Government to Compensate Victims or Torture

David Cameron has ordered an unprecedented inquiry into evidence and allegations of British complicity in the torture and abuse of terror suspects. But it also comes with a censure on courts disclosing damning evidence that would 'jeopardise' information sharing with the USA.

The upshot of that second clause is that the six former Guantánamo Bay detainees who are seeking to bring civil action claims against MI5 and MI6 will be offered out of court settlements to keep that information out of court. I expect that any inquiry would be calling on them to give evidence there instead.

Cameron has said that their is no evidence of any British officer being "directly engaged in torture" there were questions to be made "over the degree to which British officers were working with foreign security services who were treating detainees in ways they should not have done". One does wonder what will happen if this inquiry does unearth some evidence that British officers do have a direct involvement in any form of torture.

Earlier this year senior judges had issued a ruling that CIA information showing MI5 involvement in abuse should be disclosed. The USA threatened to withdraw intelligence sharing if that came to be and now Cameron is bolting that door shut, it would seem. In the announcement of the Green Paper that outlines these moves Cameron says it will set out "proposals for how intelligence is treated in the full range of judicial proceedings, including addressing the concerns of our allies".

Surely we also need to address how individuals are treated and address their concerns. I just hope this judicial review will not simply kowtow to the Pentagon but set out the rights of individuals clearly and not wash them under the carpet for the sake of expediency and that special relationship.

Four Who Should Face Investigation over Torture

Maybe the choice of the first family's dog having the word 'water' was more than a coincidence as Peter Brookes suggests above from today's Times. Of course the alternative did have the word 'poodle' in it so no matter what he'd gone for the half hearted use of the memos he has released would probably have led to a dog themed cartoon.

What is startling as the details of the legal positions on those memos is investigated is the detailed lengths to which the 'victims' can or cannot be exposed to these measures without it constituting torture. By the way the level before torture happens is defined in the memos as the 'interrogation' not causing intense, severe or lasting physical pain or psychological damage.

Issues such as:

• the water should not be colder that 41F
• exposure to water should not exceed 20 minutes "without drying and rewarming"
• exposure to waterboarding should not be greater than 40 seconds at a time

It is the precision of these memos penned by Jay Bybee (Assistant Attorney General 2001-2003 now judge on the 9th Circuit), John Yoo (a colleague from the Justice Department now professor at Berkeley School of Law) and Stephen Bradbury (Head of the Justice Dept. Office of Legal Counsel now an attorney in Washington) that raises concern. These men knew that they were running right up next to the letter of the law, right up to the envelope of what actually would be entailed and correctly branded as torture. They were working on the margins, indeed defining the margins of what is legal.

How carefully did those carrying out the actually know the detail in those 100 plus pages of legal advise? Did the water temperature drop? Where the time limits exceeded? If by trying to hedge people in from something that is on the cusp of being legal with so much detail surely some of that was from time to time overlooked. In the heat of everyone's day to day job some small detail is almost certainly neglected, not intentionally, but in error on a regular basis.

Why did Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury not give advise to steer well clear of anything that could even be conceived as torture? Because they were acting under orders? Whose orders? George W. Bush that's who. Bradbury was the chief legal counsel for all of the Bush second term. If there are arguments for letting the agents executing the orders off then surely these are the names of the four men who set the definitions, limits and legal parlance of when a torture technique is or isn't actually torture. They were aware of the thin line to the extent that they were so meticulous is trying to prevent it being crossed knowing that what they were planning or setting down the precedents for was very close to the quick.

These four surely have questions to answer and should not be allowed to get of.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of the Torture Memorandae

Barack Obama has released the memos that shows the US Justice Department and the CIA arguing around the legality of torture. Good.

Barack Obama is going to spare every official complicit in preparing this position and carrying it through. Bad.

Of course the fact that one of his first executive acts was to end these practises was praised the fact that nobody is going to be held to account for them is a poor show. Yes if somebody was merely following orders at the low end there is a possible case for leniency but what about those who were issuing those orders.

The fact is that once you let torture be used by your own forces what happens when you send your own into combat situations? What happens should they be captured? Somebody somewhere in the USA has not only realised that certain International Treaties do no apply to them as they are not signatories but also that they can circumvent the laws of human decency for the excuse of expediency.

It's a shame that Obama is not going to take this further merely exposing the wart is not enough in the eyes of most of the world on this issue.