'Extraordinary Renditions' - a UK connection

By popular request, here is a 'remix' of the original article that places the corresponding paragraphs together - to save you from scrolling up and down the page...

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'Extraordinary Renditions' - a UK Home Secretary & Foreign Secretary connection...

C1-C10 = 'Operation Condor’ (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, etc)
J1-J10 = 'Operation Jackdaw’ (UK, Libya, USA, etc)

• Remember... Compare the paragraphs, and form a composite picture in your mind - what do you see in the picture? Is everything as it should be? As well as your eyes, try using your nose to judge whether the overall picture 'smells' right. It is also fine to follow your gut instinct.
• Maybe you see a face in the picture, akin to a suspect in a police sketch artist's drawing? Maybe a man doing something bad in a high place? Or unhappy children? Maybe you don't see anything at all, because everyone disappeared along with the evidence of what happened?

C1. Jack Straw presided as Home Secretary during the 1998 arrest by London’s Metropolitan Police of Chile’s ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was being chased internationally along with 36 others of the Chilean security state apparatus. This was triggered by an arrest warrant issued by a Spanish judge, related to atrocities that (allegedly) flowed from Pinochet’s pen during his time in office, including the internationally organised abductions, imprisonments, tortures, and temporary or permanent ‘disappearances’ of Pinochet’s opponents, among them Spanish and UK citizens (nowadays we use the catch-all ‘extraordinary renditions’ for much of this activity). The victims included children and pregnant women. The international operation involved several countries other than Chile (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay), with CIA support, and its codename was “Operation Condor”.

J1. Jack Straw presided as Foreign Secretary during a 2004 period that London’s Metropolitan Police has been investigating, and that could yet result in the arrest of Straw and others, including former MI6 senior officer Mark Allen, plus other public sector employees. This was triggered by a criminal complaint issued by London lawyers, related to atrocities that (allegedly) flowed from Straw’s pen during his time in office, including the internationally organised abductions, imprisonments, tortures, and temporary ‘disappearances’ of Libyan dictator Gaddafi’s opponents, among them UK residents and asylum-seekers (in short, ‘extraordinary renditions’). The victims included children and a pregnant woman. The international operation involved several countries other than the UK and its overseas territory of Diego Garcia (Libya, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong), with the CIA as joint leader, and its codename (unless I am corrected) was “Operation Jackdaw”.

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C2. The organisers’ intention was, in part, to silence the opposition, and to continue 'business as usual' for the dictatorships that otherwise were on the brink of war with each other (hence, the Chilean army’s corruption-investigated contract with BAE to develop a military rocket system, that first brought Pinochet to the UK in 1991 to renew the contract). President Pinochet and other South American dictators put aside their countries’ differences in order to make the deal hold.

J2. The organisers’ intention was, in part, to silence Gaddafi's opposition, and to return to ‘business as usual’ between the UK and Libya governments, who otherwise were in ongoing conflict over the 1984 shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher in London, and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie (hence, in March 2004 Tony Blair visited Gaddafi and closed the deal with the famous ‘handshake in the desert’, while Shell and BP secured exploration and drilling contracts with Libya, and the likes of BAE Systems negotiated other large contracts). Prime Minister Blair and dictator Gaddafi put aside their countries' differences in order to make the deal hold.

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C3. Throughout the period, Pinochet exchanged political prisoners with other countries via ‘extraordinary rendition’ operations. The head of Chile's CNI secret police, Manuel Contreras, and the other countries’ intelligence chiefs, were left to get on with it. Before his death in 2015, Contreras had been sentenced in Chile to more than 500 years in prison for his crimes. A number of other security agents in his chain-of-command have met a similar fate. Other agents, politicians and civil servants involved in “Operation Condor” have so far escaped justice, but from the moment of Pinochet’s arrest in London they were trapped in their home countries for fear of arrest while travelling, for trial in Spain or elsewhere. In the UK, the penalty for their alleged crimes is a maximum of life imprisonment (and similar penalty in other countries).

J3. Days before the Blair-Gaddafi love-in, an MI6-CIA ‘extraordinary rendition' operation delivered to Gaddafi two political prisoners, travellers whisked away from a British Airways flight by CIA agents, namely Abdel Hakim Belhadj (or Belhaj) and his six-months pregnant wife Fatima Bouchar. Several days after the Blair-Gaddafi meeting, the same arrangement delivered another set of political prisoners, this time Abu Munthir (’Sami’) al-Saadi, his wife, and their four children, the youngest a girl aged 6 years. Gaddafi’s intelligence chief Moussa Koussa was left to get on with it, in hand with his MI6 colleague Mark Allen, head of counter-terrorism at MI6 (who left to join BP in October 2004), and their CIA etc counterparts. Koussa fled Libya in 2011 for the UK, where he was warmly welcomed as a Gaddafi dissenter, and now lives comfortably in Doha, Qatar. He is not immune from prosecution, and may be the target of an extradition request, especially if Mark Allen is arrested in the UK over “Operation Jackdaw”. In similar vein, if the UK fails to prosecute, then Mark Allen and others have the problem in common that they are not immune in the UK from an extradition request, or from arrest and prosecution overseas while travelling. In the UK, the penalty for their alleged crimes is a maximum of life imprisonment (and similar penalty in other countries).

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C4. In accordance with established UK law and international judicial cooperation, the Met executed the court’s warrant by arresting Pinochet, and the Crown Prosecution Service represented the prosecuting Spanish judge in order to arrange extradition ('extradition' = lawful; ‘extraordinary rendition’ = criminal). Using the legal principle “aut dedere aut judicare” ('if you’re not going to prosecute him, then you must extradite him to us’), other countries joined Spain in requesting extradition, especially European countries whose citizens had been victims. These included Belgium, France, Switzerland, who were represented in UK court hearings by the CPS. Between court hearings, Pinochet was considered a flight-risk, on bail and under house arrest near London, secured by 24-hour armed guard and electronic surveillance. Even if he escaped the country, he could have been arrested again for trial in another country before reaching Chile. Pinochet finally appeared less than two metres from me in the dock at Belmarsh Magistrates Court committal proceedings in December 1998. Later, the Westminster Magistrates Court set Pinochet on course for extradition, trial, and undoubted conviction in Spain. This was all underpinned by decisions of the highest UK court (the House of Lords Judicial Committee, now renamed the Supreme Court).

J4. In accordance with established UK law, and international police cooperation where required, the Met began an investigation into the allegations by questioning suspects, and is reported to have passed the file to the Crown Prosecution Service some time ago, in order to process for trial. If the CPS is unable or unwilling to bring the matter to trial, other countries with a legal interest may exercise jurisdiction via the rule “aut dedere aut judicare” ('if you’re not going to prosecute them, then you must extradite them to us’). Possibly Libya, Morocco, Malaysia, USA, Canada, etc courts would exercise this option, and so be represented in UK hearings by the CPS. Alternatively, the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Court in The Hague may reach out and take over, as allowed by UK law. In such scenarios, Straw et al. may be considered as flight risks, required to comply with bail conditions pending legal transfer overseas or to The Hague, including reporting regularly to a local police station if not also subject to the 24-hour electronic surveillance of an ankle-tag. If they were to leave the UK, they could run the risk of being arrested for criminal prosecution in another country, or sued there by victims.

