Posts Tagged ‘inquiry’

Storm of protest as Blair slinks into Iraq inquiry

January 30, 2010
Morning Star Online,  January 29, 2010
by Paddy McGuffin
A sea of placards filled Parliament Square on Friday morning

A sea of placards filled Parliament Square on Friday morning

“Blair lied, thousands died.” That was the chant which reverberated around Parliament Square on Friday as former prime minister Tony Blair gave evidence to the Iraq inquiry.

Even from the safety of the Queen Elizabeth II centre, where he had been spirited by his security detail hours before the inquiry was due to start, Mr Blair could not have failed to hear the fury of the hundreds of protesters who thronged the square throughout the morning.

Continues >>

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The tragedy of Baha Mousa

July 13, 2009
Morning Star Online, Sunday 12 July 2009
Paddy McGuffin

When 26-year-old Baha Mousa, a newly widowed father of two, was arrested along with six other Iraqi men by British troops in September 2003, he should have been entitled to be treated with decency and basic humanity in accordance with the British army’s much-boasted sense of fair play.

Tragically, Mousa and his co-detainees came face to face with the brutal reality of the army, as previously experienced by thousands of innocent Catholics interned in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and countless others before and since.

Like them, Mousa was branded a “terrorist” and subjected to horrific violence and sadistic torture.

The seven Iraqis were detained during an army raid on the Ibn al-Haitham hotel where they worked, following reports that weapons were being kept there.

The soldiers found assault rifles and pistols in a safe. Hotel staff insisted that they were used for security, but Mousa and several of his colleagues were taken to the British military base at Darul Dhyafa.

The Iraqi captives were hooded, bound, held in stress positions and deprived of sleep, kicked and beaten – in Mousa’s case, fatally.

“The military initially attempted to brush the death under the carpet and, in a move which added insult to injury, offered the Mousa family a paltry £3,000 in exchange for Mousa’s life”

So-called “conditioning methods” of this type were banned by the Geneva Convention, the Laws of Armed Combat, a 1972 government inquiry into interrogation in Northern Ireland and the Human Rights Act 1998.

Yet on the evidence of this case and many others in recent years, these techniques would appear to still be widely used by the British army with, it is argued, at least the tacit approval of the government.

When Mousa’s body was put before his stunned and grieving father for identification, it was found that he had suffered 93 separate injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.

Mousa’s father, a colonel in the Iraqi police, had last seen his son alive lying on the floor of the lobby of the hotel, his hands behind his head.

He had reassured his son after a British officer, who called himself Lieutenant Mike, told him that it was a routine investigation which would be over in a couple of hours.

Three days later, Colonel Daoud Mousa was visited by military policemen who told him his son had died in custody.

The next time he saw him was on a slab, his face so battered and bruised that he was barely recognisable to the man who had known and loved him all his life.

At a High Court hearing in 2004, Col Mousa described his horror at the state of his son’s body.

“I was asked to accompany them to identify the corpse,” he said.

“When I saw the corpse I burst into tears and I still cannot bear to think about what I saw. Every time I tell this story I break down.”

One of those who survived the brutal detention described what happened.

“They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs and in the back. We were crying and screaming,” he said.

“They set on Baha especially and he kept crying that he couldn’t breath in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off and said he was suffocating.

“But they laughed at him and kicked him more. One of them said: ‘Stop screaming and you will be able to breathe more easily’.”

It has previously been reported that the soldiers gave the detainees the names of footballers as they repeatedly kicked them.

As with countless other cases, the military initially attempted to brush the death under the carpet and, in a move which added insult to injury, offered the Mousa family a paltry £3,000 in exchange for Mousa’s life.

Seven soldiers faced a court martial at Bulford Camp in Wiltshire on war crimes charges relating to the receptionist’s death.

All but one were cleared on all counts in March 2007.

The Ministry of Defence eventually agreed in July last year to pay £2.83 million in compensation to the families of Mousa and a number of other Iraqi men mistreated by British troops.

The public inquiry, due to begin today, will not only look into Mousa’s death and the mistreatment of a number of others but it will also look at the continued use of torture by the British army.

This is not a one-off case. Nor is it even exceptional.

The Ministry of Defence has been forced to concede an inquiry into the alleged torture and murder of 20 Iraqis and mistreatment of a number of others at Camp Abu Naji in 2004.

