Why did the Gibson inquiry into rendition disappear?
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Version 0 of 1. Five years ago today, in one of his first announcements after entering No 10, David Cameron said he was establishing a “short and sharp” official inquiry into the UK’s involvement in so-called rendition and the torture of terrorism suspects. The new prime minister told the Commons he was “determined to get to the bottom of what happened” during post-9/11 counter-terrorism operations, and was appointing a judge to head what was billed as the detainee inquiry. Cameron gave short shrift to suggestions from Labour that the proper body to conduct such an inquiry was the intelligence and security committee, the panel of MPs and peers that is supposed to provide some oversight of the intelligence agencies. The ISC was facing widespread criticism for its failure to notice any real problems over the previous nine years. From the outset, Peter Gibson faced demands from the agencies that he should respect the secrecy that shrouds their work “I do not think for a moment that we should believe that the ISC should be doing this piece of work,” he said. Public confidence was paramount, and that, the prime minister explained, required an inquiry that would be “led by a judge and will be fully independent of parliament, party and government”. Time, as well as credibility, was of the essence: “The longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger will grow the stain on our reputation as a country that believes in freedom, fairness and human rights.” Fine words, and doubtless the intentions behind them were unimpeachable. But it seems they weren’t enough. From the outset, Sir Peter Gibson, the retired appeal court judge appointed to head the inquiry, faced demands from the agencies that he should respect the secrecy that enshrouds their work, concealing both their successes and their failings, and those of the ministers responsible for them. On the other hand, human rights groups and lawyers representing rendition victims said they would not cooperate with any inquiry hearing evidence in secret, and boycotted it. Related: MI6 'turned blind eye' to torture of rendered detainees, finds Gibson report With no obvious way to square this circle, the government instead seized upon an opportunity to change course. In January 2012, after Scotland Yard announced it was investigating joint UK-Libyan operations that had resulted in two of Muammar Gaddafi’s jihadi opponents being kidnapped and flown to Tripoli, along with their wives and children, the government said it would be impossible for Gibson to continue his work while police were also on the rendition case – though it said it remained committed to an independent, judge-led inquiry at some point. Gibson wrote an interim report, based on the mass of documentation he had examined, and sent it to Cameron’s office. And there it sat, unpublished, day after day after day. Five hundred and forty of them, in fact. There was a problem: lurking within the report was something that a handful of people in government did not wish the public to see. The judge had found that the UK’s intelligence agencies had indeed been involved in rendition operations, and that some of their officers had “supported” the mistreatment of suspects: assaults, sleep deprivation, hooding and the use of stress positions. His report also listed 27 questions he had been unable to answer before his inquiry had been scrapped. But Whitehall soon found a solution. In December 2013, the Cabinet Office hastily arranged for the report to be published as an Old Bailey jury was reaching its verdict on the Lee Rigby murder trial. The day’s headlines and airwaves were dominated, understandably, by reports about the horrific killing of the fusilier in Woolwich, south London: Gibson’s damning conclusions about crimes committed by the state were largely overlooked. The government quietly announced that the responsibility for answering Gibson’s outstanding questions would be handed to the ISC. This, of course, was the very body that the prime minister had said was not up to the task. That was more than 18 months ago and the ISC still hasn’t completed its inquiry. As with the Chilcot Iraq investigation, no date has been fixed for the findings to be published. And even before any report does appear it will be redacted by No 10, in consultation with the very agencies that are being investigated. In Washington DC last December, the US Senate select committee on intelligence published a summary of its findings on the CIA’s use of unlawful detention and torture following 9/11. It was a painful moment, but possibly a cathartic one, and the fact that the report was published at all reminded the world of the considerable capacity for self-correction within the US system of government. By contrast, the “short and sharp” UK inquiry promised on 6 July 2010 has become an obtuse and interminable process. Moreover, the independence that was said to be essential to the process appears now to be dispensable. Because of the manner in which Gibson’s report was published – and the deficiencies of the media’s coverage – few people in Britain are aware that a judge concluded their government was involved in the kidnap and mistreatment of a number of their fellow citizens. But the stain is still there. Perhaps the government is hoping nobody will notice? |