Top UK SEcurity view of Extraordinary Rendition 2014

 

The Government''s welcome volte face on Abdel Hakim Belhadj is an improvement on their view to Home Affairs Committee 2014.

 

Professor Sir David Omand: On the face of the Act, the analyst does actually have to be able to demonstrate that what they are doing in trying to pull out a needle of some wanted piece of information, say from a computer that has been associated with a terrorist, is necessary as well as proportionate. It would clearly fail the "necessary" test if the information could readily be obtained, for example, by a Security Service operation directly with the individual. For a lot of this, it is the only way you will find it, if it is on the internet.

Chair: Thank you. I think we have spent quite enough time now on looking for needles in haystacks.

Q631 Paul Flynn: In 2004, Mr Abdel Hakim Belhadj, with his pregnant wife, was abducted from Bangkok Airport, flown to Gaddafi’s Libya and tortured. In 2005, Jack Straw denied that the British Government had any involvement in renditions. In 2011, Human Rights Watch discovered documents and published them which named the British MI6 agent who they claim had boasted about this abduction, and Jack Straw has subsequently said that he was advised by MI6 on this. No one would have the knowledge of this and the truth on this without Human Rights Watch. Many other matters we would not have the truth of if it was not for whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. Do you not agree that we do need the whistleblowers, and they do convey to the public the truth of what is going on, rather than listen gullibly as we are told-as I have been and as the Chairman has been-that there was no involvement with extraordinary rendition. We were lied to. Do we not need whistleblowers?

Professor Sir David Omand: Let me say that a true whistleblower, in accepted international convention, has to exhaust his remedies. For example, Mr Snowden could have gone to his employers-I understand why he would not do that; I would not press that point. He could have gone to the inspector general, the independent figure of his organisation. I would not press that point either. He could have gone to Congress. Just imagine if Mr Snowden-flanked perhaps by the editor of The Guardian and the editor of The New York Times-had walked into the Congressional Oversight Committee and said, "The White House has kept from you and the Executive have kept from you knowledge of a massive programme of collecting data on American citizens." There would have been a huge political stink. I am quite sure President Obama would have been forced to issue the sort of statement that he issued a few weeks ago.

Paul Flynn: He has.

Professor Sir David Omand: Mr Snowden would have achieved his objective and he would not have had to steal 58,000 British top-secret documents or 1.7 million-

Paul Flynn: There is very little time, so can I just make two points?

Professor Sir David Omand-he did not do that, so in my book he is not a whistleblower.

Q632 Paul Flynn: Monsieur Dick Marty, who is a very distinguished Swiss MP, who was described by a Foreign Secretary here to me as being a madman-he was not; I know him very well. He was the person who very bravely took up this issue in Europe. Successive British politicians denied what was going on. The question is: do we not have to rely on the whistleblowers, on the Dick Martys, on the Human Rights Watch, to get the truth? Otherwise we live in ignorance, as politicians and the public. Of course they supply this service to us, surely.

Professor Sir David Omand: I believe in a free press. Under no circumstances will I want to muzzle the press. If they can perform a public service in exposing wrongdoing, let them do that. In a well-regulated democracy, you don’t have to rely on the media.

C

Comments

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I'm not seeing so much contrition from those who were actually involved. They claim (and I'm not going for anyone specifically, its the general line) incompetence. Who knows? What are the worthwhile lessons? That the law applies to all, or at least it is important that it should do? That it is detestable to say that it can be ignored in secret if 'the ends justify the means', or that in certain places (and perhaps to people of a certain skin pigmentation/culture/ predominant religion) it can be gleefully waived. Gleefully waived in the sense that the ideological underpinnings of the political leadership who caused this were corrupt, filthy, inhumane and dishonest.

And in the end, as tragic and abhorrent as the individual injustices are, it doesn't even do anybody any good. It opens doors that should never be allowed to open and makes us all poorer. What doors? General brutality and corruption. Debasement of institutions and standards that most of us would like to see upheld. So is it incompetence, or just low, unsavoury people prospering in politics? I don't know. There is much to that argument I think.

People seem to think, at least in more 'exalted' circles, that there is only greed, selfishness and cynicism. And they behave accordingly. That this is their world. Ironically it is the honest idealists that get the scorn; from the politicians and press. This kind of thing is just the preserve of cynical malcontents according to them. And it really isn't.