Phil Shiner, the solicitor for Col Mousa and all the victims in the Baha Mousa inquiry said: “What happened in this incident must never happen again. This inquiry starts hot on the heels of the government agreeing to a second major inquiry into the events of Camp Abu Naji on May 14-15 2004.

“The Baha Mousa inquiry has a golden opportunity to ensure that the techniques banned from Northern Ireland in 1971 can never be used again by the UK and to expose the systemic failings that allowed this to happen.

“The second inquiry shortly to be announced needs to be into the human rights violations while the UK detained the Iraqis. There are simply too many incidents for the government to consider fighting each one on a case-by-case basis.”

The inquiry, chaired by Sir William Gage, will also look at the historic use of torture and interrogation by British forces, including those used during internment in 1971 in Northern Ireland which were banned by the European Court of Human Rights as “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The inquiry has been divided into four “modules” which will deal in turn with the history of conditioning techniques used by British troops while questioning prisoners from Northern Ireland in the early 1970s to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, what happened to Baha Mousa and other Iraqi detainees, training and the chain of command, what has happened since 2003 and any recommendations for the future.

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The International Court of Justice must investigate the Iraq war

June 17, 2009

The evidence is that war crimes have been committed

By Christopher King | Redress, June 17, 2009

Christopher King argues that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s announcement that an inquiry into the Iraq war would be held in secret is an attempt to dismiss the appalling consequences of the Iraq war, and is an insult to the country and to the British dead in Iraq and the London bombings.

Gordon Brown’s inquiry into the Iraq war will:

  • Be in private, that is, secret
  • Be held by privy councillors
  • Not seek to apportion blame

None of this is in the public interest or the interests of the country.

  • The secrecy of the hearing is transparently to enable a cover up of the facts.
  • Privy councillors are core pillars of the establishment and share the interests of the wealthy rather than those of democracy and the country as a whole.
  • The Iraq war was a war of choice, a pre-emptive war and on all the evidence a war of aggression – a war crime. As such it would be in breach of the United Nations’ Nuremberg principles, falling under the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

The effects of the Iraq war were of extraordinary seriousness:

  • Over one million Iraqis killed, many more wounded
  • Four to five million Iraqis made refugees, most still displaced
  • Destruction of much of the country’s infrastructure, still unrepaired
  • Widespread destruction of housing and buildings
  • 179 British soldiers killed, probably about 1500 wounded, 222 seriously
  • Waste of approximately GBP 9 billion in direct costs
  • Reprisal attacks and deaths in London and elsewhere, decreased UK security together with huge costs and inconvenience of security precautions
  • Destruction of the United Nation’s authority, loss of UK credibility, a precedent for aggressive warfare, breach of international law, thus decreased world security.

Gordon Brown’s attempt to dismiss these appalling consequences by a secret inquiry is absurd. It is an insult to the country and to the British dead in Iraq and the London bombings. Brown himself voted in Parliament for the war as a member of the Blair cabinet at that time.

Nor could any form of parliamentary inquiry do justice to this disaster to Iraq and this country. We have a Parliament of professional politicians who are for the most part both incompetent and corrupt. They are not politicians of principle; they are politicians of self-interest. Most, with a few honourable exceptions, voted for the Iraq war. They did not read the weapons inspectors’ reports; they did not read the United Nations proceedings, yet they voted to invade another country and collude with the dangerous fool whom America chose as its president, not once, but twice. Their vote showed contempt for the British people whose money they take and who marched peacefully, a million strong in London, to tell them that the Iraq war was wrong.

On his resignation as premier, Anthony Blair, who marketed the war for George Bush, was immediately rewarded by the Americans with a job at the investment bank JP Morgan at a salary of GBP 2.5 million per year. This is reported to be the first of a series of posts that could gain him GBP 40 million. JP Morgan is now involved in Iraqi oil and stands to make huge profits by mortgaging future Iraqi oil production. One must ask, “Would Mr Blair have gained these rewards if he had refused to place the UK armed forces at America’s disposal and market the Iraq war to the rest of the world?” All the evidence is that the objective of the war was the seizure of Iraq’s oil resources and Anthony Blair’s objective was money.