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C5. In a political manoeuvre, Home Secretary Straw used his politician’s discretionary powers to release Pinochet just as he was about to be handed over for trial. Weeks later, Straw agreed to explain this ‘get out of jail free’ decision in a private meeting that I attended with the visiting heads of the Relatives of the Disappeared of Chile, Viviana Diaz, and the Relatives of the Politically Executed, Berta Manriquez. Straw said that he had no discretion, and was required by law to release Pinochet. The law required no such thing. I knew it. Straw knew it. Viviana and Berta knew it. Still he assured us that it must be true, because otherwise Amnesty would have taken him to court immediately in order to block Pinochet’s escape, but hadn’t. It was an extraordinary slap in the face to the victims’ representatives, a disregard for their need for truth and justice from the UK, and a betrayal of common decency.

J5. In a political manoeuvre, Blair's government (and now Cameron’s) created a legal mechanism that attempts to give politicians and civil servants the discretion to lock away criminal evidence from the police, courts and victims, by declaring it to be ‘secret’... even if the people locking it away are the ones being accused, investigated by police, or sitting in court. This is ‘life imprisonment insurance’, since there is neither immunity nor time-bar in UK courts for prosecuting ‘extraordinary rendition’ crimes. Not even immunity for former Prime Ministers, or collaborators such as US agents or politicians, never mind Libyans or others. It may not be possible to extradite to the UK, or even question, collaborators such as Moussa Koussa or CIA agents, but that should not prevent the Crown Prosecution Service from doing its job of prosecuting those resident within its jurisdiction. Anything less would be an extraordinary slap in the face for child victims, a disregard for their families’ need for truth and justice, and a betrayal of recent high-level reaffirmations of Magna Carta.

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C6. Pinochet is reported to have pleaded to the Met’s arresting officer, DI Andrew Hewitt, that he knew nothing about the issues on the warrant. Just to keep his actual knowledge under wraps, he went on to claim memory problems, and memorably Straw declared him unfit for trial. Just as well, since Pinochet’s public statements between the 1973 coup until his 1998 London arrest, his documented oversight of the ‘Caravan of Death’ helicopter squad that swept through Chile in the weeks after the takeover, and his daily breakfast updates from his chief of secret police Manuel Contreras, all point to plenty of knowledge and authorisation. Punishment was meted out to senior officers not carrying out orders harshly enough.

J6. Straw and Blair have said publicly that they have no recollection of authorising “Operation Jackdaw”, while Mark Allen’s apparent defence is that it was authorised by his superiors (to Ministerial level). It has also been reported that Jack Straw has been shown the transcript of his telephone authorisation giving the go-ahead for the crimes. What I have never seen reported is that it is absolutely no defence to crimes against humanity that a subordinate's offence was ordered by a superior, let alone when it was authorised on the subordinate's request. If it is reasonable to presume that the correspondence between Mark Allen and the head of Libyan intelligence is not fabricated, then it is reasonable to put Mark Allen on the stand in the ordinary way, for a jury to decide in the ordinary way whether he did the acts on the indictment, and for him to try pleading ‘superior orders or authorisation’ in defence or mitigation.

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C7. At home in Chile by early March 2000, Pinochet realised that his legal and political impunity had cracked in his absence. Under house arrest, and deemed fit for trial by a judge, he died in 2006 before any of his cases came to judgment. By then he had been forced to give testimony to several judges, and been indicted on several counts in several cases involving atrocities and corruption. A couple of ‘truth commissions’ had established the facts and criminal responsibilities in thousands of cases of torture, murder and ‘disappearance’, allowing financial compensation and reputational rehabilitation for victims and their families. Many perpetrators had hoped for a quick-fix "Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation” social process that would then leave them alone. But the victims "Neither Forgetting, Nor Pardoning” fuelled a criminal process that gave judges the courage to send an increasing number of perpetrators to prison. Prosecutions continue until this very day.

J7. At home in the UK in May 2016, Jack Straw knows that the legal impunity via Blair era laws remains in place, in spite of the political stink. He himself has not cracked under the pressure, and will be relaxed in the knowledge that the High Court in 2016 has affirmed judicial subjugation to the secrecy-impunity laws undermining feudal Magna Carta, by the consent of our Parliament during and after the Blair era. The court kicked out a civil claim against The Foreign Office, Home Office, MI5 and MI6, brought by Belhadj and others renditioned or deported to Libya. Cameron’s July 2010 announcement of a UK ‘truth commission’, namely the ‘Gibson Inquiry’, had its plug pulled in January 2012 before it was properly underway, and there has been no second attempt. Still, the Inquiry did produce a report on its ‘preparatory work’ (that was then sat on by the government until December 2013). The report indicated that UK agents were aware of abuses by "liaison partners" (e.g. Libyan intelligence, CIA), that UK agents were involved in “some cases of rendition”, and that UK agents were aware of “inappropriate interrogation techniques". Since 2013, the victims have been left to their own devices in their search for truth and justice, neither forgetting nor forgiving. No UK prosecutions have taken place (yet), although the CPS currently is in possession of the evidence gathered by the Met Police.

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C8. From the day of the Coup in 1973, through the seventeen years of dictatorship, and the period after the dictatorship when potential key witnesses were still being eliminated, Pinochet’s Chile systematically targeted men, women and children for brutal treatment, even the Relatives of the Disappeared who simply wanted a loved one’s body for a funeral. Pinochet even joked on camera that there were so many mass graves because it was cheaper that way. Convictions and trials continue today in Chile for systematic abduction, torture, murder and ‘disappearance' perpetrated by Chilean civil servants and military officers who unlawfully controlled state institutions.

J8. From Lord Saville's 2010 report on the 1972 ‘Bloody Sunday’ killings, through 2016’s jury verdict on the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, and campaigns for an inquiry into ‘historic’ police abuse of miners at Orgreave that may yet bear fruit, it seems that UK state institutions have regularly set out to cover up their mistreatment of ordinary men, women and children, rather than provide truth and justice. Blair simply defends the photo of his handshake with Gaddafi mid-renditions, on the grounds that it was prudent geopolitical diplomacy. Prosecutions are denied until this very day for systematic abduction, torture and ‘disappearance’ organised from London by civil servants and elected politicians using tax payers’ money to deliver the "air cargo” (a description of the families by Mark Allen, in a 2004 memo to Libya’s head of intelligence).

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C9. Instead of life imprisonment, Pinochet and several of his collaborators spent most of their lives making hay under the South American sunshine. Torture survivors live today with their dark memories, mass graves continue to be exhumed, and the ‘disappeared’ remain precisely that. This is what happens when elected parliamentarians undermine democratic accountability and play second-fiddle to their military and state security charges. This is what happens when police, judges and prosecutors are co-opted, controlled, and twisted around the little finger of dictatorship.

