A legal charity has named two men who ended up in the infamous "dark prison" at Bagram in Afghanistan
after being handed to US forces by members of the SAS. The men were
held in Afghanistan after being seized by the British in Iraq.
The charity Reprieve said it was suing the Ministry of Defence for refusing officially to identify the men, who are from Pakistan. The MoD argues that if it released their names, even to their families, it would be in breach of the Data Protection Act.
The
director of Reprieve, Clive Stafford Smith, accused the ministry of
"rank hypocrisy" for refusing to give the prisoners their rights while
at the same time claiming it was upholding the rule of law.
David
Davis, the former Conservative shadow home secretary, who has also
taken up the case, described the ministry's refusal to release the
names as an "insult". "If they are bad people, tell us who they are. I
think the reason we are not being told is because it is politically
embarrassing. They deserve a trial. We deserve to know what the truth
is."
Reprieve said it had taken years and thousands of pounds to
discover the identities of the two men who were taken by the SAS in
Iraq in 2004. It named them today as Amanatullah Ali, a Shia, and Yunus
Rahmatullah, a Sunni.
It said Rahmatullah, who is also known as
Saleh, is being held in the mental health wing of Bagram and has been
unable to contact his family or a lawyer and was in a "legal black
hole".
The British legal aid system will not allow his family to
bring a case because there is insufficient proof Saleh was the prisoner
rendered to Afghanistan, though only the British government had proof,
Reprieve said.
The charity released a statement from
Rahmatullah's mother, Fatima, in which she said: "As a mother, this is
a position that I struggle to understand. My plea to the British
government is simple: tell me whether you picked my son Yunus up and
gave him to the Americans."
John Hutton, the defence secretary at
the time, admitted to the Commons a year ago that British officials
knew about the transfer of the prisoners in 2004, although the
government had previously denied having any knowledge of the case. He
said they were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, (LeT) a banned organisation
that he said was linked to al-Qaida.
The US had assured him that
the men were being held in humane conditions and had access to the Red
Cross. Hutton added that the US had taken the prisoners to Afghanistan
because of a "lack of relevant linguists necessary to interrogate them
effectively in Iraq".
In a letter to Jack Straw, the justice
secretary, released today, Stafford Smith says on a recent visit to
Pakistan that he received evidence that Amanatullah, a rice farmer,
could not be a member of LeT, a Sunni extremist group.
In his
statement last year, Hutton referred to allegations first made in 2008
by Ben Griffin, a former SAS soldier, that British troops had handed
over to the US detainees who were then rendered to Iraq. The MoD
subsequently obtained a gagging order preventing Griffin from saying
anything further.
Davis said he would be surprised if an incoming
Conservative government did not set up an immediate inquiry into this
case and others where Britain is alleged to have been involved in the
secret rendering by the US of detainees to prison where they were
likely to be tortured.
The MoD had threatened it would seek to
impose costs if Reprieve took legal action against it, a move designed
to intimidate, said Stafford Smith. "The government may think that
bully-boy tactics will intimidate us. In truth, they merely steel our
resolve," he said.
An MoD spokesman described the two men as
"insurgents captured in Baghdad as they posed an imperative threat to
security of the Iraqi people and our armed forces".
He added:
"Reprieve were seeking an assurance that the MoD would not pursue them
for costs if they lost, but were clear that no reciprocal assurance
would be provided. The MoD has therefore declined to give them this
assurance."