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| The Betrayal - Pilger |
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| Learner |
| 03/02/02 at 20:04:59 |
| The Betrayal - Pilger [i]Legendary foreign correspondent John Pilger on how our politicians have breached international law[/i] THE conditions in which prisoners are being held brutally and illegally in an American concentration camp on Cuba go to the heart of the "war on terrorism", and mark the Blair government for its betrayal of the basic rights of British citizens to the interests of a foreign power. Shafiq Rasul, from Tipton, near Birmingham, is one of five Britons being held without charge and in contravention of every international convention at Camp X-Ray. A man well over 6ft in height, with a thin frame and a normal weight of less than 11st, he has lost 3st and is described by his brother as "seriously emaciated". His family believes they glimpsed him on television, on February 21, shackled to a stretcher. In this state, he was interrogated by agents of the British security service, MI5 - which itself contravenes the Geneva Convention on prisoners-of-war. At the same time, the Foreign Office claims it does not know the circumstances of the five men's arrests. This brings to mind the evidence of a British official, Mark Higson, at the arms-to-Iraq scandal inquiry in 1994. Higson described a "culture of lying" pervading the Foreign Office. All 194 prisoners on Cuba, it is now becoming clear, have committed no crime. That is true of all but a handful of the 400 captured in Afghanistan many of whom do not belong to al-Qaeda. To read more go to www.johnpilger.com |
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