J9. Instead of life imprisonment, Straw and other suspects intend spending their twilight years in clover, while prosecutors search for evidence where the sun doesn’t shine. The victims can come to court, but the evidence remains buried by bureaucracy and obfuscation. This is what happens when the work of our police, judges and CPS is controlled, corrupted, and shown the middle finger of a ‘secrecy’ and ‘impunity’ regime.

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C10. In the end, the truth came out. Still, some in Chile believe that Pinochet should have been immune from prosecution, if all he did was his patriotic and immoral duty of securing the dictatorship by organising the mass arrest, torture and disappearance of people who didn’t like him. In the Santiago office of the Relatives of the Disappeared of Chile, 10 out of 10 people know who Jack Straw is and how he duped himself into freeing Pinochet. Margaret Thatcher had tea and cake with Pinochet and condemned his house arrest in leafy Virginia Water as immoral and cruel (until he disappeared back to Chile with a last-minute gift from Thatcher in his hands that was a calculated insult to the Spanish judge and Chilean victims).

J10. In the end, the truth will probably come out, as it usually does. Still, some in the UK may believe that our own politicians and civil servants should be immune from prosecution, if all they did was their patriotic and immoral duty of securing oil, gas and other contracts by organising the abduction, torture and disappearance of children and their parents. In Liverpool, 10 out of 10 people would say that the victims of state organised violence and cover-up should never walk alone in their search for truth and justice. A jury should be sworn in, and on conviction the perpetrators justly sent to prison for life (as per Sections 134-138 of the Thatcher government’s 1988 Criminal Justice Act pertaining to torture offences committed in the UK or elsewhere). A bowl of porridge and a cup of water could be served each morning, lest they forget that they are not under house arrest, and neither were their victims.

Every Story Tells A Picture

Below I give you two short stories - each is 10 paragraphs long, drawn from real life. You will see that they are quite similar stories. Even each of the corresponding paragraphs is similar!

Compare them, and form a composite picture in your mind - what do you see in the picture? Is everything as it should be? As well as your eyes, try using your nose to judge whether the overall picture 'smells' right. It is also fine to follow your gut instinct.

Maybe you see a face in the picture, akin to a suspect in a police sketch artist's drawing? Maybe a man doing something bad in a high place? Or unhappy children? Maybe you don't see anything at all, because everyone disappeared along with the evidence of what happened?

Maybe you'd like some Inspector Clouseau theme music to accompany you?...

Story #1: 'Operation Condor’ - Impunity 

1. Jack Straw presided as Home Secretary during the 1998 arrest by London’s Metropolitan Police of Chile’s ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was being chased internationally along with 36 others of the Chilean security state apparatus. This was triggered by an arrest warrant issued by a Spanish judge, related to atrocities that (allegedly) flowed from Pinochet’s pen during his time in office, including the internationally organised abductions, imprisonments, tortures, and temporary or permanent ‘disappearances’ of Pinochet’s opponents, among them Spanish and UK citizens (nowadays we use the catch-all ‘extraordinary renditions’ for much of this activity). The victims included children and pregnant women. The international operation involved several countries other than Chile (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay), with CIA support, and its codename was “Operation Condor”.

2. The organisers’ intention was, in part, to silence the opposition, and to continue 'business as usual' for the dictatorships that otherwise were on the brink of war with each other (hence, the Chilean army’s corruption-investigated contract with BAE to develop a military rocket system, that first brought Pinochet to the UK in 1991 to renew the contract). President Pinochet and other South American dictators put aside their countries’ differences in order to make the deal hold.

3. Throughout the period, Pinochet exchanged political prisoners with other countries via ‘extraordinary rendition’ operations. The head of Chile's CNI secret police, Manuel Contreras, and the other countries’ intelligence chiefs, were left to get on with it. Before his death in 2015, Contreras had been sentenced in Chile to more than 500 years in prison for his crimes. A number of other security agents in his chain-of-command have met a similar fate. Other agents, politicians and civil servants involved in “Operation Condor” have so far escaped justice, but from the moment of Pinochet’s arrest in London they were trapped in their home countries for fear of arrest while travelling, for trial in Spain or elsewhere. In the UK, the penalty for their alleged crimes is a maximum of life imprisonment (and similar penalty in other countries).

4. In accordance with established UK law and international judicial cooperation, the Met executed the court’s warrant by arresting Pinochet, and the Crown Prosecution Service represented the prosecuting Spanish judge in order to arrange extradition ('extradition' = lawful; ‘extraordinary rendition’ = criminal). Using the legal principle “aut dedere aut judicare” ('if you’re not going to prosecute him, then you must extradite him to us’), other countries joined Spain in requesting extradition, especially European countries whose citizens had been victims. These included Belgium, France, Switzerland, who were represented in UK court hearings by the CPS. Between court hearings, Pinochet was considered a flight-risk, on bail and under house arrest near London, secured by 24-hour armed guard and electronic surveillance. Even if he escaped the country, he could have been arrested again for trial in another country before reaching Chile. Pinochet finally appeared less than two metres from me in the dock at Belmarsh Magistrates Court committal proceedings in December 1998. Later, the Westminster Magistrates Court set Pinochet on course for extradition, trial, and undoubted conviction in Spain. This was all underpinned by decisions of the highest UK court (the House of Lords Judicial Committee, now renamed the Supreme Court).

5. In a political manoeuvre, Home Secretary Straw used his politician’s discretionary powers to release Pinochet just as he was about to be handed over for trial. Weeks later, Straw agreed to explain this ‘get out of jail free’ decision in a private meeting that I attended with the visiting heads of the Relatives of the Disappeared of Chile, Viviana Diaz, and the Relatives of the Politically Executed, Berta Manriquez. Straw said that he had no discretion, and was required by law to release Pinochet. The law required no such thing. I knew it. Straw knew it. Viviana and Berta knew it. Still he assured us that it must be true, because otherwise Amnesty would have taken him to court immediately in order to block Pinochet’s escape, but hadn’t. It was an extraordinary slap in the face to the victims’ representatives, a disregard for their need for truth and justice from the UK, and a betrayal of common decency.

6. Pinochet is reported to have pleaded to the Met’s arresting officer, DI Andrew Hewitt, that he knew nothing about the issues on the warrant. Just to keep his actual knowledge under wraps, he went on to claim memory problems, and memorably Straw declared him unfit for trial. Just as well, since Pinochet’s public statements between the 1973 coup until his 1998 London arrest, his documented oversight of the ‘Caravan of Death’ helicopter squad that swept through Chile in the weeks after the takeover, and his daily breakfast updates from his chief of secret police Manuel Contreras, all point to plenty of knowledge and authorisation. Punishment was meted out to senior officers not carrying out orders harshly enough.

