The disappeared

Ian Boys of Dissident UK points out that essential civil liberties are collateral damage in the war against terrorism

For better or for worse the war against terrorism is Britain’s war too: we sent a few thousand soldiers to Afghanistan and made our political support for President Bush quite clear. Now it has come back to haunt us: nine of our citizens are held incommunicado in Guantanamo Bay, together with several more from the Commonwealth. We do at least know who and where they are, even if we do not know why they are being held. Their families cannot visit them and they cannot speak to outside lawyers. Their status has been determined by the US Secretary of Defence and the only lawyers they will be allowed are US military officers: it has been suggested that their conversations even with these will be overheard. The same camp holds children as young as 13, while 16-year olds are mixed in with the adult detainees.

Imagine that Argentina’s Junta of the 1980’s or today’s Iran were holding these 680-odd detainees, including nine Britons. The outcry would be phenomenal. There would be talk of sanctions at the very least.

Yet these are actually the ‘lucky few’ among the hundreds detained by the USA. Many many more have disappeared. Let’s look at that word – reminiscent of the dictatorships of the 1960’s and 70’s. Do I mean that they have been murdered? No, probably not. Do I mean that they have been tortured? Yes – whether outright physical pressure or just being held in a steel container at Bagram airbase in the blazing sun. Do I mean that they have vanished, held in some solitary hell-hole? Most certainly. Whatever became of Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, handed over to the USA by Pakistan and held at an unknown location? It is alleged that these two men confessed to a journalist to being the brains behind Sept. 11th. It is likely that such will indeed prove to be the case. So why aren’t they in civilian courts in the USA awaiting trial for mass murder? The simple answer is that they know things that the US Government wants to find out, so where are they and what is being done to them? Nobody knows. This is being done in our name.

Five men were recently ‘disappeared’ from Malawi. The CIA ‘identified’ them and they were taken into custody there. In spite of there beoing no extradition treaty between Malawi and the USA and in the face of a Malawi High Court injunction forbidding their removal they were handed over to US agents and put on a plane out of the country. Their present whereabouts and the conditions they are being held under remain unknown. It seems being ‘identified’ by the CIA is enough to have you disappear. Malawi is a Commonwealth country and one of the five was a Commonwealth citizen. [BBC source] They have not been charged with any offence.

People are also disappearing out of the US civil criminal justice system. [Human Rights Watch source]. Three people so far who were on criminal trial in the mainland US and who had lawyers representing them have been removed from the criminal justice system, removed from access to lawyers and journalists and been placed in military custody as ‘enemy combatants’. One of them, a Qatari named Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, had been charged with lying to the FBI and credit card fraud – hardly earth-shattering offences. With no clear link to any war zone he has been disappeared – held without charge and without representation. It now seems likely that Zacarias Moussaoui (known to the world as the alleged 20th hijacker – not much chance of a fair hearing!) is likely to join al-Marri and the others, as he has asked to call Binalshibh (see above) in his defence at his trial – that seems unlikely to be allowed.

Here in the UK the Government has detained without trial an unknown number of people since 2001 purely on the basis of the danger they may pose. This is fundamentally, seriously wrong. Either they are engaged in a conspiracy to commit an offence (in which case our Security Service and Special Branch should investigate and charge if necessary) or they are not. Holding people without charge goes against all notions of British justice. We are not even permitted to know why they are being held. The Security Service have scored a number of notable successes, like the Ricin factory, and there have been no major Al-Qaeda related incidents in the UK. That would seem to vindicate the policy of interning these people, but it is just as good an argument against. And internment without trial, as we learned in Northern Ireland, is one of the best ways of convincing a person flirting with opposition that we are actually worth fighting against.