This secret, disgusting, cover-up inquiry organized by Gordon Brown should be ignored. It is a waste of time to oppose it or to attempt modification of its terms of reference, whatever they might be. Those named to hold it would do well to reconsider as they will henceforth be regarded as apologists for and concealers of war crimes. Those concerned with peace, justice and the rule of law should concentrate their effort where it will bear results. The future morale, reputation and direction of the country are at stake. The country needs to be cleansed.

There is only one possibility for demonstrating that the United Kingdom has returned to the rule of law. The Iraq war inquiry must go to the International Court of Justice.

Gordon Brown is obliged to call an election in less than a year. Those political parties or independent candidates who stand on the undertaking to take the Iraq war to the International Court of Justice will gain overwhelming public support. The country is sickened of its self-serving politicians. A means of expressing public opinion is needed. Coalitions of the minority parties for this purpose should be formed since the major parties will not support this action. If our serving soldiers, the injured and families of the dead want the truth, they will find it at the International Court of Justice – not in Gordon Brown’s secret whitewash inquiry that he hopes will get him past the next election.

At the last parliamentary election, the Liberal Democrats had the opportunity to stand on a platform of withdrawing our forces from Iraq. Anthony Blair successfully bluffed them that it would be “disloyal to our brave troops”. The evidence is that Anthony Blair’s lies and cynical use of our troops for his personal enrichment put them in harm’s way and left 179 of them dead.

Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.

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Covering up Israel’s Gaza crimes with UN help

May 14, 2009

Hasan Abu Nimah, The Electronic Intifada, 13 May 2009

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon meets with Israeli President Shimon Peres at the UN in New York, 6 May 2009. (Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo)


In my last article, I considered how UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon might handle the inquiry into Israeli attacks on UN facilities in the occupied Gaza Strip last winter. I hoped for the best but feared the worst given press reports that Ban had been told by the United States not to publish the report in full lest that harm the “peace process.”

Unfortunately, the worst fears were fully justified as Ban published and sent to the Security Council only a 27-page summary of the 184-page document submitted to him by a board of inquiry led by a former head of Amnesty International.

Moreover, Ban rejected a key recommendation that there be a full independent investigation into numerous killings and injuries caused to UN personnel and Palestinian civilians during the Israeli assault.

The board issued the recommendation because its own mandate was specifically limited to examining just nine incidents (Israel launched thousands of land, sea and air attacks on the Gaza Strip over 22 days). The board noted that “it was not within its scope or capacity to reach conclusions on all aspects of these incidents relevant to assessment of the responsibility of the parties in accordance with the rules and principles of international humanitarian law.”

These limitations meant that the board was “unable to investigate fully all circumstances related to the deaths and injuries” during several incidents including an attack in the immediate vicinity of school run by UNRWA — the UN agency for Palestine refugees — in Jabaliya in which dozens of people were killed, and another incident on 27 December which killed nine students from UNRWA’s Gaza Training Center immediately across the road from the main UN compound in Gaza City. Other incidents mentioned included ones in which white phosphorus shells fell on UN schools and facilities and densely populated urban areas.

Now here is the crucial part, included in recommendation 11 in the published summary: “where civilians have been killed and there are allegations of violations of international humanitarian law, there should be thorough investigations, full investigations, and, where required, accountability.” Such investigations, the summary states, should be carried out by an “impartial inquiry mandated, and adequately resourced, to investigate allegations of violations of international humanitarian law in Gaza and southern Israel by the [Israeli army] and by Hamas and other Palestinian militants.”

The board of inquiry corroborated the already existing masses of evidence collected by local and international human rights organizations, eyewitness accounts from UN and other humanitarian personnel, and the legal examination by the distinguished (but vilified by Israel and the US) UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Richard Falk.

And yet none of this death and destruction, not the use of white phosphorus in flagrant violation of international law, not even against the UN (if that is all the secretary-general cares about) merited any further examination.

In his 4 May letter to the Security Council accompanying the summary, Ban wrote, “I do not plan any further inquiry,” adding perhaps as an excuse that “the government of Israel has agreed to meet with United Nations Secretariat officials to address the Board’s recommendations, in as far as they related to Israel.”

Israel, however, made its position very clear in a foreign ministry statement: “Israel rejects the criticism in the committee’s summary report, and determines that in both spirit and language, the report is tendentious, patently biased and ignores the facts.” Israel accused the board of inquiry of preferring the claims of Hamas, “a murderous terror organization and by doing so has misled the world.” Would Israeli representatives say anything different when they meet the secretary-general’s staff?

