Straw must clean up his rendition mess

If the UK is to dodge future horror stories of complicity in torture, Jack Straw needs to get behind proposed rendition legislation
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Jack Straw

Not long ago, we were reminded on these pages that to train a dog, or politician, it's sometimes necessary (and, in the latter case, often fun) to rub their nose in their shit. The latest ministerial candidate for a scat-covered nose is Jack Straw.

Let's first be clear what this naughty old mutt is up to. A parliamentary committee on extraordinary rendition, headed by Andrew Tyrie, has made some very practical proposals that significantly reduce the prospect of the UK being complicit in torture and disappearances – practices that have been internationally illegal long before even Straw was a puppy. If passed, Tyrie's proposals would impose requirements on airports to search suspicious flights and keep detailed records.

In case you missed the last decade, extraordinary rendition involves kidnapping to torture, and was a frequent habit of the Bush administration. The UK has, sad to say, been mixed up in this horror on several occasions. Yet despite this, Straw refuses to accept the legitimacy of these proposed measures, which would help prevent this from happening in the future.

The mess created by Jack Straw and his various ministerial colleagues and underlings includes being complicit in the torture of Mohammed Saad Iqbal Madni and another unknown prisoner rendered to torture through the British territory of Diego Garcia to Egypt, Afghanistan and ultimately Guantánamo Bay. It also includes handing over at least two prisoners to the US for rendition from Iraq to Afghanistan, where they remain. And it includes participating in or otherwise facilitating the illegal interrogations of a remaining unknown number of torture victims held in Guantánamo Bay and beyond. But not only have the British government not cleared their mess up, in the meantime Straw and his colleagues look set to continue soiling the pavement at the taxpayers' expense.

Reprieve has now filed suit – at considerable expense – for Madni, and lobbied the government to reveal information about two prisoners captured by British forces in Iraq in 2004 and handed to the US for rendition to torture in Bagram, Afghanistan. In Madni's case, the British government has already admitted that it destroyed the very flight data that would help Madni piece together exactly what happened to him in his around-the-world odyssey at the hands of the US.

If Tyrie's draft legislation had been in place in 2002, it would have ensured, at the very least, that a suspicious flight such as Madni's was investigated. It would also have ensured that the flight data was kept in one place, and not subsequently destroyed. The difference this would have made to Madni is immeasurable. It is a difference, literally, between two possible lives.

Tyrie's proposed legislation sensibly protects the UK from engaging in further damaging complicity. Straw should make like a good pooch, support the draft, and dodge future horror.

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