Belhadj was rightly miffed that the UK government had a hand in his kidnap and torture, and did what any sensible person would do and sued. Such is the watertight case of UK plc that MI6 has allegedly offered a million spondoolees (of your money, dear tax payer) to get Mr Belhadj to forget the whole affair. Fortunately he is more principled and greedy than that and is looking forward to his day in court.
It now gets more interesting, because according to press reports, the Met is going to take a look into the affair, and may be about to question Straw or even Blair. The latter shouldn't be hard to find because you dear tax payer are still paying for three of the Met's finest to keep him out of trouble 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
No doubt there will be the usual bluster and fobbing off, but things do not look to good for either Blair or Straw, because our legal department have been hard at work and ferreted out that under The Intelligence Services Act of 1994, ‘authorisation of acts outside the British Isles’ can only be signed off as a result of ‘authorisation given by the Secretary of State’. No chance of blaming a lowly Home Office minister then, although some authorities think that "the Secretary of State" could also include the Prime Minister, although I find it hard to agree with it on the facts, although equally I don't see that stopping Blair.
Let's look forward to some doubletalk from Straw about "always being opposed to extraordinary rendition" (even when he or the Prime Minister authorised it), and the same from Blair along the lines of "well, I may have authorised it (or some play on words to that effect), but I am not the Secretary of State so I am not responsible".
Last year, Richard Dearlove, formerly head of MI6, told us it was a political decision to hand over opponents of the Libyan government, and a few years ago David Miliband told Parliament that Diego Garcia had been used by rendition flights on two occasions in 2002.
Join the dots to get the full picture
4 comments:
New Labour 97-10 were the most destructive government in our history, it good to know that over time as they all come to be publicly disgraced, history will not be a sympathetic as many in the press were at the time.
How long before Fred gets his collar felt by the Met for misleading his board of directors and the markets? I am sure he has a few tales to tell us.
Nah, Fred was fooling nobody but himself. His board were too stupid to understand. The first time he did a hostile takeover he got lucky. There was some extra fat at NatWest so he managed to make himself look good after the numbers improved post-takeover. ABN Amro was a different story, but it was a stab in the dark, just like the Nat West deal.
Ignorance is no defence from the law
Well, that would be recklessness or some sort of fiduciary error rather than "misleading" his board. His line was probably "Well it worked last time at Nat West, and ABN Amro is regulated by the Dutch, so where is the downside?" Since his directors knew less about banking than he did (not saying much), they were never going to question him. They are all guilty of something, but most of all stupidity and ineptness. The FSA is thus equally culpable for letting them be in charge.
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