The establishment has it all sown up.
It can't be said it's a surprise that no one at either MI5 or SIS will face charges over complicity in the torture of Binyam Mohamed. When the Crown Prosecution Service only decided after the Ian Tomlinson inquest that Simon Harwood should face manslaughter charges, having previously felt that a jury was unlikely to convict due to the inadequacy of the post-mortem performed by Freddy Patel, it was always unlikely that in an even more complex case, where the security services would doubtless make onerous demands over secrecy that any officers would come appear before the beak.
Even more politically toxic was the investigation made clear that front line officers were operating under guidelines which had been drawn up after consultation at the very highest levels of both the security services and government. Despite having pleaded ignorance at every turn, or completely ignored much of the questioning, it seems that ministers were the ones authorising just what agents could and couldn't do, as has been suggested by the documents that came to light in Libya.
With the horse having well and truly bolted, the government now of course wants to ensure that any such unpleasantness in the future can never emerge in the same way. With that sown up, and the laughable Gibson inquiry apparently stuck in limbo as more investigations unlikely to lead to a prosecution take place, the chance of anyone being held to account diminishes with each passing month.
Even more politically toxic was the investigation made clear that front line officers were operating under guidelines which had been drawn up after consultation at the very highest levels of both the security services and government. Despite having pleaded ignorance at every turn, or completely ignored much of the questioning, it seems that ministers were the ones authorising just what agents could and couldn't do, as has been suggested by the documents that came to light in Libya.
With the horse having well and truly bolted, the government now of course wants to ensure that any such unpleasantness in the future can never emerge in the same way. With that sown up, and the laughable Gibson inquiry apparently stuck in limbo as more investigations unlikely to lead to a prosecution take place, the chance of anyone being held to account diminishes with each passing month.
Labels: complicity in torture, Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Libya, MI5, MI6, Peter Gibson, politics, rendition, security services, torture
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