Parliamentary body urges inquiry into claimed British torture role

An independent inquiry is needed into claims UK security services were complicit in the torture of terrorism suspects, say MPs and peers.
The Joint Human Rights Committee said it was unable to establish whether British officers were involved in mistreatment of suspects.
It also criticised ministers and the head of MI5 for refusing to testify at parliamentary hearings on the claims.
Minister Ivan Lewis said torture was "unacceptable and abhorrent".
"We neither engage in, collude with or condone torture," the foreign affairs minister told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
Asked whether Britain was complicit in torture, he said: "I don't believe that that's the case.
"We stand very firmly in saying that torture is not acceptable. We make it clear to those countries that we work with.
It is unacceptable both for Ministers to refuse to answer policy questions about the Security Services, and for the Director General of MI5 to answer questions from the press but not from a Parliamentary committee
Andrew Dismore, committee chairman
"What we can't do is simply turn away from our responsibilities to the security of the British people."
In a highly critical report, the joint parliamentary committee said there was now a "disturbing number of credible allegations" of British complicity in torture.
These allegations include the rendition and alleged abuse of British resident Binyam Mohammed from Pakistan to Morocco, prior to being taken to Guantanamo Bay.
The Metropolitan Police are investigating the role of one MI5 officer in Mr Mohamed's case.
Last week the High Court revealed that the same officer visited Morocco three times during the period that Mr Mohamed says he was being secretly tortured there.
Binyam Mohamed: Claims to have been tortured in Morocco by interrogators who asked him questions about his life which he says could only have come from British authorities
Salauddin Amin: Claims Britain was complicit in alleged torture suffered following his arrest in Pakistan
Rangzieb Ahmed: Claims his fingernails were pulled by a Pakistani torturer and MI5 supplied Pakistani interrogators with questions
The committee also looked at other cases where British men, two of whom have been convicted of terror offences, say they were visited by British intelligence officers while they were detained and allegedly mistreated by Pakistani authorities.
But in all the cases, the parliamentary committee said it could not get to the facts because too many questions were not being properly answered.
It said that both the foreign secretary and home secretary, as well as the director general of MI5, had declined to give evidence on what was known about torture or mistreatment.
The ministers appeared "determined to avoid parliamentary scrutiny", said the report, and had batted away important questions with standardised answers.
Committee chairman Andrew Dismore MP said: "The allegations we have heard about UK complicity in torture are extremely serious.
"It is unacceptable both for ministers to refuse to answer policy questions about the security services, and for the director general of MI5 to answer questions from the press but not from a Parliamentary committee."

US Blackwater-Xe Mercenaries Spread Fear in Peshawar

This is a report by the German news agency DPA.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan—Fear is spreading across University Town, an upmarket residential area in Pakistan’s north-western city of Peshawar, due to the overt presence of the controversial US private security contractor Blackwater. Sporting the customary dark glasses and carrying assault rifles, the mercenaries zoom around the neighborhood in their black-colored armored Chevy Suburbans, and shout at motorists when occasionally stranded in a traffic jam.

The residents are mainly concerned about Blackwater’s reputation as a ruthless, unbridled private army whose employees face multiple charges of murder, child prostitution and weapons smuggling in Iraq.

‘Sometimes, these guys stand in the streets and behave rudely with the passers-by, sometimes they point guns at people without provocation’ said Imtiaz Gul, an engineer, whose home is a few hundred meters from the US contractor’s base on Chanar Road in University Town.

‘Who rules our streets, the Pakistani government or the Americans? They have created a state within the state,’ he added.

Repeated complaints to the authorities have been to no avail since, according to residents.

Blackwater provides security to the employees of Creative Associates International Inc. (CAII), an American company carrying out multi-million-dollar development projects in the country’s Islamic militancy-plagued Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a former US Navy SEAL officer and a major contributor to Republican Party candidates, Blackwater has hired thousands of former military personnel from Western countries as well as other mercenaries from the Third World.

It emerged as the largest of the US Department of State’s private security companies, winning multi-million-dollar contracts globally, but attracted a lot of media attention in September 2007 when its personnel killed 17 civilians in an unprovoked shooting while escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles to a meeting in Baghdad.

The firm is now facing a civil lawsuit filed in the US state of Virginia by those who were injured and who lost family members in the massacre.

The company faces charges of human rights violations, child prostitution and possible supply of weapons to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, an Iraqi group designated by United Nations, European Union and NATO as a terrorist organization. It has been declared persona non grata in Iraq.

