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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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UK’s feeble torture inquiry boycotted by Human Rights Groups

12 Aug

Ten human rights groups said last week they would boycott a UK government inquiry into allegations that its secret services were complicit in torture of detainees in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The groups, including Human Rights Watch, Liberty, Reprieve and Amnesty International, sent a letter to the Detainee Inquiry saying they would no longer participate after receiving information on the protocol and transparency of the inquiry, siting a lack of credibility and transparency, and the claim that arrangements for it are “secretive, unfair and deeply flawed”.

They argue that the inquiry conducted in the manner described to them would not comply with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights on the prohibition of torture. The joint letter states:

We are particularly disappointed that the issue of what material may be disclosed to the public will not be determined independently of Government and, further, that there will be no meaningful participation of the former and current detainees and other interested third parties. As you know, we were keen to assist the Inquiry in the vital work of establishing the truth about allegations that UK authorities were involved in the mistreatment of detainees held abroad. Our strong view, however, is that the process currently proposed does not have the credibility or transparency to achieve this. If the Inquiry proceeds on this basis, therefore, and in light of indications from the lawyers acting for former detainees that they will not be participating, we do not intend to submit any evidence or attend any further meetings with the Inquiry team.

Amnesty International released a public statement on its decision to boycott the inquiry saying, “[c]rucially, [AI] believes that the Detainee Inquiry risks failing in its intended aim to systematically get to the truth of these allegations, and ensure that such abuses never happen again.”

The Detainee Inquiry released the protocol exactly one year after UK Prime Minister David Cameron said he would set up an inquiry to investigate the allegations of torture. The announcement came after 12 ex-detainees brought civil cases against the government, claiming that British agents took part in their mistreatment while they were held in prisons in foreign countries, including Pakistan and Morocco.

Key sessions will be held in secret and the cabinet secretary will have the final say over what information is made public. Those who alleged they were subject to torture and rendition will not be able to question MI5 or MI6 officers, and will foreign intelligence agencies will not be questioned. Read the rest of this entry »