7. At home in Chile by early March 2000, Pinochet realised that his legal and political impunity had cracked in his absence. Under house arrest, and deemed fit for trial by a judge, he died in 2006 before any of his cases came to judgment. By then he had been forced to give testimony to several judges, and been indicted on several counts in several cases involving atrocities and corruption. A couple of ‘truth commissions’ had established the facts and criminal responsibilities in thousands of cases of torture, murder and ‘disappearance’, allowing financial compensation and reputational rehabilitation for victims and their families. Many perpetrators had hoped for a quick-fix "Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation” social process that would then leave them alone. But the victims "Neither Forgetting, Nor Pardoning” fuelled a criminal process that gave judges the courage to send an increasing number of perpetrators to prison. Prosecutions continue until this very day.

8. From the day of the Coup in 1973, through the seventeen years of dictatorship, and the period after the dictatorship when potential key witnesses were still being eliminated, Pinochet’s Chile systematically targeted men, women and children for brutal treatment, even the Relatives of the Disappeared who simply wanted a loved one’s body for a funeral. Pinochet even joked on camera that there were so many mass graves because it was cheaper that way. Convictions and trials continue today in Chile for systematic abduction, torture, murder and ‘disappearance' perpetrated by Chilean civil servants and military officers who unlawfully controlled state institutions.

9. Instead of life imprisonment, Pinochet and several of his collaborators spent most of their lives making hay under the South American sunshine. Torture survivors live today with their dark memories, mass graves continue to be exhumed, and the ‘disappeared’ remain precisely that. This is what happens when elected parliamentarians undermine democratic accountability and play second-fiddle to their military and state security charges. This is what happens when police, judges and prosecutors are co-opted, controlled, and twisted around the little finger of dictatorship.

10. In the end, the truth came out. Still, some in Chile believe that Pinochet should have been immune from prosecution, if all he did was his patriotic and immoral duty of securing the dictatorship by organising the mass arrest, torture and disappearance of people who didn’t like him. In the Santiago office of the Relatives of the Disappeared of Chile, 10 out of 10 people know who Jack Straw is and how he duped himself into freeing Pinochet. Margaret Thatcher had tea and cake with Pinochet and condemned his house arrest in leafy Virginia Water as immoral and cruel (until he disappeared back to Chile with a last-minute gift from Thatcher in his hands that was a calculated insult to the Spanish judge and Chilean victims).

Story #2: 'Operation Jackdaw’ - Impunity

1. Jack Straw presided as Foreign Secretary during a 2004 period that London’s Metropolitan Police has been investigating, and that could yet result in the arrest of Straw and others, including former MI6 senior officer Mark Allen, plus other public sector employees. This was triggered by a criminal complaint issued by London lawyers, related to atrocities that (allegedly) flowed from Straw’s pen during his time in office, including the internationally organised abductions, imprisonments, tortures, and temporary ‘disappearances’ of Libyan dictator Gaddafi’s opponents, among them UK residents and asylum-seekers (in short, ‘extraordinary renditions’). The victims included children and a pregnant woman. The international operation involved several countries other than the UK and its overseas territory of Diego Garcia (Libya, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong), with the CIA as joint leader, and its codename (unless I am corrected) was “Operation Jackdaw”.

2. The organisers’ intention was, in part, to silence Gaddafi's opposition, and to return to ‘business as usual’ between the UK and Libya governments, who otherwise were in ongoing conflict over the 1984 shooting of PC Yvonne Fletcher in London, and the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie (hence, in March 2004 Tony Blair visited Gaddafi and closed the deal with the famous ‘handshake in the desert’, while Shell and BP secured exploration and drilling contracts with Libya, and the likes of BAE Systems negotiated other large contracts). Prime Minister Blair and dictator Gaddafi put aside their countries' differences in order to make the deal hold.

3. Days before the Blair-Gaddafi love-in, an MI6-CIA ‘extraordinary rendition' operation delivered to Gaddafi two political prisoners, travellers whisked away from a British Airways flight by CIA agents, namely Abdel Hakim Belhadj (or Belhaj) and his six-months pregnant wife Fatima Bouchar. Several days after the Blair-Gaddafi meeting, the same arrangement delivered another set of political prisoners, this time Abu Munthir (’Sami’) al-Saadi, his wife, and their four children, the youngest a girl aged 6 years. Gaddafi’s intelligence chief Moussa Koussa was left to get on with it, in hand with his MI6 colleague Mark Allen, head of counter-terrorism at MI6 (who left to join BP in October 2004), and their CIA etc counterparts. Koussa fled Libya in 2011 for the UK, where he was warmly welcomed as a Gaddafi dissenter, and now lives comfortably in Doha, Qatar. He is not immune from prosecution, and may be the target of an extradition request, especially if Mark Allen is arrested in the UK over “Operation Jackdaw”. In similar vein, if the UK fails to prosecute, then Mark Allen and others have the problem in common that they are not immune in the UK from an extradition request, or from arrest and prosecution overseas while travelling. In the UK, the alleged crimes attract a maximum penalty of life imprisonment (and similar penalty in other countries).

4. In accordance with established UK law, and international police cooperation where required, the Met began an investigation into the allegations by questioning suspects, and is reported to have passed the file to the Crown Prosecution Service some time ago, in order to process for trial. If the CPS is unable or unwilling to bring the matter to trial, other countries with a legal interest may exercise jurisdiction via the rule “aut dedere aut judicare” ('if you’re not going to prosecute them, then you must extradite them to us’). Possibly Libya, Morocco, Malaysia, USA, Canada, etc courts would exercise this option, and so be represented in UK hearings by the CPS. Alternatively, the Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Court in The Hague may reach out and take over, as allowed by UK law. In such scenarios, Straw et al. may be considered as flight risks, required to comply with bail conditions pending legal transfer overseas or to The Hague, including reporting regularly to a local police station if not also subject to the 24-hour electronic surveillance of an ankle-tag. If they were to leave the UK, they could run the risk of being arrested for criminal prosecution in another country, or sued there by victims.

5. In a political manoeuvre, Blair's government (and now Cameron’s) created a legal mechanism that attempts to give politicians and civil servants the discretion to lock away criminal evidence from the police, courts and victims, by declaring it to be ‘secret’... even if the people locking it away are the ones being accused, investigated by police, or sitting in court. This is ‘life imprisonment insurance’, since there is neither immunity nor time-bar in UK courts for prosecuting ‘extraordinary rendition’ crimes. Not even immunity for former Prime Ministers, or collaborators such as US agents or politicians, never mind Libyans or others. It may not be possible to extradite to the UK, or even question, collaborators such as Moussa Koussa or CIA agents, but that should not prevent the Crown Prosecution Service from doing its job of prosecuting those resident within its jurisdiction. Anything less would be an extraordinary slap in the face for child victims, a disregard for their families’ need for truth and justice, and a betrayal of recent high-level reaffirmations of Magna Carta.

