THE BRITISH ministry of defence faces legal action over its refusal to identify two men handed by British troops in Iraq to American forces, who subsequently transferred them to the infamous “dark prison” at Bagram in Afghanistan.
The men, believed to be from Pakistan, were arrested by British soldiers in 2004. In February this year, John Hutton, then defence secretary, told MPs they had been sent to Afghanistan, contradicting earlier assurances made by defence ministers that they were still in custody in Iraq.
In July, Bob Ainsworth, Mr Hutton’s successor, told Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the House of Commons all-party group on extraordinary rendition, that the men were being held in Bagram prison, where they remain still.
Reprieve, the legal charity, and Leigh Day, its lawyers, are planning to sue the ministry over what they say is a cover-up by the British government.
The two men have not been charged with an offence. A periodic review of their status by the US military has been described by an American federal judge as a process that “falls well short of what the supreme court found inadequate at Guantánamo”, according to Reprieve.
The ministry claims revealing the men’s identities would breach their rights under the Data Protection Act. Reprieve lawyers say that stance is “patently absurd” since establishing their identity would allow their families to apply for habeas corpus to secure their release. Mr Hutton told MPs the two men were members of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, a group linked to al-Qaeda, and that the US transferred them to Afghanistan because of a lack of linguists able to interrogate them in Iraq.
The House of Commons foreign affairs committee this week chastised the UK government over the transfer. “We do not regard the stated reason for this transfer, that US forces did not have sufficient linguists available in Iraq, as being convincing,” it said.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, told the committee: “There was no question of British personnel collaborating or colluding in rendition to Afghanistan.”
Reprieve says the ministry has become “mixed up, unwittingly or otherwise, in the wrongdoing committed by the US authorities”.
In February, Mr Hutton admitted officials knew about the transfer in 2004. He said references to them had been made in “lengthy papers” sent in April 2006 to Jack Straw and Charles Clarke, then foreign and home secretary, respectively.
Reprieve’s director, Clive Stafford Smith, said yesterday: “These two men have been held in appalling conditions for five years and, for all that time, the British government chose to do nothing.
“While we have not been able to identify their full names, we have learned that at least one of the men is now suffering from very serious mental problems as a result of his mistreatment.
“We have an urgent moral, as well as legal, duty, to repair the damage it has caused.” – (Guardian service)