Former foreign secretary named in legal documents concerning Gaddafi opponents held after MI6 tip-offs

The documents claim Jack Straw did not tell the truth when he told the Commons foreign affairs committee in 2005 that Britain was not involved in any rendition operations. Photograph: EPA

Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary, and Sir Mark Allen, a former senior MI6 officer, have been cited as key defendants in court documents that describe in detail abuse meted out to Libyan dissidents and their families after being abducted and handed to Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police with the help of British intelligence.

The documents accuse Straw of misleading MPs about Britain’s role in the rendition of two leading dissidents – Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi – and say MI6 must have known they risked being tortured. They say British intelligence officers provided Libyan interrogators with questions to ask their captives and themselves flew to Tripoli to interview the detainees in jail.

They recount how Belhaj was chained, hooded, and beaten; his pregnant wife, Fatima Bouchar, punched and bound; how Saadi was repeatedly assaulted; his wife, Ait Baaziz, hooded and ill-treated; and their children traumatised, as they were abducted and jailed in Libya following tip-offs by MI6 and the CIA in 2004.

Belhaj and Saadi were leading members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which opposed Gaddafi. Belhaj became head of the Tripoli Brigade during last year’s revolution and is a leading Libyan political figure. They are suing Straw, Allen, MI6, MI5, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, and the attorney general, for damages for unlawful detention, conspiracy to injure, negligence, and abuse of public office. It is believed to be the first time such action has been taken against a former British foreign secretary.

The court documents, served by the law firm Leigh Day and the legal charity and human rights group, Reprieve, allege:

• MI6 alerted Libyan intelligence to the whereabouts of Belhaj and his family. They were held in Malaysia and Thailand and flown to Libya in a CIA plane.

• The CIA and MI6 co-operated in the rendition of Saadi and his family from Hong Kong to Libya via Thailand.

• Straw and his co-defendants knew that torture was endemic in Gaddafi’s Libya.

• British intelligence officers sent detailed questions to the Libyan authorities to be used in Belhaj and Saadi’s interrogations.

• Straw did not tell the truth when he told the Commons foreign affairs committee in 2005 that Britain was not involved in any rendition operations.

• Evidence by Sir John Scarlett, the head of MI6, to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) in 2006 that his agency did not assist in any rendition to countries other than the US or the detainee’s country of origin was incorrect and misleading. Bouchar is Moroccan, and Baaziz is Algerian, and neither had been to Libya before their abduction.

• Evidence by an MI5 witness to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission about the renditions was untrue and misleading.

• According to the US flight plan rendering Belhaj and his wife to Libya, the plane would refuel at the American base on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. If it had done so it would contradict assurances made to MPs by the former foreign secretary David Miliband. Referring to the coalition government’s plans for secret courts, Khadidja al-Saadi, who was 12 when she was abducted, said: “I tried writing to Ken Clarke [former justice secretary] about my case – I told him that having a secret court judge my kidnap was the kind of thing Gaddafi would have done.”

Her father said: “After my rendition I spent years in Gaddafi’s jails, and a secret ‘court’ sentenced me to death. Even now, after everything that happened, I hope and pray British justice will serve me better than this. My family has asked the government to apologise, and the government has refused.”

Cori Crider, Reprieve’s legal director, said: “The public have every right to know just how high the plot to kidnap these families went. Did it stop at Allen and Straw? Or did Tony Blair know what was going on in a torture chamber down the road while he hugged Gaddafi in a tent? You won’t find the answer in Straw’s book [Last Man Standing].”

If the justice and security “secret courts” bill, passes “we will never know”, Crider added.

The abductions took place after the Blair government embraced Gaddafi following the Libyan leader’s promise in 2003 to abandon nuclear weapons. Allen developed close relations with Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa, documents unearthed in Tripoli show.

Whitehall sources say that in their dealings with Gaddafi MI6 was carrying out “ministerially authorised government policy” and were given assurances by the Libyans that the detainees would not be tortured. The Guardian has asked Straw about the renditions. He has said he cannot comment because of a police investigation into the affair.
…

Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Wednesday 10 October 2012

Find this story at 10 October 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Security firm G4S was sent warnings not to employ an armed guard in Iraq just days before he murdered two colleagues, a BBC investigation has found.

