SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Publish Secret 'Torture' Documents, MPs Tell Obama
Cross-party group of British politicians writes to US president as David Miliband defends himself over Mohamed case
Feb 19, 2009
A cross-party coalition of MPs and human-rights campaigners has written to Barack Obama calling on him to publish secret documents that allegedly contain evidence of US and British complicity in torture.
The move came as David Miliband, the foreign secretary, defended his position on the Guardian website over the suppression of evidence of the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the former UK resident held in Guantanamo Bay.
"Far from suppressing evidence, it was our efforts that got documents disclosed to Mr Mohamed's lawyers," Miliband wrote. He was referring to the handing over of 42 US intelligence documents to Mohamed's lawyers for the purposes of a secret military trial in the US.
The lawyers have had to sign an order that they would not disclose the contents of the documents. The high court in London has made it clear that it believes that what it calls the "powerful evidence" ought to be disclosed. The judges said they could not order the disclosure because, according to Miliband, the US said it was likely to cause "real damage" to British and American national security and harm intelligence-sharing between the two countries.
Miliband told MPs it was not his job to lobby Washington on the issue. It later emerged that it was his officials who had proposed to the US state department that it write a letter to the high court objecting to disclosure.
In today's article, Miliband says he would have "no objection" to the US deciding to publish the documents.
The letter to Obama calling on the president to publish them has been signed by Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister, Clare Algar, the executive director of the legal charity Reprieve, and Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK.
Davey said today: "With the foreign secretary refusing to lobby the US to release these documents, I felt others had to do his job for him. It is a total dereliction of duty for the foreign secretary not to push this case with the Obama administration, given this involves something so serious as torture."
He added: "So it is important that a direct request to President Obama comes from British MPs and civil society. The government's claims to oppose torture sound hollow when it fails to pursue the publication of evidence that may uncover it."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
A cross-party coalition of MPs and human-rights campaigners has written to Barack Obama calling on him to publish secret documents that allegedly contain evidence of US and British complicity in torture.
The move came as David Miliband, the foreign secretary, defended his position on the Guardian website over the suppression of evidence of the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the former UK resident held in Guantanamo Bay.
"Far from suppressing evidence, it was our efforts that got documents disclosed to Mr Mohamed's lawyers," Miliband wrote. He was referring to the handing over of 42 US intelligence documents to Mohamed's lawyers for the purposes of a secret military trial in the US.
The lawyers have had to sign an order that they would not disclose the contents of the documents. The high court in London has made it clear that it believes that what it calls the "powerful evidence" ought to be disclosed. The judges said they could not order the disclosure because, according to Miliband, the US said it was likely to cause "real damage" to British and American national security and harm intelligence-sharing between the two countries.
Miliband told MPs it was not his job to lobby Washington on the issue. It later emerged that it was his officials who had proposed to the US state department that it write a letter to the high court objecting to disclosure.
In today's article, Miliband says he would have "no objection" to the US deciding to publish the documents.
The letter to Obama calling on the president to publish them has been signed by Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister, Clare Algar, the executive director of the legal charity Reprieve, and Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK.
Davey said today: "With the foreign secretary refusing to lobby the US to release these documents, I felt others had to do his job for him. It is a total dereliction of duty for the foreign secretary not to push this case with the Obama administration, given this involves something so serious as torture."
He added: "So it is important that a direct request to President Obama comes from British MPs and civil society. The government's claims to oppose torture sound hollow when it fails to pursue the publication of evidence that may uncover it."
A cross-party coalition of MPs and human-rights campaigners has written to Barack Obama calling on him to publish secret documents that allegedly contain evidence of US and British complicity in torture.
The move came as David Miliband, the foreign secretary, defended his position on the Guardian website over the suppression of evidence of the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the former UK resident held in Guantanamo Bay.
"Far from suppressing evidence, it was our efforts that got documents disclosed to Mr Mohamed's lawyers," Miliband wrote. He was referring to the handing over of 42 US intelligence documents to Mohamed's lawyers for the purposes of a secret military trial in the US.
The lawyers have had to sign an order that they would not disclose the contents of the documents. The high court in London has made it clear that it believes that what it calls the "powerful evidence" ought to be disclosed. The judges said they could not order the disclosure because, according to Miliband, the US said it was likely to cause "real damage" to British and American national security and harm intelligence-sharing between the two countries.
Miliband told MPs it was not his job to lobby Washington on the issue. It later emerged that it was his officials who had proposed to the US state department that it write a letter to the high court objecting to disclosure.
In today's article, Miliband says he would have "no objection" to the US deciding to publish the documents.
The letter to Obama calling on the president to publish them has been signed by Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, Andrew Tyrie, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition, Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister, Clare Algar, the executive director of the legal charity Reprieve, and Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK.
Davey said today: "With the foreign secretary refusing to lobby the US to release these documents, I felt others had to do his job for him. It is a total dereliction of duty for the foreign secretary not to push this case with the Obama administration, given this involves something so serious as torture."
He added: "So it is important that a direct request to President Obama comes from British MPs and civil society. The government's claims to oppose torture sound hollow when it fails to pursue the publication of evidence that may uncover it."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.