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Will Fatima Bouchar’s Nightmare Hold US-UK Accountable for Extraordinary Renditions?

Special report: Rendition ordeal that raises new questions about secret trials

In 2004, Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, were detained en route to the UK, and rendered to Libya. This is the story of their imprisonment, and the trail of evidence that reveals the involvement of the British government.

Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her feet. They moved upwards, she says, along her legs, winding the tape around and around, binding her to the stretcher. They taped her stomach, her arms and then her chest. She was bound tight, unable to move.

Bouchar says there were three Americans: two tall, thin men and an equally tall woman. Mostly they were silent. She never saw their faces: they dressed in black and always wore black balaclavas. Bouchar was terrified. They didn’t stop at her chest – she says they also wound the tape around her head, covering her eyes. Then they put a hood and earmuffs on her. She was unable to move, to hear or to see. “My left eye was closed when the tape was applied,” she says, speaking about her ordeal for the first time. “But my right eye was open, and it stayed open throughout the journey. It was agony.” The journey would last around 17 hours.

Bouchar, then aged 30, had become a victim of the process known as extraordinary rendition. She and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a Libyan Islamist militant fighting Muammar Gaddafi, had been abducted in Bangkok and were being flown to one of Gaddafi’s prisons in Libya, a country where she had never before set foot. However, Bouchar’s case is different from the countless other renditions that the world has learned about over the past few years, and not just because she was one of the few female victims.

Documents discovered in Tripoli show that the operation was initiated by British intelligence officers, rather than the masked Americans or their superiors in the US. There is also some evidence that the operation may have been linked to a second British-initiated operation, which saw two men detained in Iraq and rendered to Afghanistan. Furthermore, the timing of the operation, and the questions that Bouchar’s husband and a second rendition victim say were subsequently put to them under torture, raise disturbing new questions about the secret court system that considers immigration appeals in terrorist cases in the UK – a system that the government has pledged to extend to civil trials in which the government itself is the defendant.

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Libyan Dissidents Sue MI6 Officer over Abduction and Torture Claims

05 Feb

Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi serve claim on Sir Mark Allen in first test of legislation described as a ‘licence to kill’

Two prominent Libyan dissidents are suing a former senior MI6 officer in a move which could expose the role of ministers in the men’s abduction to Tripoli, where they say they were tortured by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police.

Lawyers for Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi have served a claim on Sir Mark Allen, the MI6 officer at the centre of the affair. They are suing Allen, then the most senior officer in MI6 responsible for counter-terrorism, alleging “complicity in torture” and “misfeasance in public office”.

Whitehall officials have repeatedly defended MI6′s actions, saying the agency was following “ministerially authorised government policy.”

The case will be the first significant test of a little-known piece of legislation, section seven of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act, which protects MI6 officers from liability for criminal acts abroad as long as their actions have been authorised by a cabinet minister.

Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time, and former prime minister Tony Blair, have both sought to distance themselves from the matter. In a BBC radio interview, Straw said: “No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence services are doing at any one time.”

Straw declined to comment on Monday but has said in the past that he was “always happy to deal with any questions relating to his time as home secretary or foreign secretary”.

The two men are also claiming damages for “unlawful detention, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, batteries and assaults” by US, Thai, and Libyan agents.

In a claim which has been sent to government lawyers, the men’s solicitors, Leigh Day, told Allen that if he denied the claims, they would demand disclosure of documents, including MI6 communications with Gaddafi’s government, the CIA, MI5 and other British government agencies. The law firm has demanded a response within six weeks.

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Zachary Adam Chesser: October 20, 2011 (Response to Qaddaafi’s Death)

20 Oct

Bismillaah ir-Rahmaan ir-Rahiim,
22nd Dhul-Qi’dah, 1432
20th October, 2011

As-salaamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuhu,

‘Ozymandias’

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Al-hamdu Lillaah, today is a great day. The fate of every tyrant has consumed Qaddaafi, the butcher of Libya. How much did he wage war against Allaah subhaanahu wa ta’alaa and His awliyaa? Who was more arrogant in their defiance of the truth than Mu’ammar al-Qaddaafi? This should be a strong message to those who seek to oppress the Muslims and to wage war on the truth. Allaah subhaanahu wa ta’alaa will never grant a man glory through falsehood.

The fate of the tyrant has been humiliation since the time of Fir’awn. We have now seen the sea swallow two rulers, the Fir’awn of Egypt and the Fir’awn of Libya. The tyrant of Yemen has been set ablaze and cannot move a finger in his own land.

O Muslims, how many of you have watched as the doors to the rewards of these deeds have been closed? How many people have heeded the words of the shayatiin who told the Muslim people that Allaah hates that you free yourself from oppression and kufr? How many people had the opportunity to give victory to Islaam, but have squandered it? Allaah loves the saabiquun. Allaah loves those who are early in doing righteousness. Those who come late have a much lower status, and those who do not come at all are the lowest of the people.

O rulers of the Muslim world, have you learned your lesson? It should be clear that the Muslim people will not accept oppression. They will not tolerate that you hold back their religion, that you murder their families, that you wage war on their resources. They will not tolerate that you remain deaf to their words while you are immersed in heeding the words of the East and the West.

Wallaahi, we are all going to die, and the only thing we will take with us are our deeds. How hollow are the caravans for the funerals of the tyrants? The people march, and sing, and mourn men who are being paraded off to Jahannam. How hollow are the deaths of their soldiers? Who will be the last man to die for this tyrant inLibya? The one who sells himself for this worldly life will only achieve an everlasting humiliation, while the one who sells himself for the hereafter finds nothing more beloved to him than that he go to his grave with his deeds.

May Allaah free the Muslims in every land.
Was-salaamu ‘alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakaatuhu,
Abu Talhah

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Posted by aseerun on October 20, 2011 in Letters from Zachary Adam Chesser, Risala

Tags: Abu Talha, death of Gaddafi, Gaddafi, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poem, Qaddaafi, Shelley