Around a dozen men, who accused British security forces of colluding in their torture overseas, are to get millions in compensation from the UK government.
Some of the men, who are all British citizens or residents, were detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
At least six of them alleged UK forces were complicit in their torture before they arrived at Guantanamo.
Of the hundred or so prisoners seized in Pakistan — mostly in house raids, but also in random raids on mosques, on buses and in the street — all but these 40 have been released. The cases of those released reveal, in general, how US intelligence was often horrendously inaccurate, and how opportunism often played a part in the actions of the Pakistani authorities, who were being rewarded financially. As [Pakistan's] President Musharraf admitted in his 2006 autobiography, In the Line of Fire, in return for handing over 369 terror suspects to the US, “We have earned bounty payments totaling millions of dollars.”
Moreover, of the 13 men whose stories are described in this chapter, many appear to be victims of the same failures of intelligence or opportunism as those already released.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010 at 8:43