December, 14 2015, 07:30am EDT
UK Torture Complicity
Jack Straw’s comments do not fit with facts
LONDON
Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has reportedly today claimed that "the British government never condoned, nor was complicit, in the torture or ill-treatment of detainees, wherever they were held."
Mr Straw's reported claims are directly at odds with a range of evidence, including MI6 correspondence relating to the kidnap and rendition of Gaddafi opponents; judgments from the High Court; and even the admissions of his own colleagues in Government.
Documents found in Libya after the fall of the Gaddafi regime show a senior MI6 officer taking credit for an operation, conducted alongside the CIA, which saw a Libyan dissident and his five-months' pregnant wife kidnapped, tortured, and forcibly flown to Gaddafi's prisons in 2004. The operation took place while Mr Straw was Foreign Secretary, with responsibility for MI6, and is the subject of a Metropolitan Police investigation which has passed files to the Crown Prosecution Service for a charging decision.
The documents include a letter from Sir Mark Allen, then director of counter-terrorism at MI6, to Libyan spy chief Moussa Koussa in the wake of the kidnap and rendition of Abdul-hakim Belhadj and his wife Fatima Boudchar, in which he emphasises that while "I did not pay for the air cargo," "the intelligence...was British." Sir Mark adds that "This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years. I am so glad."
Mr Straw's comments also appear to be at odds with a 2009 High Court ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed, who was rendered by the CIA to a secret prison in Morocco where he faced extensive torture. The High Court found that "the relationship of the United Kingdom government to the United States authorities in connection with Binyam Mohamed was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing."
Finally, two of Mr Straw's Cabinet colleagues admitted to the House of Commons in 2008 that British personnel and territory had been involved in the US rendition programme, which saw people flown to secret prisons around the world in order to be tortured. 2008 saw then-Foreign Secretary David Miliband admit that CIA rendition flights, carrying prisoners, had used the British territory of Diego Garcia on two occasions in 2002. In the same year, then-Defence Secretary John Hutton admitted that, in 2004, UK personnel had captured people in Iraq and handed them to the US, who then 'rendered' them to a secret prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, where they faced torture.
Commenting, Cori Crider, a director at international human rights charity Reprieve - which is representing the Libyan rendition and torture victims - said: "Mr Straw's claims seem to be an attempt to re-write history. We already know that Britain was complicit in the US torture programme - the only questions remaining are how far this went, who knew about it, and who signed it off. As the minister responsible for MI6 when it helped render a pregnant woman and four young children to Gaddafi's prisons, maybe Mr Straw could start giving us some answers."
Reprieve is a UK-based human rights organization that uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantanamo Bay.
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"As CMS negotiates the prices Medicare will pay for top-selling drugs, it should take into account the billions we've already lost due to these patenting tactics," said one researcher.
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When the Inflation Reduction Act became law in 2022, it included a historic provision that gave the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) the ability to negotiate maximum fair prices for select drugs. This means that CMS now has an important tool to resist high prices imposed by pharmaceutical companies and lower the cost that Medicare recipients pay for their drugs. So far, Medicare has negotiated the maximum fair prices for 10 drugs, which will go into effect January 1, 2026.
But according to a report released Wednesday by the watchdog group Public Citizen, the manufacturers behind these drugs are able to rely on another method to protect their profits: patent abuses and evergreening tactics.
The report defines "evergreening tactics" as the practice of "patenting trivial and/or obvious modifications of existing medications to lengthen exclusivity on branded medicines."
The makers of the drugs Eliquis, Imbruvica, Jardiance, Farxiga, and Entresto, for example, obtained patents on what constitute trivial or minor changes to earlier patent claims, "such as crystalline forms of drug compounds which would be discovered and managed during routine testing that is part of the drug approval process," according to Public Citizen. These new patents allow the manufacturers to extend their monopoly on these drugs.
"Big Pharma patent abuse is cheating Medicare enrollees of more affordable drugs and costing taxpayers billions," said Public Citizen Access to Medicines program researcher Jishian Ravinthiran in a statement.
"Patent abuses enable Big Pharma companies to unfairly extend their monopolies and keep prices artificially high. As CMS negotiates the prices Medicare will pay for top-selling drugs, it should take into account the billions we've already lost due to these patenting tactics," he added.
The report makes this same point, arguing that the agency's initial offers on pharmaceuticals should take into account how long-monopoly drugs have been able to obtain longtime exclusivities on medicines by manipulating patents.
This is paramount, Public Citizen argues, given the scope of lost savings. The group estimates that Medicare will lose somewhere between $4.9 and $5.4 billion in savings that should have accrued to taxpayers if four out of the 10 drugs did not take advantage of patenting tactics, and therefore would have faced greater competition prior to negotiation.
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Tanaka warned that there are currently 12,000 nuclear warheads in the arsenals of the U.S., Russia, China, and six other countries, and 4,000 of those "could be launched immediately."
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Tanaka said that "the nuclear taboo threatens to be broken," as evidenced by Israeli Heritage Minister Amihay Eliyahu's recent comment that a nuclear attack on Gaza would be "one way" to defeat Hamas.
"I am infinitely saddened and angered" by such statements, said Tanaka.
He described his experience as a 13-year-old when the U.S. bombed Nagasaki, just a couple of miles away from his family's house, which was crushed by the impact.
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"Hunger is a man-made tragedy that you helped make in Gaza."
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"She is on a shamelessness tour in her final weeks as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.," journalist Jeremy Scahill wrote Wednesday in response to Thomas-Greenfield's speech. "She presided over numerous cease-fire vetoes as part of an administration that facilitated Israel's starvation policy against the Palestinians of Gaza. Listen to her remarks on 'hunger' in that context."
Yesterday, @USUN brought together humanitarian leaders to discuss solutions to the global food insecurity crisis.
Hunger is a man-made tragedy. But if it caused by man, that means it can be stopped by us, too.
Every human being, everywhere, has the right to food. pic.twitter.com/zczlerRHEc
— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) December 10, 2024
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