Ban could even have called Israel’s bluff and said that since Israel did not view the current report as sufficiently thorough, he would indeed order a full, impartial inquiry as recommended.

But the reality is that Ban has learned all the “right” lessons from the past. In 1996, then UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali published — against American “advice” — a UN report that demolished Israeli claims that its shelling on 18 April that year of the UN peacekeeping base in Qana, Lebanon, killing 106 people, was an accident. Boutros-Ghali effectively paid with his job as the Clinton Administration vetoed his bid for a second term. In 2002, after the Israeli army destroyed much of Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Security Council ordered then Secretary-General Kofi Annan to carry out an investigation. But Israel refused to allow the inquiry team into the country, and so Annan, rather than going back to the Security Council to ask for its support in carrying out his mandate, simply told the investigation team to disband and go home.

Ban is taking things even further. He apparently created the board of inquiry not in order to find out the truth, but only as a political exercise to cover himself from the charge of total inaction. But the board of inquiry members did take their mandate very seriously and honestly. By rejecting their call for accountability, Ban has in effect rejected and betrayed his own mandate to uphold the UN Charter and international humanitarian law.

And on what grounds did the secretary-general decide to publish only 27 pages? Most likely the rest of the report was not only damning to Israel, but would have exposed his decision to block further investigation as even more nakedly cynical.

It is especially puzzling since Ban himself had described the board of inquiry as “independent.” In response to allegations he had “watered down” the document, he stated: “I do not have any authority to edit or change any wording” of its “conclusion and recommendations.”

He did much more than that: he withheld 85 percent of the report! It may be true that the report is just an “internal document and is not for public release” as Ban wrote in his letter, and that the inquiry “is not a judicial body or court of law.”

But the Security Council — the UN’s most authoritative body — is not the public, and it ought at least to be able to see it even if the public cannot. Of course it is very likely that by some means or another some members of the council do have the full report, and it is likely that Israel has it as well, otherwise how did the pressures on the secretary-general not to publish it originate in the first place?

The UN Charter places on the secretary-general the responsibility to inform the Security Council of grave breaches of the charter so that it can act. Ban is actually hiding evidence of grave breaches in order to spare the Security Council the embarrassment of having to act against Israel which remains as ever the special case enjoying full impunity.

In the absence of any credible explanation for stopping even the 15 members of the Security Council from officially seeing the full report the presumption must be that Ban is engaging in a cover-up to protect Israel and therefore his own job. Equally puzzling is the acquiescence of the Security Council to this scandal. It is known that Ban’s action has been prompted, or fully approved by three permanent members. Why did the 12 others keep quiet?

In Gaza, there are numerous, credible and mounting allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including testimonies published in the Israeli media from Israeli soldiers themselves. The ongoing blockade preventing the movement of basic supplies and people in and out of an occupied territory is a prima facie breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Unlike other alleged war crimes in other parts of the world, the evidence is all there requiring little effort to find, including numerous statements from Israeli leaders showing that they had the motivation and intent to harm civilians as an act of punishment or revenge.

Yet once again, when it comes to Israel, UN officials actively collude in protecting the perpetrators. How could an investigation of an aggression which involved severe war crimes, deliberate attacks on civilians, destruction of civilian infrastructure, usage of banned weapons, attacks on UN installations, siege and deprivation be quietly shelved upon the discretion of the secretary-general alone?

The answer may be simple, but alarmingly revealing; the office of the secretary -general carries with it so much prestige, privilege and material reward, it seems not many can resist the temptation of holding on to the job at any price even if that price is paid in innocent people’s blood. The hunger for a second term requires so much obsequiousness and opportunism that the holder of this position becomes a burden rather than an asset, an obstacle to the UN functioning effectively.

It is not only Palestinians who are the victims of such outrageous and immoral actions, but the last vestiges of credibility of the UN itself. I hold — as do most Palestinians — enormous admiration and respect for the work of UNRWA and its personnel who remained under Israeli bombardment in Gaza risking their lives along with the communities they serve. These UN personnel also deserve better; they too are betrayed by the cowardice of those above them.

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations. This essay first appeared in The Jordan and is republished with the author’s permission.

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