21st Century Vision

How far we have fallen

In his new book, international lawyer Philippe Sands - author of the widely acclaimed Lawless World (Allen Lane 2005) - has named those responsible for the adoption by the current US administration of torture as an instrument of policy (Torture Team, Allen Lane 2008). The following account of what this means in practice, taken from the Human Rights Watch website, illustrates both the depravity of the Jordanian torturers and the moral corruption of their US sponsors.

On a recent trip to Amman, Jordan, during a visit to the home of someone who had been detained by the Jordanian intelligence service in 2002, I was given two very thin strips of paper covered with Arabic writing and marked with a thumbprint. Curled up into a tight spiral, they were no bigger than the cap of a pen. My contact, who had smuggled the papers out of intelligence detention a few years previously, told me that the message therein had been written by a prisoner who had been detained with him. He said it gave a detailed account of that person's experiences ... 

The message's author was a Yemeni terrorism suspect named Ali al-Hajj al-Sharqawi, who was arrested in Pakistan in February 2002. Though the message was undated, it was clear from the narrative that it had been written in October 2002. 

Sharqawi said that he had been delivered to Jordan by the CIA. Unknown to the outside world, he was held as a secret prisoner by the Jordanian intelligence service: unregistered, cut off from all communication and hidden during visits by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

In the note, which he managed to slip to my contact without his captors noticing, he gave what he called a "short summary of my sufferings."

"They beat me up in a way that does not know mercy," Sharqawi wrote, referring to his Jordanian captors, "and they're still beating me. They threatened me with electricity, with snakes and dogs ... [They said] we'll make you see death."

Sharqawi described his interrogations, explaining that the Jordanians were feeding his responses back to the CIA. "Every time that the interrogator asks me about a certain piece of information, and I talk," Sharqawi said, "he asks me if I told this to the Americans. And if I say no he jumps for joy, and he leaves me and goes to report it to his superiors, and they rejoice."

Of course the Jordanians deny this ever happened, but the flight logs of the CIA transports contradict them. And of course we in Britain - so free with our criticisms of the Iranians - have nothing to say about Jordanian brutality, the similar practices in Egypt and Morocco, or the connivance of the US in all these instances.

Al-Sharqawi is believed to be now in Guantánamo. Click here for the full version of his story.

All power corrupts - but rarely so openly

At Enfield and the Barnets United Nations Association we are doing our little bit for democracy. Together with the Enfield Civil Society Forum we are organizing a public meeting for candidates for Enfield and Haringey constituency in the Greater London Assembly elections on 1st May. Our idea is that citizens should have the opportunity to question the candidates on issues from local bus routes to climate change, and from the rot in our community which has led to a spate of murders of young black men in Edmonton to London's role as a world city. So if you are nearby on 21st April, why not come along to the meeting (see side panel for details)?

But goodness, doesn't our democracy need strengthening. What is so alarming is that some of the very people we elect to Parliament through the democratic process seem to be the ones who least understand what it means. Take two examples this week.

On Thursday the Court of Appeal denounced in ringing terms the government's capitulation to pressure from Saudi Arabia in calling off the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the huge bribes paid by BAE to secure arms contracts with the kingdom. "No one", the judges said, "whether in this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice", and they went on: "Had such a threat been made by one who was subject to the criminal law of this country, he would risk being charged with an attempt to pervert the course of justice".  As for Blair and his government: "To give in so easily merely encourages those with power ... to repeat such threats, in the knowledge that the courts will not interfere with the decision of a prosecutor to surrender".

What was the response from ministers? Pretty soon, and with the full support of the Conservative shadow attorney general, they were promising a "hands-on operation" to legislate to permit capitulation to blackmail in similar circumstances in the future. It does not seem to have occurred to these supposed guardians of the rule of law that you cannot logically pass a law which ceases to be one when it is inconvenient. What message does it send to those in developing countries whom we habitually lecture on the evils of corruption? Indeed what does it say to those - like Kibaki in Kenya and Mugabe in Zimbabwe - who when voted out of office simply refuse to go?

Today we read that another MP and luminary of constitutional principle thinks that a fellow member should be censured for calling on speaker Michael Martin to quit because of his defence of the self-serving Spanish practices now so rampant in the Commons. Ex-minister Denis MacShane apparently believes that the criticism of Martin was part of a "plot to discredit the government and parliamentary institutions". Mr MacShane doesn't seem to get it: as a member of a party that exists for little else but to facilitate the aims of powerful interests (such as BAE), while at the same time claiming the right to employ close relatives with complete contempt for every principle of equal opportunities and withholding expenses claims from scrutiny, he and his colleagues are doing the job themselves. No plotter could hope to compete.

So come and help keep your GLA candidates honest, as they have every desire to be. Subject them to open and rational scrutiny. They will welcome it, and so should we. Only the shadowy godfathers who think politics is a form of well-rewarded powerbroking have anything to lose.