Those UK Torture Memos will be all over the Internets by tonight
http://www.johnconyers.com/ http://www.conyersblog.us/Comment #2:
12/29/05 @ 5:11pm ET... Hey, how about this one:

DailyKos, joining the efforts of UK Bloggers, has published a copy of
the UK Torture Memo that Downing Street is trying to keep suppressed.

Here's the link: UK Torture Memos
http://www.dailykos.com/special/Torture_memosUK Torture Memos

Anyone not at risk for prosecution - print a copy to PDF, and spread
it widely. Perhaps the folks we help in the UK will help us get the
rest of the records we're seeking published in a similar way.

Thanks

You are quite a guy. Problem......Links busted (already). Got another
source? Comment #4: 12/29/05 Yes, thank you. The link worked when I
went there. At any rate, those memos will be all over the Internets
by tonight.
http://www.dailykos.com/special/Torture_memosUK Torture Memos

Source.

The first document contains the text of several telegrams that Craig
Murray sent back to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the
information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was
torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was
nonetheless "useful".

The second document is the text of a legal opinion from the Foreign
Office's Michael Wood, arguing that the use by intelligence services
of information extracted through torture does not constitute a
violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

Craig Murray says:

In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent
specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I
was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain
and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.

After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute
from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has
become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable
evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was
attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying
to suppress this.


First document: Confidential letters from Uzbekistan

Letter #1
Confidential
FM Tashkent
TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council
Posts

16 September 02

SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism
SUMMARY

US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous
policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote
Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical
policy.

DETAIL

The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has
jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of
converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist
also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged
that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already
grim human rights record". I agree.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are
currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no
representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently
considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured
to death in jail apparently with boiling water.

Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two
weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being
drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political
parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the
pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of
counter-terrorism.

Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan
was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a
constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement
of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch
immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of
the State Department claim.

Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a
reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media
censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent
media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of
President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State
Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair
way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of
the security services.

Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a
human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance,
but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover
any of their activities or carry any of their statements.
The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a
prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an
improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not
appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of
torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible
explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died
in a fight between prisoners.

But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and
a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of
detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov
has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe
there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned
(the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly
controlled.

All Internet providers must go through a single government server and
access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition
sites and much international media (including, ironically,
waronterrorism.com). This is in essence still a totalitarian state:
there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in
Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial
independence would be impossible here.

Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor
economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of
his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic
supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic
told me privately, there is more repression here now than in
Brezhnev's time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically
and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of
economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is
either cynicism or self-delusion.

This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-
rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of
increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims,
combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure
continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have
certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and
Karimov's repression may keep the lid on for years – but pressure is
building and could ultimately explode.

I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and
why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In
the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it
will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be
right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex
situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through
a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be
the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that
September 11 divided the World into two camps in the "War against
Terrorism" and that Karimov is on "our" side.

If Karimov is on "our" side, then this war cannot be simply between
the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things,
like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I
silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words
on New York have all been said. But last week was also another
anniversary – the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The
subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people
than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and
learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of
US-sponsored dictatorship here.

It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of
the World's old communist leaders. We need to think much more deeply
about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the "too
difficult" tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are
running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we
see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice
this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean
grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration.

We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on
democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be
taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a
bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and
not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not
invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy
effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from
the British Council. We should increase support to human rights
activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups.

Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people,
suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not just pawns
in the new Great Game.

MURRAY

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #2 Confidential Fm Tashkent (Nelli Kim's Hometown) To FCO

18 March 2003

SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY
SUMMARY

1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy
or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US
pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We
must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

DETAIL

2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan,
about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail
Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven
thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without
freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of
movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion.
It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands.
Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with
medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the
population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the
other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and
gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US
is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are
extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five
years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the
contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this
year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce
any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid –
more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative
developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While
the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to
appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a
bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating
fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that
tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a
day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw
a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at
the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to
find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-
up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in
human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and
Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these
are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I
understand at American urging).

6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are
activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored
dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under
previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk
today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror… removing the
torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the
Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as
peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in
international fora. Double standards? Yes.

7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to
the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in
Uzbekistan.
MURRAY

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #3

CONFIDENTIAL FM TASHKENT TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 63
OF 220939 JULY 04

INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD
LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY

1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek
intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad
information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to
confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to
believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the
question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is
morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical
our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral
standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop
torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the
results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services
they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence
here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL

4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times
the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services
which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I
queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael
Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to
use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal
limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal
proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that
they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct
bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been
asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and
understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a
reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have
been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the
war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I
believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I
had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to
highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as
much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing
me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the
meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of
Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the
receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the
office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend
the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the
Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument
deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise
source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual
who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a
euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that
if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry,
nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would
resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of
individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan,
and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN
convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question
with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged
torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there
is any doubt as to the fact

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be
more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable
grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There
is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;
"The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant
considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the
state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass
violations of human rights." While this article forbids extradition
or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present
question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant.
Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be
plainer:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a
threat of war, internal political instability or any other public
emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are
selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is
designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It
exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and
its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the
Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep
the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they
should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic
reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable.
Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of
intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they
can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but
that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which
exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them.
Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and
certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this
assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two
of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a
confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming
down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin
Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence
services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he
kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated
only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of
material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it
does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such
material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of
complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be
at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a
different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I
talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof
Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the
Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of
the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be
grateful to hear Michael's views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt,
but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are
other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention
for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it
has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and
increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young
people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus
creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov
strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence
here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer
brutality puts them beyond the pale.

MURRAY

Second Document - summary of legal opinion from Michael Wood arguing
that it is legal to use information extracted under torture:

From: Michael Wood, Legal Advisor

Date: 13 March 2003

CC: PS/PUS; Matthew Kidd, WLD

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig
had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under
the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under
torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but
undertook to re-read the Convention.

2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect.
The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is
established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be
invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person
accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

3. This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law
any statement established to have been made as a result of torture
would not be admissible as evidence.

[signed]

M C Wood
Legal Adviser

=Comment #1: They have no shame nor fear of retribution because with
Bush in power, they're just following orders! Hmmm, didn't we hear
that someplace before...at the Nuremberg Trial?
Fascism has a new face, complete with big ears (besides George's, the
NSA's).