Following are excerpts from yesterday’s editorial in The Guardian: It was no surprise when a doctor advised that Binyam Mohamed was in no state to face the media upon his return to the UK. The 31-year-old British resident — against whom all terror charges have been dropped — had spent seven straight years in the hands of intelligence authorities in Pakistan, Morocco and then Guantanamo Bay before he touched down in Britain on Monday. Only weeks have passed since he was weakened by a month-long hunger strike, but even more damage was done by what came before that act of defiance. Mohamed alleges a catalog of mistreatment, including having his genitals sliced with a razor in Morocco. He said that the worst moment of all only arrived when he realized that the British authorities were in alliance with his abusers.
His serious charges remain allegations, but there is good reason to take them seriously. This month a high court judge ruled there was “powerful evidence” of the mistreatment and of the awareness of UK intelligence services, although warnings about the potential damage its exposure might do to Anglo-American relations sufficed to keep this evidence away from public view. The attorney general is said to be considering the possibility of prosecuting particular intelligence officers, but while the pall of national security is being used to obscure relevant facts it might prove to be tough to secure a conviction. Besides, the lingering suspicion is that the fault goes well beyond one or two rogue MI6 men, and up to the top where a decision was made not to ask awkward questions about the way in which George W. Bush’s Washington was waging its self-proclaimed “war on terror.”
With the demise of the regime that coined it, that dangerous phrase has now fallen from fashion. But the damage done to British and American justice in its name is only starting to be understood.