To conceal its bad reputation, the shadowy company renamed itself Xe Worldwide in February 2009 and Prince resigned as its chief executive officer the following month.

In Pakistan, the Interior Ministry asked the regional governments of all four provinces to keep an eye on the activities of Blackwater in early 2008, immediately after it was believed to have been hired by CAII, according to a media report.

CAII works locally under the name of FATA Development Programme Government to Community (FDPGC).

Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad, said that Blackwater-Xe was not in any way associated with its missions in Pakistan. But the denial does not include the possibility that the security firm was working for a private US company.

Blackwater has recruited dozens of retired commandos from Pakistan’s army and elite police force through its local sub-contractors, said an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some Pakistani security officials suggested that besides providing security to the aid workers, Blackwater was carrying out covert operations.

Among these were buying the loyalties of influential tribal elders and tracking the money flowing to al-Qaeda and Taliban through the national and international banks, something which perhaps goes far beyond the mandate of a private security firm.

Taliban and al-Qaeda militants who use the tribal regions to attack civilian and government targets inside Pakistan and NATO-led international forces in Afghanistan are also watching Blackwater’s moves.

On June 9, suicide bombers drove an explosive-laden vehicle into Peshawar’s sole five-star hotel, the Pearl Continental, after shooting the security guards, and detonated it at the side of the building where some Blackwater guards were staying.

Sixteen people died including four of the security firm’s personnel – two Westerners and the same number of locals. Four more guards were injured.

The dead bodies and injured were moved quietly. Neither the Pakistani government nor any foreign official admitted these deaths, apparently at the request of US officials.

‘Absolutely no comments,’ Qazi Jamil, the senior superintendent of police in Peshawar said abruptly when German Press Agency DPA asked him about the Blackwater deaths.

But a minister in the North-West Frontier Province government, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he knew that some US private guards died but did not know how many and which firm they were from.

‘The provincial government was not directly dealing with the issue. It’s the federal intelligence agencies that handled it,’ said the minister.

The possibility that Islamist militants might be plotting more attacks on the contractors is also a source of concern for many residents in University Town.

‘In the first week of July we requested the interior minister in a letter that targets like Blackwater should be kept away from the residential areas,’ said Ihsan Toro, a trader and member of council of citizens in University Town.

‘Al-Qaeda and the Taliban must be after them,’ added Toro.

Pakistan bigger threat for uk then helmand-report

A House of Commons report published on Sunday concluded that the UK faced more threat from inside Pakistan than from Afghanistan’s Helmand province where, the report asserted, British soldiers were sent on ‘an ill-defined mission undermined by unrealistic planning and lack of manpower’.
The Labour-chaired Commons foreign affairs select committee report raises the alarming spectre of Al Qaeda, ‘which has shifted its focus into Pakistan’.
Professor Shaun Gregory, an expert on Pakistan at Bradford University, told the committee that a direct attack on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons infrastructure could not be ruled out.
According to the Observer, MPs concluded that there was now a ‘strong argument to be made’ that the Afghan insurgency was no longer an immediate threat to Britain, adding: ‘That threat in the form of Al Qaeda and international terrorism can be said more properly to emanate from Pakistan’.
The report concluded that, while the military campaign in Helmand might be gaining traction, Afghan support for the troops had been damaged by civilian casualties and ‘cultural insensitivity’, and there was no evidence the war on drugs had reduced poppy cultivation.
A weak, corrupt police force was driving Afghans back to the Taliban to seek justice, it argued, while cultural assumptions about women were barely changed.
The Observer said Whitehall was braced for the publication this month of a review of the Afghanistan campaign by General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces there, which was expected to trigger a fresh debate over troop numbers. Some MPs believed parliament might even be recalled from recess to debate Afghanistan.
The Foreign Office admitted on Saturday night that the insurgent threat in Helmand was ‘greater than anticipated’, but said the aim of denying Al Qaeda a safe haven remained unchanged.
The committee suggested that Whitehall was distracted by Iraq during its planning, made wrong assumptions about Afghan expectations and gave unclear direction to the armed forces. It noted that ‘most analysts believe the initial UK strategy failed primarily because of a lack of manpower and a poor understanding of the local situation’.
Meanwhile, a memo from Major Brian Dupree leaked to the newspaper showed that Britain’s war effort in Afghanistan was being hindered by a number of frontline troops ‘too fat to fight’.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed that it had directed military chiefs to ensure units were following army fitness policy after concerns were raised over a ‘worrying trend of obesity’.