Private security guard Paul McGuigan, from the Scottish Borders, was shot dead by Danny Fitzsimons in 2009 in Baghdad while on a protection contract.

Another man, Australian Darren Hoare, was also killed.

All were working for UK contractor G4S, which was operating under the name ArmorGroup in the region.
Violent criminal

In a BBC documentary, it is revealed that a G4S worker sent a series of emails to the company in London, warning them about Fitzsimons’s previous convictions and unstable behaviour.

The anonymous whistleblower signed one email “a concerned member of the public and father”.

The worker warned G4S: “I am alarmed that he will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public.

“I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.”

Another email, sent as Fitzsimons was due to start work in Baghdad, said: “Having made you aware of the issues regarding the violent criminal Danny Fitzsimons, it has been noted that you have not taken my advice and still choose to employ him in a position of trust.

“I have told you that he remains a threat and you have done nothing.”

Within 36 hours of arriving in Iraq in August 2009, Fitzsimons – a former paratrooper – had shot and killed the two men after what he claimed was a drunken brawl.

An Iraqi colleague was also wounded as Fitzsimons tried to flee the scene.

Fitzsimons had worked as a private security contractor before in Iraq, but he had been sacked for punching a client.

At the time he was taken on by G4S, Fitzsimons also had a criminal record, was facing outstanding charges of assault and a firearms offence, and had been diagnosed by doctors as having PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).

In the documentary, the parents of Paul McGuigan call for the company to face criminal charges over the killing.

His mother Corinne Boyd-Russell, from Innerleithen in the Borders, said: “[Fitzsimons] fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup. They put the gun in that man’s hand.

“I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.”

The parents of Danny Fitzsimons, who is serving 20 years in a Baghdad prison after being sentenced for the murders in February 2011, were also shocked to hear about the existence of the emails.

Liz Fitzsimons, from Manchester, said: “And they still took him out there? They [G4S] need to be taken to task for that.

“The people who we feel are responsible, who we hold responsible for putting that gun in Danny’s hand, are without a shadow of a doubt G4S.”

A G4S spokesman admitted that its screening of Danny Fitzsimons “was not completed in line with the company’s procedures”.

It said vetting had been tightened since the incident.

Regarding the email warnings, the spokesman G4S told the BBC it was aware of the allegations but that an internal investigation showed “no such emails were received by any member of our HR department”.

He did not say whether anyone else in the company had seen them.

An inquest into the death of Paul McGuigan, a former Royal Marine, is due to begin in December.

The revelations in the Fitzsimons case come just weeks after G4S found itself at the centre of a crisis over its inability to meet its commitment to recruit security staff for the Olympics in London.

It is the biggest security company in the world in an industry that is worth about £400bn globally.

Often controversial, the sector has been dogged by allegations of abuse and violence in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, in the BBC documentary, Britain’s Private War, it reveals the growing extent to which the UK government relies on armed security companies to protect its interests overseas.

The UK has spent almost half a billion pounds on such firms since the end of the Iraq war in 2003.

Yet British companies – said to be the key players – remain unregulated.

The programme-makers heard stories of contractors being forced to work on dangerous missions with inadequate equipment, incident reports sanitised to protect company reputations and numerous deaths of former soldiers.

One security contractor, Bob Shepherd, said: “We know when a soldier dies it’s all over the newspapers, it’s on the TV. But we never know when security contractors die.

“For the companies it’s bad for business, for the government it’s hiding the true cost of these conflicts.

“If the British taxpayers knew the total numbers of people that have died on behalf of British security companies in places like Iraq and Afghanistan they would be shocked.”

Instead of formal regulation, the UK government has opted for the companies to set up their own body to monitor themselves, called the Security in Complex Environments Group (SCEG).

Chris Sanderson, the chairman of SCEG, told the programme his organisation did not have powers to punish poor behaviour.

