12TH JANUARY
MI6 AGENTS NOT REQUIRED TO INTERVENE TO PREVENT TORTURE.
12 January 2002 – London sends a note of legal clarification to MI6 agents in Afghanistan, who had been sent out to interview Afghan prisoners and might witness signs of abuse or torture on anyone held by the Americans. “Given that they are not within our custody or control,” it explained, “you are not required to intervene to prevent this.” Nor was there any need to update senior officials in Whitehall about such bothersome matters and they should only inform a senior US official if the abuse involved an MI6 interview. Other human rights abuses committed by Americans were, it seems, of no importance.(1)
BRITISH TROOPS BURN INDIAN VILLAGE
12 January 1757 – Captain Coote of Clive’s army in India noted in his diary “I was detached with fifty soldiers and one hundred seapoys to burn a village about three miles from the fort, and was to be joined by some sailors… I therefore marched into the village about a mile and a half, and then ordered the seapoys and sailors to set fire in the rear of me as I marched back again.”
FOOTNOTES
- Gordon Corera (2011), “MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service,” Phoenix, London p339