During the Viet Nam War Daniel Ellsberg got his hands on what became known as the Pentagon Papers.The NY Times published parts of the report but took tremendous flack because of their Top Secret classification. US Senator Mike Gravel used his Congressional privileges to enter them into the Senate record. Ellsberg said the Pentagon Papers, "demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates". Their release cause major demonstrations and outrage across the world.
Last night is a move similar to the one used by Sen. Gravel David Davis MP of the UK exposed a 2006 British Torture Operation.
In a dramatic intervention using the protection of parliamentary privilege, the former shadow home secretary revealed how MI5 and Greater Manchester police effectively sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to a Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), whose routine use of torture has been widely documented.
This is the first time that the information has entered the public domain. Previously it has been suppressed through the process of secret court hearings and, had the Guardian or other media organizations reported it, they would have exposed themselves to the risk of prosecution for contempt of court. Revealed – the secret torture evidence MI5 tried to suppress
The short story is that MI5 and MI6, with more than enough evidence to try Ahmed on major terrorist charges let him go free, to fly to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. MI5&6 had other plans than to let him go free tho. They asked the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate to pick him up and ask him questions, knowing full well the ISI tortures. This violates laws of both Britain and International Laws as well.
Ahmed describes his ordeal and in doing so implicates the US in this Torture Trip.
He says he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep and sexually humiliated. At one point three fingernails were ripped out of his left hand. He says this was done slowly, over a period of days, while he was being asked questions which he believes were handed to the ISI by British and US authorities.
Mr Davis is a interview with the BBC Radio explained why he went public in the way he did.
Mr Davis said he had used parliamentary privilege to make his claims because he was afraid of "tripping over the Official Secrets Act".
"Nothing that was said was not in the public interest to be in the public domain, but I also wanted to make very sure that I didn't suddenly find someone being prosecuted for doing something that was actually the right thing," he added. MP claims UK 'outsourced torture'
The Bush admin. as well has the Obama admin. has gone as far as to threaten the UK if they released information on Torture in it's courts system recently. Just a few days ago a story about Ahmed being approached by MI5 appeared in British Newspapers. Ahmed alleges he was recently visited by an MI5 officer and a police officer who said they could arrange for his sentence to be reduced, or for him to be paid money, if he withdrew his complaints about torture.MI5 accused of bribe offer in Rangzieb Ahmed torture case
Mr Davis has called for a larger investigation into claims of Torture by British. I'm hopeful our own US organizations will join in this call and extend it to include more investigations of US involvement. As more and more trickles out Pres. Obama may wish he had gotten ahead of all this crap instead of continued backing of the Bush claims of States Secrets to cover it all up. It's never too late to come clean Mr. President, that is unless you get your own hands dirty before coming clean.