Asked what action he would be able to take against companies which did not uphold the best standards, he said: “If they continue to operate underneath the radar, very little.

“What the majority of the industry is keen to do is to ensure that those companies who are behaving less professionally are identified and commercially disadvantaged.

“At the moment, signing an international code of conduct means nothing apart from perhaps a wish to differentiate themselves in the market place.

“In terms of substance and performance it means nothing.

“What will mean a great deal is when the standards are in the place and there is an independent verification of those standards.”

In a statement, the foreign Office said it was vital to work in partnership with the industry to effectively prevent abuses by private security companies abroad.

BBC Scotland Investigates: Britain’s Private War, BBC Two Scotland on Monday 1 October at 21:00 and soon after on the BBC iplayer.

Find this story at 1 October 2012

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Danny Fitzsimons avoids death sentence but family say his PTSD meant he should never had been employed in a war zone

Danny Fitzsimons is escorted out of court after his sentencing in Baghdad. Photograph: Karim Kadim/AP

A former British soldier who claims to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder has been jailed for 20 years in Iraq for the murder of two fellow security contractors during a whisky-fuelled argument, becoming the first westerner convicted in the country since the 2003 invasion.

Danny Fitzsimons, 31, a former paratrooper from Middleton, Manchester, shot dead Briton Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare, colleagues at the UK security firm ArmorGroup, now part of G4S, and injured an Iraqi security guard 36 hours after arriving in Iraq in 2009.

His family said they were “euphoric” that Fitzsimons had escaped the death penalty, but said he was suffering from severe PTSD and should never had been employed in a war zone.

Fitzsimons’s stepmother and father, Liz and Eric Fitzsimons, from Rochdale, said the Ministry of Defence had “let him down and continue to let down an awful lot of soldiers who come out with PTSD and aren’t offered any help”.

They called for legislation to help vet those hired by private security firms.

Fitzsimons, who joined the army at 16 and was discharged eight years later, admitted shooting the men but claimed it was in self-defence – an argument rejected by the court.

McGuigan, 37, a former Royal Marine originally from Peebles, Scottish Borders, was shot twice in the chest and through the mouth. Weeks after his death his fiancee, Nicci Prestage, from Tameside, Greater Manchester, gave birth prematurely to his daughter, Elsie-Mai.

Hoare, also 37, a father of three from Brisbane, was shot through the temple at close range.

Fitzsimons said as he was led from the courtroom that he was happy with the sentence. But asked whether he thought his trial had been fair, he said: “No.”

His Iraqi lawyer, Tariq Harb, said: “This is a very good sentence. I saved him from the gallows.”

He told Reuters: “A year in prison in Iraq is nine months and this means that 20 years in prison will, in fact, be 15 years.”

…

Caroline Davies
The Guardian, Monday 28 February 2011 17.23 GMT

Find this story at 28 February 2012

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

The sun never sets on the UK’s armies of private security firms (Image via Shutterstock)

In the wake of the Olympic Games vetting scandal, private security company G4S may have hoped that its period on the public rack had come to an end. But G4S’s vetting, it appears, is fraught with failure abroad just as it is in East London – only with far deadlier consequences.

Tonight on BBC Scotland, reporter Samantha Poling investigates the the deaths of private security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and the lax security standards of the mutil-billion pound firms that send young men to war zones and arm them with deadly weapons.

In the summer of 2009, former British paratrooper turned private security contractor Daniel Fitzsimons shot dead two colleagues in Baghdad’s highly-securitised Green Zone. In a vodka-fuelled squabble and only 36 hours after arriving in the sandy nation, Fitzsimons killed Paul McGuigan, from Peebles in Scotland, and Australian Darren Hoare.

The three men had come to Iraq to work for the British private security company ArmorGroup Iraq, which G4S now owns.

While the media widely reported on the deaths at the time and on Fitzsimon’s subsequent trial before the Supreme Court of Iraq, BBC Scotland tonight reveals a shocking new fact: a whistleblower had sent G4S numerous emails only days before Fitzsimons arrived in Iraq warning the company that the lives of fellow contractors would be put at risk if he were given a weapon.