6. Straw and Blair have said publicly that they have no recollection of authorising “Operation Jackdaw”, while Mark Allen’s apparent defence is that it was authorised by his superiors (to Ministerial level). It has also been reported that Jack Straw has been shown the transcript of his telephone authorisation giving the go-ahead for the crimes. What I have never seen reported is that it is absolutely no defence to crimes against humanity that a subordinate's offence was ordered by a superior, let alone when it was authorised on the subordinate's request. If it is reasonable to presume that the correspondence between Mark Allen and the head of Libyan intelligence is not fabricated, then it is reasonable to put Mark Allen on the stand in the ordinary way, for a jury to decide in the ordinary way whether he did the acts on the indictment, and for him to try pleading ‘superior orders or authorisation’ in defence or mitigation.

7. At home in the UK in May 2016, Jack Straw knows that the legal impunity via Blair era laws remains in place, in spite of the political stink. He himself has not cracked under the pressure, and will be relaxed in the knowledge that the High Court in 2016 has affirmed judicial subjugation to the secrecy-impunity laws undermining feudal Magna Carta, by the consent of our Parliament during and after the Blair era. The court kicked out a civil claim against The Foreign Office, Home Office, MI5 and MI6, brought by Belhadj and others renditioned or deported to Libya. Cameron’s July 2010 announcement of a UK ‘truth commission’, namely the ‘Gibson Inquiry’, had its plug pulled in January 2012 before it was properly underway, and there has been no second attempt. Still, the Inquiry did produce a report on its ‘preparatory work’ (that was then sat on by the government until December 2013). The report indicated that UK agents were aware of abuses by "liaison partners" (e.g. Libyan intelligence, CIA), that UK agents were involved in “some cases of rendition”, and that UK agents were aware of “inappropriate interrogation techniques". Since 2013, the victims have been left to their own devices in their search for truth and justice, neither forgetting nor forgiving. No UK prosecutions have taken place (yet), although the CPS currently is in possession of the evidence gathered by the Met Police.

8. From Lord Saville's 2010 report on the 1972 ‘Bloody Sunday’ killings, through 2016’s jury verdict on the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, and campaigns for an inquiry into ‘historic’ police abuse of miners at Orgreave that may yet bear fruit, it seems that UK state institutions have regularly set out to cover up their mistreatment of ordinary men, women and children, rather than provide truth and justice. Blair simply defends the photo of his handshake with Gaddafi mid-renditions, on the grounds that it was prudent geopolitical diplomacy. Prosecutions are denied until this very day for systematic abduction, torture and ‘disappearance’ organised from London by civil servants and elected politicians using tax payers’ money to deliver the "air cargo” (a description of the families by Mark Allen, in a 2004 memo to Libya’s head of intelligence).

9. Instead of life imprisonment, Straw and other suspects intend spending their twilight years in clover, while prosecutors search for evidence where the sun doesn’t shine. The victims can come to court, but the evidence remains buried by bureaucracy and obfuscation. This is what happens when the work of our police, judges and CPS is controlled, corrupted, and shown the middle finger of a ‘secrecy’ and ‘impunity’ regime.

10. In the end, the truth will probably come out, as it usually does. Still, some in the UK may believe that our own politicians and civil servants should be immune from prosecution, if all they did was their patriotic and immoral duty of securing oil, gas and other contracts by organising the abduction, torture and disappearance of children and their parents. In Liverpool, 10 out of 10 people would say that the victims of state organised violence and cover-up should never walk alone in their search for truth and justice. A jury should be sworn in, and on conviction the perpetrators justly sent to prison for life (as per Sections 134-138 of the Thatcher government’s 1988 Criminal Justice Act pertaining to torture offences committed in the UK or elsewhere). A bowl of porridge and a cup of water could be served each morning, lest they forget that they are not under house arrest, and neither were their victims.


Well done! But possibly you need more time to compare the corresponding paragraphs of each story? On the bright side, the 'Pink Panther' theme tune will play for 10 hours!

SENATE INQUIRY INTO 'CONVOY OF DEATH'

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator John F. Kerry (Democrats) is to investigate the 'Convoy of Death' and subsequent mass graves site at Dasht-e-Leili, near Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan.

Dasht-e-Leili (red pins), Sheberghan Prison, Sheberghan town

(Google Earth image, courtesy of Physicians for Human Rights)

The Senate inquiry comes in the wake of President Obama receiving a report about the convoy and the Dasht-e-Leili graves site, from his National Security team. In July 2009, President Obama was so concerned about war crimes allegations involving US military and local Afghan soldiers, that he instructed his national Security team to "collect the facts" and present them to him in a report. There was a positive response to this from human rights organisations, including a Physicians for Human Rights response on YouTube. However, it now seems that the hoped-for Presidential investigation into the convoy and mass graves may not take place, and the report itself will not be made public.

There is no reason to believe that the Senate inquiry is being welcomed by the White House. This means that the White House is unlikely to support the inquiry. If the Senate inquiry wishes to have sight of the White House report, it may ask for it, but may not receive it.

Physicians for Human Rights will support the Senate inquiry by submitting documentation relating to the PHR forensic team's part-excavation of the grave site in 2002. PHR personnel who took part in the site excavation will also make themselves available to Senate investigators. Jamie Doran, the producer-director of the 2002 television documentary, "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death" (YouTube short version), will also make available his film (official site) and other archive materials, and personal knowledge of the incident. Ditto yours truly.

More on this as the Senate inquiry gets under way.

U.S. JUDGE ORDERS DEFENSE DEPARTMENT TO HAND OVER 'CONVOY OF DEATH' EVIDENCE

On 30th December, in a hearing related to the Dasht-e-Leili 'Convoy of Death', a US federal judge criticised the Department of Defense (DoD) for its weak response to a Freedom of Information request by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). The judge ruled that DoD agencies should have searched for, and handed over, relevant documents existing between 1st November 2001 and now, rather than merely documents existing in November and December 2001.

The ruling gives a boost to the efforts of PHR and others, in our claim that US government agencies have been suppressing evidence relating to war crimes. The suppressed documents may corroborate claims that the bodies of up to a couple of thousand prisoners were buried in a mass grave site at Dasht-e-Leili in northern Afghanistan, at the end of 2001.

The DoD agencies, including Central Command and the Defence Intelligence Agency must comply with the ruling by no later than April.

Here's a report of the hearing from the Maryland Daily Record:

http://mddailyrecord.com/2009/12/30/federal-judge-orders-dod-to-supply-taliban-papers/

December 30, 2009

Federal judge orders DoD to supply Taliban papers

By Brendan Kearney <brendan.kearney@mddailyrecord.com>

Daily Record Legal Affairs Writer

The U.S. Department of Defense did not adequately respond to a human rights group’s Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the American investigation of a Taliban mass grave in northern Afghanistan, a federal judge in Baltimore ruled Wednesday, representing a “substantial” victory for government transparency advocates.

The U.S. Central Command, a DoD component agency known as CENTCOM, must now conduct a temporally broader search for internal documents related to the Dasht-e-Leili gravesite, and the Joint Staff and Defense Intelligence Agency must submit to U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett certain documents it had previously turned over to the Physicians for Human Rights only in redacted form.

Judge Bennett, who is handling the Washington, D.C., case because the district court there is overworked, otherwise ruled for the government defendants, determining that they had performed a reasonably thorough search and that they offered legitimate reasons for redacting portions of the relevant documents.

