Why can't our government remember torture sessions it took part in?
However, you'd think that we'd manage to remember that our government engaged in torture. It seems quite important.
Even if torture somehow slips the mind of the public, surely the government would remember? If you were involved in torture, wouldn't it perhaps stay somewhere in your memory banks?
Pity our poor government, then. It's a sure sign of dotage when you can't recall the crimes you've committed.
Read more by Neil Mackay
I know the Government is busy, but I'm pretty confident that no matter how run off our feet you or I may be we'd remember screams from a torture chamber.
This failure of memory struck me as I read accounts of an ongoing tribunal hearing centred on whether British intelligence was complicit in the mistreatment of two men tortured by America's CIA in the early 2000s.
The case is continuing behind closed doors, where the findings will be considered in secret.
It centres on two alleged al-Qaeda terrorists. Both have been in Guantanamo Bay since 2006, and were held incommunicado at secret "black site" prisons where they were 'systematically' tortured.
Lawyers for the two – Mustafa al-Hawsawi, accused of aiding the 9/11 hijackers, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to have plotted al-Qaeda's bombing of a US naval ship – claim there's credible evidence British intelligence unlawfully aided, abetted, conspired or 'were otherwise complicit' in their torture by the CIA.
During the reportable part of the case, the British Government admitted UK intelligence services 'were too slow to appreciate the risk of mistreatment to detainees in CIA detention'.
This has been described as a 'startling' admission. Professor Sam Raphael, an expert on CIA black sites, said it 'appeared to explicitly concede for the first time that UK agencies were involved in the CIA's detention programme'.
For sure, this mealy-mouthed statement from our Government is significant, but in truth we learn nothing new here.
I found the entire discussion somewhat strange as I was sure I remembered writing investigation upon investigation at the height of the so-called "War on Terror" outlining explicitly in this newspaper the assistance which British intelligence offered to America in acts of torture.
Sure enough, I was right. For once someone's memory hadn't failed them. I'm currently looking at a newspaper from October 2005, in which I wrote a piece for The Herald headed "Torture Flights: the Inside Story". It investigated the use of what's called "extraordinary rendition'"
Rendition saw terror suspects scooped off the streets of cities around the world, then transferred to third-party countries where they were tortured. British airports, including Prestwick and Glasgow, were used for these rendition flights.
One case I investigated was that of Binyam Mohamed. Born in Ethiopia, Mohamed was raised in Britain. After 9-11, he was seized in Karachi.
While in custody in Pakistan, FBI officers interrogated him. When they left, Pakistani jailers beat him and held a gun at his chest.
Two MI6 officers then visited him. Mohamed claimed one told him he would 'get tortured by the Arabs'.
Mohamed was then handed to American soldiers, stripped, shackled, blindfolded and taken to Morocco. The Americans told him he had to give them information on al-Qaeda. Mohamed denied any involvement with terrorism.
The internationally acclaimed lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith represented Mohamed. He told me: 'The British Government was complicit in some of the abuse that took place against Binyam, at least to the extend that the Government told the Moroccans information that they would then use against him in the torture sessions.'
Mohamed suffered appalling treatment. One guard told him: 'They'll come in wearing masks and beat you up. They'll beat you with sticks. They'll rape you first, then they'll take a glass bottle, they break the top off and they make you sit on it.'
Later, he would face torturers wearing bondage masks, and was beaten until he vomited. His food was stopped, and he was subjected to relentless noise.
Mohamed was taken into a room with meat hooks and beaten unconscious. During one torture session, an interrogator used a scalpel to cut his penis. He was held in Morocco for 18 months where he was drugged, and deprived of sleep.
It didn't take long for him to start confessing to anything he was accused of: that he'd met Osama bin-Laden, that he was al-Qaeda's top "ideas man".
During interrogation he was asked questions which could only have come from British intelligence. Moroccan torturers knew who his fitness instructor was in Britain, what grades he got at school.
Stafford-Smith said: 'British intelligence aided and abetted torture by passing information to interrogators which was then used to question suspects.'
The Americans later transferred Mohamed to an Afghan holding centre, where he was subjected to more abuse, before sending him to Guantanamo in 2004.
He was eventually released in 2009 and returned to Britain. In 2010, Mohamed, and a number of other men, reached a settlement with the British Government for compensation running into millions of pounds.
Binyam Mohamed (Image: PA)
Such events are far from rare. Britain was involved in torture long before 9-11. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled that the treatment of 14 men – known as "the hooded men'" interned without trial in Northern Ireland in 1971 – 'would be characterised today' as torture.
In 2011, Human Rights Watch discovered documents in Libya after the fall of Gaddafi revealing 'high-level cooperation among United States, United Kingdom and Libyan intelligence agencies' regarding the transfer of suspects.
This followed rapprochement between Libya and the West. Gaddafi was brought in from the cold to assist the war on terror. His regime was known for torture.
British intelligence still operates under the so-called "James Bond clause" – section seven of the Intelligence Services Act which protects spies for crimes committed abroad.
It matters that we remember and keep talking about the role our Government played in torture. If we don't, it could happened again. Indeed, in might be happening now.
Neil Mackay is the Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.
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