MI5 colluded with CIA extraordinary renditions from Britain

By Harvey Thompson

11 April 2006


On March 29, Britain's *Independent *newspaper revealed how Britain's
intelligence services colluded in the "extraordinary rendition" of terror
suspects by the US, whereby captives are flown to secret locations to
countries notorious for human rights abuses. It published an account of the
fate of one British citizen, one of four men arrested by the US military in
November 2002 in Gambia—two of whom were eventually transferred to the
military camp at Guantánamo Bay.

On November 2, 2002, Abdullah el Janoudi (a British citizen) was arrested
alongside Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna (both British residents) at
Gatwick airport in London. They had intended to travel to Gambia where they
hoped to establish a business venture for a mobile peanut-oil processing
factory. The three men were questioned for two days on suspicion of links
with terrorist groups, as well as on suspicion of carrying an explosive
device, which turned out to be a normal battery charger. They were all
released without charge.

On November 8, the three men left the UK for Banjul, the Gambian capital,
and were arrested on arrival, together with Bisher's brother, Wahab al-Rawi,
who had come to meet them at the airport. After an initial period of
questioning by the Gambian National Intelligence Agency (NIA), they were
then questioned by US investigators. During this time, the men were held in
several undisclosed locations in Banjul. At least one of the men was
allegedly threatened by US investigators who told him that unless he
cooperated he would be handed over to the Gambian police who would beat and
rape him. One of the men sustained injuries from what US investigators later
described as a "scuffle with Gambian guards."

Gambia has close ties with Washington. In October 2002 it signed an impunity
agreement with the US agreeing not to surrender US nationals accused of
genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes to the International
Criminal Court.

On the day of his departure flight from the UK, Wahab also was detained at
London's City airport in east London by two men who described themselves as
airport security officers. They said they were investigating an alleged
terror suspect called Abu Qatada whom Wahab had met four days before his
flight. Qatada is now imprisoned in Britain as a terror suspect and the
British government are seeking to deport him to Jordan.

Wahab says he met Qatada because he was regarded as an authority on Islamic
law and he had needed to know whether it allowed for partners in a firm to
be paid wages. Wahab said Qatada told him this was not the case and he had
just thanked him for the information and left.

Four days after their arrest in Banjul, the four men were taken to a secret
location in the suburbs. Separated from one another, Wahab said he was
accused by the US officers of coming to Gambia to start a terrorist training
camp. He told the *Independent*, "It was at this point that I withdrew my
co-operation because the questioning was getting ridiculous. Once again I
demanded to see someone from the [British] High Commission. This was when
they said: 'Who do you do think ordered your arrest in the first place? They
don't want to talk to you. Where do you think this information came from,
the questions we are asking you?' Now it was clear we had been set up and
betrayed by the country we had adopted as our own."

Wahab and El Janoudi were released without charge in December 2002 and
returned to the UK. Wahab and Bisher both arrived in Britain from Iraq as
teenagers in the 1980s after their father was tortured by Saddam Hussein's
Baathist regime. In 1992 Wahab applied for and was granted British
nationality, but his brother decided to retain Iraqi citizenship in the hope
of reclaiming confiscated family property if Hussein's government ever fell.
As neither Bisher nor al-Banna had British citizenship they were flown to
Bagram air base in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantánamo, where
they have been held for the past three years.

Intelligence reports made by MI5, which have been submitted to the all-party
group on extraordinary rendition, also support Wahab's testimony and
indicate the fabricated nature of the case against the four men.

Part of the evidence, which was passed on to US intelligence, includes
allegations that Bisher had an interest in "extreme sports" while Wahab was
described as playing a lead role in setting up the Gambian factory as a
possible front for a terrorist organisation. MI5 also said the men carried
copies of the Koran and had possessed an electronic device (which turned out
to be a battery charger).

According to High Court documents released March 27, MI5 knew that the three
men seized at Gatwick airport were carrying harmless items, yet told the CIA
that they were in possession of bomb parts.

In a telegram sent on November 1, 2002, apparently to the CIA, an MI5
officer said an "electronic device" that could be part of an improvised
explosive device (IED) had been found on the men. But in a note to the
Foreign Office 10 days later, MI5 stated that the men had been released at
Gatwick "after it was assessed that this item was a commercially available
battery charger that had been modified by Bisher al-Rawi in order to make it
more powerful."

The disclosures were followed by a March 28 report from the human rights
group, Caged Prisoners, which claims evidence shows that Prime Minister Tony
Blair, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and the leader of the House of Commons,
Geoff Hoon, "misled" Parliament "over their knowledge and complicity in
illegal acts of rendition."

It also accuses Britain's secret services of involvement in "interrogations
of detainees where abuse and torture" were used in countries ranging from
Morocco and Pakistan to Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay.

The report says the security services passed "misinformation" to countries
that was then used to detain and torture people from the UK and that,
despite government denials, CIA rendition flights had been cleared to use
British airspace and airports.

The documents were prepared for a court challenge to the Blair government's
failure to petition for the release from Guantánamo Bay of Bisher, al-Banna,
a Jordanian-Palestinian national, and Omar Deghayes, a Libyan refugee
allegedly picked up by bounty hunters in Pakistan.

The Caged Prisoners report states that Britain was involved in the rendition
or torture of at least 17 of its own citizens or residents—including Bisher
and al-Banna—who have been subjected to a "subterranean system of
kidnappings, ghosted to black sites, suffering abuse and torture."

In a statement made at Guantánamo, Bisher said he had been dressed in
nappies and hooded and shackled for his transfer, along with al-Banna, from
Gambia by a CIA rendition team on December 8, 2002. The account is
corroborated by flight logs obtained by the *Guardian* newspaper, which
indicate that a Gulfstream V jet, registration N379P, arrived in Banjul from
Washington on that day. The plane arrived in the Afghan capital, Kabul, the
next day via Cairo.