‘I am alarmed that he [Fitzsimons] will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public,’ the whistleblower wrote, who signed off as ‘a concerned member of the public and father.’

‘I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.’

Fitzsimons had a criminal record, including firearm and assault convictions. The former British paratrooper was also suffering post-traumatic disorder from the gruesome sights he had witnessed during previous work in war zones such as Kosovo. Despite this background, G4S employed Fitzsimons and sent him to Iraq.

The mother of slain British contractor, Paul McGuigan, said, ‘[Fitzsimons] fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup. They put the gun in that man’s hand.’

‘I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.’

Responding to the BBC Scotland investigation, G4S acknowledged that Fitzsimon’s ‘screening was not completed in line with the company’s procedures.’ G4S claims to have since improved.

The investigation shines a light into the murky world of private security. BBC Scotland spoke with security contactors who claim to have been forced to work on dangerous tasks with the wrong equipment. Numerous incidents have not been reported for the sake of G4S’s reputation, one of them alleged.

Bob Shepherd, a security contractor, told Poling, ‘We know when a soldier dies it’s all over the newspapers, it’s on the TV. But we never know when security contractors die.’

In response to the news that a whistleblower had repeatedly warned G4S about hiring Fitzsimons, the company told BBC Scotland that it was unable to find the email trail. It appears that a company selling security management software that allows businesses to monitor staff in the farthest reaches of the world is unable to carry out a simple email search; ‘I can’t track down the relevant individual so I am afraid we can not comment further on when we received the emails,’ G4S said.

G4S, one of the major players in the constantly growing yet constantly scandal-ridden private security sector, had a 2011 turnover of £7.5bn.

The International Code of Conduct for Private Service Providers is currently aiming to improve standards in the sector, which is dominated by UK-based companies. Out of the 511 companies to have signed up to the Code, 177 have headquarters in the UK – more than three times the number based in the United States of America.

Britannia may no longer rule the waves, but it does rule the world of private security.

BBC Scotland’s investigation, Britain’s Private War, airs on Monday October 1 at 21:00.
The editor of the Bureau worked with Sam Poling on the Scottish Bafta winning film Security Wars.
http://www.iainoverton.com/blog/?portfolio=security-wars-bafta-prix-circom

October 1st, 2012 | by Zlatina Georgieva | Published in All Stories, Bureau Recommends

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Danny Fitzsimons, 31, was sentenced to 20 years in 2011 for killing Scot Paul McGuigan, 37, and Australian Darren Hoare, 37, in Baghdad in 2009
All were working for UK security firm G4S, operating as ArmorGroup
A BBC probe claims a G4S whistleblower warned them about Fitzsimons’ previous convictions and unstable behaviour before his posting
G4S claim nobody ever saw the email warnings
Victims’ families call for G4S to be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter
It comes a week after it emerged G4S chief Nick Buckles will keep his job despite review finding the firm guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract

Security firm G4S was warned not to employ an armed guard in Iraq days before he murdered two colleagues – one of them an ex-Royal Marine, a new BBC documentary claims.

Danny Fitzsimons, 31, was sentenced to at least 20 years in 2011 for killing Paul McGuigan, 37, from Peebles in Scotland, and Australian Darren Hoare, also 37, in Baghdad in August 2009.

All were working for UK security firm G4S, operating as ArmorGroup in the region.

G4S controversially failed to supply enough staff during the Olympics this summer and was recently handed a £13million Government contract to monitor sex offenders in Scotland.

BBC Scotland Investigates: Britain’s Private War, to be screened on BBC2 tonight, claims that a G4S whistleblower sent a series of emails to the company in London, warning them about Fitzsimons’ previous convictions and unstable behaviour.

Signing one email ‘a concerned member of the public and father’, the anonymous worker warns G4S: ‘I am alarmed that he will shortly be allowed to handle a weapon and be exposed to members of the public. I am speaking out because I feel that people should not be put at risk.’