The decision, which comes during a presidential administration that has promised to be more forthcoming in response to FOIA inquiries, offers a series of important reminders, according to Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice.

“It’s a substantial victory, and it’s a reminder of the importance of FOIA,” said Fidell, who has submitted many FOIA requests to the Defense Department with “uneven” results and teaches at Yale Law School. “It is a reminder that we have someone looking over the government’s shoulder to enforce transparency. … It’s a reminder that the federal court helps the government turn square corners.”

Nathaniel Raymond, who has led the Physicians for Human Rights investigation into what happened at Dasht-e-Leili in late 2001, said the plaintiff organization is “heartened” by Bennett’s decision, “but the proof is in the pudding with what the Department of Defense produces.”

“We still don’t fully know what the U.S. knew, when they knew it, and how they knew it,” Raymond said. “But what we do know is this: Department of Defense personnel, namely the Special Forces teams on the ground … were operating with Northern Alliance forces at the time of the massacre.”

A Pentagon spokesman said only that the “DoD will review the ruling and take the appropriate action.”

The events underlying the lawsuit allegedly occurred in the months following the post-9/11 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the ouster of the ruling Taliban.

According to media reports, several thousand Taliban fighters surrendered to the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan, after a battle in Konduz. The defeated Taliban were then transported, in sealed cargo containers, 200 miles to a Northern Alliance prison in the city of Sheberghan, according to Bennett’s memorandum opinion.

During the journey, approximately 1,000 of the prisoners died of asphyxiation and were allegedly buried in a mass grave in nearby Dasht-e-Leili, according to the opinion. Raymond said he has seen State Department documents that have “a redacted three-letter intelligence agency” reporting an even higher body count.

Investigators from the Physicians for Human Rights, a Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit composed of health care professionals devoted to investigating alleged human rights violations, learned of the gravesite in January 2002 from Taliban prisoners at Sheberghan, according to a lengthy report in Newsweek magazine in August of that year.

Since then, the PHR has had only limited success in learning about the official American government investigation. It sued in February 2008 after the defendant agencies did not respond adequately to its June 2006 FOIA request. DOD, the State Department and the CIA have since provided approximately 60 documents to the PHR, some of which were heavily redacted.

In his 34-page opinion, Judge Bennett examined each defendant agency’s search procedures and explanations for what was not disclosed as laid out in their representatives’ affidavits. Most were “sufficiently detailed” or “not unreasonable under the circumstances,” he found, but with respect to the temporal scope of the search, the defendants interpreted PHR’s request “far too narrowly.”

“While the underlying events occurred in November and December of 2001, PHR have clearly requested all records ‘pertaining to’ or ‘relating to’ the underlying events, including any subsequent investigations,” Bennett wrote.

And in ordering the Defense Intelligence Agency to submit unredacted documents, Bennett found that division’s explanations for why their documents were exempt from disclosure “clearly deficient.”

CENTCOM must conduct its new search — from Nov. 1, 2001 to present, rather than just November and December of 2001 — then produce all responsive and non-protected information and renew its motion for summary judgment by April.

The Joint Staff must submit its September 2002 U.S. Space Command Situation Report and the DIA must, by February, submit two intelligence reports it claims contain code words and names of international organizations with which the DIA shared intelligence in one instance and geocoordinates and an evaluation of a classified source in the other.

Interview on DEMOCRACY NOW!

DEMOCRACY NOW! is "A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on nearly 800 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S."

Following the posting of my blog comment on the renewed interest (Obama's) around the war crimes/mass grave that I investigated in Afghanistan in 2002, today I did a live interview on the issue for the New York-based TV/radio channel DemocracyNow!
After the first couple of shaky seconds, I got my act together (I thought I was there to talk about war crimes only, not Gen. Dostum's return from Turkey!). The whole Afghanistan segment lasts almost half-hour in total, and I'm roughly in the middle, after footage of the mass grave, Obama interview, etc.

Here's the video, after the DEMOCRACY NOW! intro:

Eight Years After Orchestrating Massacre at Dasht-e-Leili, Afghan Warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum Returns to Afghanistan to Campaign for Karzai

One of Afghanistan’s most feared warlords has returned to Afghanistan just days before its presidential election. General Abdul Rashid Dostum is one of several warlords who have allied with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking a new term. Karzai is hoping Dostum’s return will help attract ethnic Uzbek voters. Dostum’s return to prominence in Afghanistan comes despite his role overseeing a 2001 massacre at Dasht-e-Leili that left at least 2,000 Taliban POWs dead. He’s also had extensive ties with the US and was formerly on the CIA payroll. We speak with international human rights lawyer, Andrew McEntee.

[if you have problems viewing the video, other viewing options are available here ]
TRANSCRIPT of the VIDEO (optional!)

"SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: One of Afghanistan’s most feared warlords has returned to Afghanistan just days before its presidential election. General Abdul Rashid Dostum is one of several warlords who have allied with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is seeking a new term. Karzai is hoping Dostum’s return will help attract ethnic Uzbek voters.
On Monday, Dostum addressed a rally in the northern Afghan city of Sheberghan. His message of support for Karzai also contained a warning to his opponents.

GEN. ABDUL RASHID DOSTUM: [translated] We are hopeful. We are determined. Playing with General Dostum is playing with a million human beings. Playing with General Dostum is playing with a storm. Playing with General Dostum will be tough and will create anger. God willing, we will establish a party in Afghanistan which will be bigger and stronger within six years, and this party will be able to respond to your demands. And this is what you and your martyrs deserve.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Dostum’s return to prominence in Afghanistan comes despite his role overseeing a 2001 massacre at Dasht-e-Leili that left at least 2,000 Taliban POWs dead. He’s also had extensive ties with the US and was formerly on the CIA payroll.
Last month, New York Times reporter James Risen revealed the Bush administration blocked at least three federal investigations into the alleged war crimes committed by Dostum. Risen spoke about his findings on Democracy Now!

JAMES RISEN: The evidence was overwhelming that something had happened and that it was the responsibility of the Bush administration to look into this or at least to push for an international investigation, because Dostum had been on the CIA payroll, was part of a US-backed alliance that was taking over Afghanistan. And what I found was, time after time, in different agencies and as far—and in the White House, Bush administration officials repeatedly ignored evidence or just decided or discouraged efforts to open investigations into the massacre.

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: After the new findings came to light, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked President Obama about opening a new investigation into the Bush administration’s alleged cover-up.