In Afghanistan, the two were taken to what other inmates have termed "Dark
Prison," a CIA jail where prisoners were held in complete darkness and
subjected to non-stop loud music.

The *Washington Post Foreign Service* alleges that British intelligence had
contrived to encourage its US counterparts to pursue two men it knew to be
innocent so as to turn them into spies. An April 2 article by Craig Whitlock
and Julie Tate states, "The primary purpose of this elaborate operation,
documents and interviews suggest, was not to neutralize a pair of potential
terrorists—authorities have offered no evidence that they were planning
attacks—but to turn them into informers.

"US and British efforts to infiltrate Britain's Islamic underground went
into high gear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the documents show. The
two men, acquaintances of the radical cleric Abu Qatada, were singled out by
MI5 for threats, cajoling and offers of cash and protection if they would
channel information. Although one of them offered some assistance, MI5
wanted more."

George Brent Mickum IV, a Washington lawyer who represents the men, said
that though they were friends of Qatada, neither shared the cleric's
"radical beliefs" nor represented a security risk to the US. As to why
British intelligence would engineer their seizure, he added, "Either it was
an attempt to put these guys at risk and to use them to find evidence that
would implicate Abu Qatada or it was an attempt to bring them within the
closer control of MI5."

According to accounts by al-Rawi family members, the day after the 9/11
attacks, two MI5 agents knocked on the door of the house where Bisher was
living with his sister and her husband. The agents asked about Qatada, who
he knew from the mosque. "He was completely gobsmacked," said Nomi Janjua,
his brother-in-law. "He said, 'What? Secret services?' I started laughing
because we couldn't believe it."

The British government acknowledged in court that Bisher agreed to become an
unpaid informer and intelligence agents regularly visited the family's home.
They telephoned so often that his relatives complained, forcing MI5 to give
him a mobile phone and meet him elsewhere.

Sometimes the contacts were unfriendly, family members recalled. Once, when
he took his mother to an airport, agents pulled him aside for a long
interrogation. MI5 documents show that some agents came to have reservations
about whether he was carrying out their orders. He tried to end the
relationship in the summer of 2002, angering his handlers.

Al-Banna came to London from Pakistan with his wife in 1994. He had worked
in an orphanage in Peshawar, where he met Qatada, a fellow Jordanian. He
also received a visit from two intelligence officers following the 9/11
attacks. His wife said one was British and the other American. The agents
inquired about Qatada. He resisted pressure to become an informer, she said,
but they kept it up.

On October 21, 2002, as al-Banna was packing for his trip to Gambia with the
other men, an M15 agent called at his London home and pressed him again to
infiltrate extremist Islamist circles on behalf of British intelligence,
either domestically or in a Muslim country.

An unnamed MI5 agent disclosed in a report; "He did not give any hint of
willingness to cooperate with us.... I returned to the choice which he could
make; he could either continue as at present, with the risks that entailed,
or he could start a new life with a new identity.... It was quite possible
that he could find himself swept up in a further round of detentions."

Amnesty International has also been separately informed that the Gambian
authorities, through the Gambian High Commission in London, hindered
attempts by relatives of Bisher and al-Banna to ascertain their whereabouts
by refusing to authorize power of attorney instructing a lawyer in Banjul to
act on their behalf, thereby significantly delaying introduction of the
habeas corpus petition and "smoothing" the way for the US military
rendition. Amnesty has also speculated, from the information available to
the organisation, that it appears that Bisher and al-Banna were under
surveillance in the UK, possibly on account of intelligence originally
received from US officials.

In accounts made to their attorneys Bisher and al-Banna say that in
Afghanistan they were asked by CIA operatives whether they would serve as
informants. Al-Banna was reportedly offered increasing sums of money and a
US passport to work for the CIA, but refused, his lawyer said.

A few weeks later they were flown to Guantánamo. On March 12, 2003, Bisher
wrote a sardonic letter to his family in London. "Dear Mum and family," it
read, "I'm writing to you from the seaside resort of Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
After winning first prize in a competition, I was whisked to this nice
resort with all expenses paid (I did not need to spend a penny).... Everyone
is very nice, the neighbours are very well mannered, the food is best class,
plenty of fun."

Both detainees have told their attorneys that US and British intelligence
operatives have visited them repeatedly at Guantánamo and in Afghanistan,
renewing demands that they inform, offering them freedom and money in
exchange. Bisher told his lawyer he was visited in Guantánamo at least six
times by MI5 officials, including some of the same agents who had served as
his handlers in London. They apologised for the turn of events, but asked
whether he would still be willing to work for the agency if they could
secure his release.

In September 2004, the two inmates were brought before tribunals that would
determine whether they could be formally classified as "enemy combatants."
The primary evidence against them was that they knew Abu Qatada and had
wired money on his behalf to Jordan.

In testimony during the hearings, the detainees admitted knowing Qatada and
helping him transfer the funds, which they said went to a charity. They said
MI5 had been aware of all their activities and had encouraged them to
interact with Qatada. They also pointed out that British police had them in
custody just prior to their trip to Gambia and could have pressed charges if
they were suspected of illegal acts.

"We were kidnapped in Gambia, not arrested," al-Banna said, according to a
transcript of his hearing. "I don't even know what I have done.... If I were
a danger to anyone, Britain would have put me in jail."

The tribunals eventually ruled that both men should be classified as enemy
combatants.

With a lawsuit seeking to force the British authorities to intercede on the
men's behalf now pending, at the end of March the government said it would
ask for Bisher's release. Its previous position had consistently been that
it could not intercede for a non-British citizen.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