No Let-Up In Labour’s Appalling Human Rights Record

South Dorset Liberal Democrats have condemned a judgement last week which saw two senior judges declare that they were powerless to reveal information about the torture of Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident, because David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary had warned the court that the US was threatening to stop sharing intelligence about terrorism with the UK.

According to Miliband releasing the evidence would mean that “the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk”. Miliband has stuck to this decision even after Barak Obama signed orders announcing the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

The decision by Miliband to carry forward the threat by the Bush administration is deeply disturbing. It implies that the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s wish of last year to investigate possible criminal wrongdoing by M15 & the CIA over Mohamed’s treatment will receive pretty short shrift.

Surely the inauguration of President Obama offers this government the chance to close the door on its deplorable association with the actions of the Bush era. For an apparently forward-looking politician like Miliband, sometimes billed as a future prime-minister, to continue holding a cloak over activities in a prison camp which we know to have been illegal under international law is simply appalling.

If there is a genuine threat by the Americans to withdraw co-operation because it will reveal their own misdemeanors then that is something that needs to be addressed at the highest level. The British people are as deserving of democratic transparency as the American people & the change of administration should be used as an opportunity to mend breaches in human rights rather than continuing to obscure them. There’s no excuse this time.