ANDERSON COOPER: Some were suffocated in a steel container. Others were shot, possibly buried in mass graves. Would you support—would you call for an investigation into possible war crimes in Afghanistan?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: You know, the indications that this had not been properly investigated just recently was brought to my attention, so what I’ve asked my national security team to do is to collect the facts for me that are known, and we’ll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all the facts gathered up.
ANDERSON COOPER: But you wouldn’t resist categorically an investigation?
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I think that, you know, there are responsibilities that all nations have, even in war. And if it appears that our conduct in some way supported violations of the laws of war, then I think that we have to know about that.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, the State Department said the Obama administration continues to gather evidence on Dostum’s alleged role in the Dasht-e-Leili massacre. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley said the US had expressed, quote, “serious concerns” to the Afghan government about Dostum’s return.
For more on this story, we’re going to London now, where we’re joined by Andrew McEntee. He is an international human rights lawyer who traveled to Afghanistan in the fall of 2002 to investigate the massacre. Andrew is also the former chair of Amnesty International UK.
Andy, welcome to Democracy Now! The significance of Dostum’s return on the eve of the Afghanistan elections to support President Karzai in his bid to be reelected?
ANDREW McENTEE: Well, I think that the significance is quite clear if you’ve ever been to northern Afghanistan, where General Dostum’s role, I think, this week is to deliver the Uzbek, ethnic Uzbek, votes for President Karzai. It’s as simple as that. And the best way of doing that is to have him back home in Afghanistan.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And you traveled to Afghanistan to investigate this massacre. Describe exactly what happened. These prisoners surrendered. They were transported. Go through the events that took place.
ANDREW McENTEE: Well, I’d like to say first that I was introduced to this issue by the filmmaker and journalist Jamie Doran, who had investigated with his film crew in northern Afghanistan in late 2001 into early 2002. And Jamie approached me in London and asked me to look at his film footage and other evidence he had to make a human rights assessment, some legal assessments, partly about culpability responsibilities, partly to help him fill the gaps in the storyline.
And very quickly after reviewing several hours’ worth of film footage of the grave site at Dasht-e-Leili, of interviews, translated transcripts of the interviews, as well, of people who had been there, people who had driven the transport, people who had actually claimed that they had killed some of the prisoners, very quickly the story held up.
What surprised me, though, was the strand which went through which is in some ways the most contentious strand, which is that there was some involvement or at least some responsibility for many of the deaths on the part of US Special Forces who were on the ground at the time, as well. And I think that when you look at the story, the story itself is big enough. More than 2,000 people in a mass grave under one incident that took place—well, it took place over a number of days, but it was one continuing incident—that is big enough in itself for any war, any series of war crimes in any country in any decade. The problem with this issue, though, has been precisely the fact that US Special Forces were on the ground and that they had command responsibility. They had command over many of the guys, the Afghan soldiers, who began the killing.
And the problem continues to be—and I full understand the problem that defense departments have and the White House has had over the years. The problem continues to be that over the days when the bodies were rolling out of these trucks in Sheberghan prison, US Special Forces could have stopped it. And the big question for me has always been, why did they not stop it? They had control over the actions of the Afghan soldiers. They were the top of the command structure, and yet they continued to let it happen. And in particular—
AMY GOODMAN: Were they there?
ANDREW McENTEE: Well, at first they denied they were there. And that was interesting, because I had seen photographs showing they were there, and there was other evidence they were there. So the storyline changed and said, well, yeah, they were there, but they weren’t there when the trucks rolled through the gates, and they weren’t there when the bodies spilled out of the backs of the trucks, and they certainly weren’t there when the bodies were being tipped into pits on the edge of the desert. And bit by bit, the evidence seems to show that in fact they were there, they did know, they must have known.
One of the keys to this is that the reason that the two, three thousand men who died were being taken from Kalai Zeini to Sheberghan prison before being sent home, because the war had finished, the fighting had finished, the reason they were being taken was that US Special Forces interrogators were still looking for al-Qaeda operatives, and they feared that some of the operatives were hiding amongst these guys. So their idea was to identify them, to take them to wherever, which ultimately would have been Guantanamo in some cases, because they were an intelligence asset. And the US special interrogators must have known in the first day, at the prison where they were stationed, that hundreds of bodies were spilling out of metal containers, dead through suffocation.
Why they didn’t then stop that in the subsequent days, when these container trucks were rolling back down to where they began to pick up another batch of prisoners and rolling back, and more were spilling out—why didn’t stop it? That, to me, is the big question. Negligence, for sure, but criminal negligence.
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: And finally, General Dostum himself, his role in this massacre—these were his forces—and also his connection to the United States?
ANDREW McENTEE: Yeah, well, this is where it gets a much more—a broader picture shows you the realities on the ground at the time. The whole area of Mazari Sharif and Sheberghan and so on were the vital strategic assets for the military forces on each side, so it was imperative for the allies, United States and their allies, to come in and control the area. And it was very clear from the recent history of Afghanistan that the only way you could do that is if you had General Dostum on your side.
Now, General Dostum is a character who—he flips from one side to the other. His allegiance goes depending on whether he will win if he flips his allegiance or whether he’s going to get paid more. So he was paid buckets full of dollars over a long period of time, and he was an ally. And he effectively won the war in the north and gained control of the north—Mazari Sharif, Sheberghan—for the US and their allies. And that was the importance of Dostum. And because of that military importance, everything else was overlooked.
The problem in the years since then, of course, has been that Dostum is a very contentious fellow. And I think it’s worth explaining to people that when you refer to people like Dostum as warlords, you’re not talking about a gang leader, you know, someone who lives out of a small hut and controls a village; you’re talking about someone who effectively controls a military operation, which controls a major part of the state territory. He has guns. He has armored vehicles. He has light aircraft. He has everything.
And he continues, even now, to be an important political, but also military, figure in the north of Afghanistan. And that was why it was quite important for him to be out of the country, because on the political side, he is ethnically an Uzbek. Uzbekistan borders to the north of Afghanistan. And his role for President Karzai clearly was to deliver Uzbek voters for Karzai. And the reason being that—I mean, although personally I think Karzai is going to come out in the first round of the election with the highest number of votes, what President Karzai clearly needs for his credibility is to win the presidency in the first round, which requires 50 percent of the votes cast plus one. Otherwise, it goes to a second round. And that’s why I think Dostum is back. Dostum’s job is to deliver as many votes of—from the Uzbek ethnic community in Afghanistan as possible to help Karzai reached the 50 percent plus one target.
AMY GOODMAN: Andrew McEntee, we want to thank you very much for being with us, formerly head of Amnesty International in the UK.
As we turn now to an excerpt of the documentary you referred to, Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death by the award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran, who traveled to the site of the massacres and the mass graves in 2002 in Afghanistan. The witnesses who testified in the film are unidentified and have their faces obscured. Two of them have since died. This excerpt begins with a description of how the prisoners were transported in containers.

