We need some politicians like this one
Mar. 28th, 2009 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumDavid Davis (a Tory MP) wrote a piece, published in the Guardian.
We did things differently in my day.
He's calling for an investigation of the possibility that British Intelligence broke the law in the way it helped other nations, specifically in regards to torture.
Which he should, it is fitting and proper that such an investigation take place, and that MPs should be clamoring for it. What is also fitting and proper is this sentiment.
Last week, the attorney general referred the case of Binyam Mohamed to the police. This confirms what many of us already knew or suspected, that there is a prima facie case to answer that government agents colluded in the torture of one or several of the detainees picked up in Pakistan. It is important to understand what is meant by "colluded" in this case. It does not mean that British agents wielded the instruments of torture or were present when the pain was being inflicted. But neither does it simply mean negligence, as was suggested by one ill-informed, so-called security specialist on the BBC.
No shilly-shallying, no false equivocation. No argument that the people who do dark things can't be threatened with the law, because they might then decide to obey it. Nope, goes on to say, one of two things has happened. Either a foreign secretary has approved complicity in torture, in which case that foreign secretary should be on a criminal charge, or the system has suffered a massive breakdown, in which case heads should roll at the agency. But it is going to be difficult for the police, even with access to all the papers and all the British officers, to get to the core of the breakdown. Indeed, that is not their job. They will be looking, quite properly, to bring a criminal case against an individual.
No calls for a generic inquiry. No suggestion that a "reconciliation" commission would be adequate.
He wants a full judicial inquiry, with people at the top being charged, dismissed; or both, as needed. He also thinks the people who specifically participated need to be held to personal account for their misdeeds.
Would that we had such men in office.
Because our house is out order too. It was often (probably primarily) us, the United States, to whom no small number of those British subjects who will face prison, were assisting.
We did things differently in my day.
He's calling for an investigation of the possibility that British Intelligence broke the law in the way it helped other nations, specifically in regards to torture.
Which he should, it is fitting and proper that such an investigation take place, and that MPs should be clamoring for it. What is also fitting and proper is this sentiment.
Last week, the attorney general referred the case of Binyam Mohamed to the police. This confirms what many of us already knew or suspected, that there is a prima facie case to answer that government agents colluded in the torture of one or several of the detainees picked up in Pakistan. It is important to understand what is meant by "colluded" in this case. It does not mean that British agents wielded the instruments of torture or were present when the pain was being inflicted. But neither does it simply mean negligence, as was suggested by one ill-informed, so-called security specialist on the BBC.
No shilly-shallying, no false equivocation. No argument that the people who do dark things can't be threatened with the law, because they might then decide to obey it. Nope, goes on to say, one of two things has happened. Either a foreign secretary has approved complicity in torture, in which case that foreign secretary should be on a criminal charge, or the system has suffered a massive breakdown, in which case heads should roll at the agency. But it is going to be difficult for the police, even with access to all the papers and all the British officers, to get to the core of the breakdown. Indeed, that is not their job. They will be looking, quite properly, to bring a criminal case against an individual.
No calls for a generic inquiry. No suggestion that a "reconciliation" commission would be adequate.
He wants a full judicial inquiry, with people at the top being charged, dismissed; or both, as needed. He also thinks the people who specifically participated need to be held to personal account for their misdeeds.
Would that we had such men in office.
Because our house is out order too. It was often (probably primarily) us, the United States, to whom no small number of those British subjects who will face prison, were assisting.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-29 06:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-29 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-29 06:18 pm (UTC)I wish we had the same adherence to morality & law here as is shown in your example.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-29 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-30 01:18 am (UTC)B