17 May 2002 On 17 May 2002, an MI5 officer interviewed a British resident being held incommunicado and without any access to any legal representation in Pakistan.1 Binyam Mohamed had been arrested a month earlier on 10 April at Karachi airport, as he was about to board a flight to Britain, for a visa violation. …
7 March 2004 Abdel Hakim Belhaj was a Libyan dissident belonging to an organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which though banned in Libya was not considered to be a terrorist organization by the British. He had fled Libya to China where he hoped to to be beyond the reach of Gadaffi’s security forces. However…
25 February 2008 On 25 February 2008, former SAS soldier Ben Griffin revealed, during a conference hosted by the Stop the War Coalition, that he had been ordered to detain Iraqis who were then handed over to the Americans to be illegally rendered and subsequently subjected to torture. ‘Throughout my time in Iraq,’ he explained,…
PUNITIVE EXPEDITION AGAINST INDONESIAN TOWN BURNS DOWN 1000 HOMES [ 13 December 1945 ] On 13 December 1935, Indian troops led by British officers, acting under the orders of Major General Douglas Hawthorn, burned down the town of Bekassi on the Indonesian island of Java. BRITISH BAN CYPRIOT COMMUNIST PARTY [ 13 December 1955 ]…
PHOTO PUBLISHED OF A SMILING BRITISH SOLDIER HOLDING UP A SEVERED HEAD [ 28 April 1952 ] On 28 April 1952, the mainstream media remained silent when the Daily Worker published a photo of a smiling British soldier holding up the severed head of a Malayan insurgent. Historian Susan Carruthers observes that ‘no other British newspaper replicated…
MI6 ARRANGE RENDITION OF FAMILY TO LIBYAN TORTURE CENTRE [ 28 March 2004 ] On 28 March 2004, in an operation masterminded by MI6, Sami al-Saadi, his wife and children were forcibly flown from Hong Kong to Tripoli, where he was tortured while his family remained locked up in a nearby cell. They had flown…
GEORGE VI GLAD JEWISH REFUGEES PREVENTED FROM LEAVING THEIR COUNTRIES [ 28 February 1939 ] Today, King George VI is looked back on sympathetically, particularly in the wake of the acclaimed film ‘The King’s speech,’ which has immortalized his personal struggle with stuttering. Few who watch it might suspect that ‘Bertie,’ His Majesty’s nickname, shared…