JAMIE DORAN: Originally loaded onto trucks at Kunduz, many of these men were crammed two to three hundred at a time into the backs of sealed containers. After around twenty minutes, the prisoners began crying out for air.
EYEWITNESS: [translated] The weather was very hot. They put too many people inside the containers. Many died because there was no air.
INTERVIEWER: [translated] How many containers were at Kalai Zeini when you left?
EYEWITNESS: [translated] There were about twenty-five containers. The condition of them was very bad, because the prisoners couldn’t breathe, so they shot into the containers, and some of them were killed.
TRUCK DRIVER: [translated] They told us to stop the trucks, and we came down. After that, they shot into the containers. Blood came pouring out of the containers. They were screaming inside.
JAMIE DORAN: One Afghan soldier admits that he personally murdered prisoners.
AFGHAN SOLDIER: [translated] I hit the containers with bullets to make holes for ventilation, and some of them were killed.
JAMIE DORAN: You specifically shot holes into the containers. Who gave you those orders?
AFGHAN SOLDIER: [translated] My commanders ordered me to hit the containers to make holes for ventilation, and because of that, some prisoners died.
JAMIE DORAN: But this was no humanitarian gesture. Rather than shooting into the roofs of the containers, the soldiers fired at random, killing those nearest the walls. A local taxi driver had called in at a petrol station on the road to Sheberghan.
TAXI DRIVER: [translated] I smelled something strange and asked the attendant where the smell was coming from. He said, “Look behind you.” There were three trucks with containers fixed on them. Blood was running from the containers.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt of Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death by the award-winning Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran, who traveled to the massacre sites. The notorious warlord Dostum has been invited back to Afghanistan on this eve of the election by the incumbent President Hamid Karzai to win—to help him win reelection. "

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You'll find more information and links at the DEMOCRACY NOW! 18 August 2009 web page, including:

• Obama Calls for Probe into 2001 Massacre of at Least 2,000 Suspected Taliban POWs by US-Backed Afghan Warlord (7/13/2009)

• “Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death” Broadcast for the First Time Ever in the US: Eyewitnesses Testify that US Troops Were Complicit in the Massacre of up to 3,000 Taliban Prisoners During the Afgha (5/23/2003)

A worthy link for some readers is the one that allows you to make a donation to DEMOCRACY NOW! towards the cost of the transcript [ "This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, More..."]

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST, PRESIDENT OBAMA...INVESTIGATE NOW!

MY VISIT TO THE MASS GRAVE AT DASHT-E-LEILI

Seven years ago, in 2002, I stood on the surface of a mass grave in northern Afghanistan that contained over 2000 bodies. There is evidence to support the claim that each and every death amounted to a murder, a war crime. I was standing close to the bodies of thousands of men who had died needlessly over a number of days, when they were in the process of being transported along a northern highway after the fighting had ended.

This was a journey involving several thousand passengers (roughly seven thousand, according to one local Afghan Commander interviewed for television). Their journey was from the holding centre at Kalai-Zeini, to their destination at Sheberghan Prison, from where they were to be sent home - unless the US special interrogators at Sheberghan Prison could identify any of them as Al-Qaeda operatives who had so far evaded capture. Maybe half of them got out of the journey alive; certainly half of them were buried in the mass grave under my feet.

"AFGHAN MASSACRE - CONVOY OF DEATH"

I visited Dasht-e-Leili in 2002, for the making of the television documentary "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death" (directed by the Irish journalist and film-maker Jamie Doran, and first broadcast in November 2002). In early 2002, Jamie Doran had approached me in London and asked for a human rights/war crimes assessment of his findings to date, including: footage from the surface of the Dasht-e-Leili site, footage of prisoners in Sheberghan prison, filmed interviews with participants in/ witnesses to events up to and including the killing and burial of prisoners at Dasht-e-Leili (including an Afghan soldier's confession of guilt to murder).

Subsequently, in September 2002, I accompanied Jamie and his film crew to Afghanistan for site visits at the Dasht-e-Leili grave, and interviews in northern Afghanistan and Kabul (for example, with officials of the UN and the Afghan government). Some of the detailed filming of the surface of Dasht-e-Leili (human remains protruding, visible clothing and other personal items, spent cartridges from semi-automatic weapons, etc) was included in the final version of the film.

I also participated in the June 2002 meetings of the German Parliament and European Parliament that viewed a 10-minute video-short of Jamie Doran's film (not completed until a few months later). These meetings called for UN protection of the sites (but it never happened), and investigation by the US authorities in light of accusations against US special forces in relation to the incident, including possible individual criminal responsibility.

Last year I wrote to the US Congress (Rep. Waxman, in fact) regarding the relevance of the Dasht-e-Leili incident to other investigations of the House Oversight Committee presided over by Rep. Waxman. I was confident that Obama would win the Presidency, and that Congress would be given a green light to further and deepen its investigations.

Last month (11 July 2009), James Risen's article in the New York Times put President Obama under pressure to give an official account of what had occurred at Sheberghan Prison and at the mass-grave site of Dasht-e-Leile. The President instructed his aides to prepare a report for him: "So what I've asked my national security team to do is to collect the facts for me that are known, and we'll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all of the facts gathered up". But Obama's words left room for doubt about his resolve to order an official investigation - similar to the advice given to me in 2002 by a US military spokesman, that "there has not been an 'investigation' with a capital 'I'...", implying that the US military authorities preferred to keep their questions informal, unofficial, and off the public radar. So I wonder - will Obama prefer to hit the brakes once he's carried out his own in-house 'investigation', rather than order an 'Investigation' into these war crimes?

A STORY SO BIG THAT IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY

This story is so big that it will never go away. That was my view in 2001, and my view still. In fact, my view expressed in 2001 was that it will never go away, unless and until there is a proper investigation that holds the perpetrators to account - be they Afghan warlords and their soldiers, or US special forces and their superior officers who have tried time and again to cover up the alleged criminal responsibility of US soldiers at the time (the cover-up amounts to a separate and additional offence under US law). The story of what occurred is now common knowledge in Afghanistan and internationally, including the part of the story involving the cover-up at US Central Command, the Pentagon and elsewhere in the Bush Administration. It's just a story that's lacking an official investigation - it seems that the film-footage of bodily remains sticking out of the ground in a northern Afghan desert, the photographs of US soldiers at nearby Sheberghan Prison, the interviews with local witnesses, etc, just came out at the wrong time, too soon after 9/11, for the US authorities to care too much about the victims, never mind care about the strict requirements of US law.

TRAIL OF EVIDENCE

I am certain that the US military and other agencies have extensive files on the incident that support our case, but that are being suppressed. I have, of course, read the documents published by Physicians for Human Rights at the end of 2008, following PHR's successful Freedom Of Information requests - all of these continue to give a firmer foundation to our story, and calls for an official investigation by independent and impartial US authorities. PHR's excellent work in cataloguing the case since 2002, beginning with a part-excavation of the mass grave that corroborates much of Jamie Doran's filmed witnesses, is worth following via the special PHR blog that is updated regularly.

It's irrelevant to me whether responsibility for this mass murder lies with junior Afghan soldiers, or their superiors such as the 'Warlord' General Dostum - or, as alleged and evidenced, whether some criminal responsibility lies with some members of the US special forces who were on the ground at the time, and who had chain-of-command responsibility over many of Dostum's men. I saw a great deal of the evidence first-hand at Dasht-e-Leili, and was able to trace backwards through the chain of events that led me there. I know where the evidence points, and I can't change that. So I believe that the US President, as Commander-in-Chief, should also want to know where the evidence points.