Binyam Mohamed,
the British resident who was tortured in Morocco on behalf of the CIA,
has been free from Guantanamo for nearly two months, but the struggle
for access to documents proving his rendition and torture - both in
Morocco and in the CIA's own "Dark Prison" in Afghanistan - continues.
The US government has never explained where he was held between May
2002, when British agents last saw him in Pakistan, where he was
initially seized, and May 2004, when he surfaced in the US prison at
Bagram airbase, and although the British government has conceded that
it received intelligence reports about him from July 2002 to February
2003, officials have always maintained that the US authorities did not
inform them abut where he was being held.
Last summer, after a judicial review of Mohamed's case in the UK, two high court judges - Lord Justice Thomas and Mr. Justice Lloyd Jones - ruled that the British government's decision
to be involved in an exchange of intelligence about Mohamed, without
knowing where he was being held, or receiving assurances that he was
not being subjected to ill-treatment or torture, meant that "the
relationship between the United Kingdom Government and the United
States authorities went far beyond that of a bystander or witness to
the alleged wrongdoing."
However, despite this and other trenchant criticisms, the British
government has, to date, prevented the judges from either ordering the
release of 42 documents in its possession, which deal with Mohamed's
interrogations in Pakistan, or even releasing a seven-line summary of
those documents, even though the judges have clearly stated
that they believe the summary should be released in the interests of
"open justice," and because there is "nothing in the redacted
paragraphs that would identify any agent or any facility or any secret
means of intelligence gathering. Nor could anything in the redacted
paragraphs possibly be described as 'highly sensitive classified US
intelligence.'"
On Friday, reiterating a well-worn but disputed argument that
releasing the summary would cause "real harm to the national security
and international relations of the United Kingdom," Foreign Secretary
David Miliband again sought to prevent the judges from releasing the summary, but in today's Mail on Sunday,
David Rose reports that Binyam Mohamed has now stated that a British
spy - or a "mole," as Rose calls him - was sent by the British
authorities to Morocco in September 2002, in an attempt "to persuade
him that giving intelligence to the British would end his ordeal."
"It was one of my lowest points," Mohamed told Rose. "The really bad
stuff [the torture which included having his penis regularly cut by
razorblades] had already been going on for weeks. I thought he was a
friendly face who might get the British to help me - but it was just
another way of putting on pressure."
Mohamed's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, added that the Moroccans
told Mohamed that the man, a British citizen of Moroccan descent,
identified only as Informant A, "was working with the British
Government and pressed Mr. Mohamed to do the same if he wanted to end
his torture."
Stafford Smith also explained that he had written to Gordon Brown
demanding an immediate inquiry, calling for the government to finally
reveal its involvement with the case, and to "quit working with the US
to hide evidence of criminal acts." Pouring scorn on the British
authorities' claim that they did not know that he had been rendered to
Morocco by the Americans, Stafford Smith added that, in his letter, he
had written, "The suggestion that British officials simply lost track
of Mohamed for more than two years and did not know that he had been
rendered to Morocco for torture is implausible. They had their own
agent in Morocco who had seen Mohamed there and that person was back in
the UK while the razor blades were still being taken to Mohamed's
genitals."
What is even more fascinating about this story, however, is the
report of Binyam's relationship with Informant A before his capture,
and the fact that other Guantanamo prisoners were also aware of the
"mole."
As Rose described it, Informant A "knew Mohamed in London and helped
him plan the fateful journey in the spring of 2001 that took him first
to Pakistan, then to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. After Mohamed had
fled the conflict, the mole was wounded fighting alongside Osama Bin
Laden in the caves of Tora Bora. Months after that, Mohamed saw
Informant A again in Pakistan shortly before both men were separately
captured."
In addition, Tarek Dergoul, a British citizen who was released from
Guantanamo in 2004, said that he was "held at a US base in
Afghanistan in 2002 at the same time as Informant A," and he told David
Rose on Saturday, "The fact he'd agreed to become a grass was all over
the jail. One of the guards was saying, 'We've got another 007.'"
According to Stafford Smith, who said that Mohamed told him about
Informant A in Guantanamo in 2005, but that it was "only recently that
new sources have come forward to support his account," Shaker Aamer,
a British resident who is still held in Guantanamo, was actually seized
with Informant A in Afghanistan - or crossing the border into Pakistan
- and he told Stafford Smith that, when he was flown to Guantanamo,
Informant A was "taken somewhere else by the British." Rose added that
another, unidentified source explained that Informant A "had been
allowed to return to London after his capture."
While the revelation of the role played by Informant A will
undoubtedly renew the pressure on the British authorities to reveal the
extent of their involvement in Mohamed's interrogations in Morocco, two
other important questions also need to be raised.
The first involves trying to ascertain what information was provided
by the newly-recruited agent, who was presumably desperate to please
his new masters, when he was planted amongst the prisoners in
Afghanistan; and in particular, whether any of this information has
been used by the US authorities to justify the detention of prisoners
who are still held in Guantanamo, including, of course, Shaker Aamer.
The Saudi-born resident traveled to Afghanistan with another former
Guantanamo prisoner, Moazzam Begg, to establish a girl's school, funded
by a Saudi charity, and also to pursue a number of well-digging
projects that they had funded separately, but over the years he has
been subjected to several suspicious claims - including an allegation
that he "lived on stipends in Afghanistan paid by [Osama] bin Laden" -
whose provenance has never been explained.
The second question, however, is even more explosive, as it involves
asking whether Mohamed's rendition to Morocco, a country with which he
had no connection, was the direct result of information provided by
Informant A. Given his Moroccan background, I can only conclude that
this seems very likely, and that it also shines an even more
uncomfortable light on the British government's persistent attempts to
claim that it was never directly involved in Mohamed's rendition and
torture than the revelation that Informant A was sent to Morocco to
persuade him to cooperate. I state this for two reasons: firstly,
because it suggests that the British and American intelligence services
were in extremely close contact in the three months following Mohamed's
capture, when he was held in Pakistan, and secondly, because it
suggests, bluntly, that the CIA's decision to render Mohamed to Morocco
only came about because of British input.
I doubt that David Miliband is getting much rest today ...