Facebook is a recent example” she went on.

The website, which was launched in 2004, currently has more than 100 million active users worldwide.

Other popular social networking sites include Bebo and MySpace.

Source: uk.news.yahoo.com, 28 September 2008

September 29, 2008