Another email, sent as Fitzsimons was due to start work in Baghdad, says: ‘Having made you aware of the issues regarding the violent criminal Danny Fitzsimons, it has been noted that you have not taken my advice and still choose to employ him in a position of trust. I have told you that he remains a threat and you have done nothing.’

The programme reports that Fitzsimons had worked as a private security contractor before in Iraq, but he had been sacked for punching a client.

In the documentary, the parents of Paul McGuigan, whose fiancée Nicci Prestage gave birth to his baby daughter in October 2009, call for the company to face criminal charges over the killing.

In the documentary, Mr McGuigan’s mother Corinne Boyd-Russell, from Innerleithen, in the Borders, said: ‘[Fitzsimons] fired the bullets. But the gun was put in his hand by G4S ArmorGroup. They put the gun in that man’s hand.

‘I want G4S to be charged with corporate manslaughter and be held accountable for what they did.’
The parents of Fitzsimons were also shocked to hear about the existence of the emails.

Fitzsimons’ mother Liz, from Manchester, said: ‘And they still took him out there? They [G4S] need to be taken to task for that.

‘The people who we feel are responsible, who we hold responsible for putting that gun in Danny’s hand, are without a shadow of a doubt G4S.’

Fitzsimons became the first Westerner to be convicted by an Iraqi court since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion when he was convicted in February last year, narrowly escaping the death penalty.

The former security contractor from Rochdale admitted shooting the men but claimed it was self-defence.

The men had been out drinking and the other two tried to kill him during an altercation, Fitzsimons said during previous testimony. He also claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

A G4S spokesman said: ‘We are aware of the allegation over emails but following an internal IT investigation it is clear that no such emails were received by any employee before the incident.

‘We have not been shown any formal documentation which proves Mr Fitzsimons had post-traumatic stress disorder.

‘This was a tragic case and our thoughts remain with the families of both Paul McGuigan and Darren Hoare, who were valued and highly respected employees of the company, and who continue to be sadly missed by their families, colleagues and friends alike.

‘We confirmed publicly on September 15 2009 that, in this particular case, although there was evidence that Mr Fitzsimons falsified and apparently withheld material information during the recruitment process, his screening was not completed in line with the company’s procedures.

‘Our screening processes should have been better implemented in this situation but it is a matter of speculation what, if any, role this may have played in the incident.’

Since his conviction G4S has been roundly criticised for its handling of Olympic security arrangements.

Last week, it emerged G4S chief Nick Buckles will keep his job despite an independent review finding the bungling security firm guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract.

Mr Buckles, whose pay and benefits package was worth £5.3million last year, had been widely expected to lose his lucrative post over the fiasco.

But instead, two of his deputies will pay the price for the group’s failures during the Games.

The company’s UK boss David Taylor-Smith and events chief Ian Horseman Sewell have both resigned.

…

By Graham Grant

PUBLISHED: 08:30 GMT, 1 October 2012 | UPDATED: 09:33 GMT, 1 October 2012

Find this story at 1 October 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Olympics security Seventh Report of Session 2012–13 Volume I

and

Olympics security written evidence – United Kingdom Parliament 

But board decides chief executive Nick Buckles should keep his job in ‘best interest of company and all its stakeholders’

G4S’s chief operating officer David Taylor-Smith has resigned but chief executive Nick Buckles keeps his job. Photograph: PA

Two senior executives at G4S have resigned over the company’s failure to deliver its contract for the London 2012 Olympics, but chief executive Nick Buckles has kept his job.

David Taylor-Smith, chief operating officer, and Ian Horseman-Sewell, managing director for G4S Global Events, are stepping down following the firm’s failure to meet its Olympics commitments. The G4S board, though, has concluded Buckles should stay on “in the best interest of the company and all of its stakeholders”.

Taylor-Smith and Horseman-Sewell are leaving following an inquiry into the Olympics debacle by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It found G4S had failed to strengthen its management and its “structures and processes” to handle the “unique and complex” task of delivering more than 10,000 trained guards to protect Olympic venues.

G4S summarised PwC’s conclusions in a statement to the stock market on Friday morning. It said: “The company has management and other structures and processes that have proved highly effective in delivering the company’s regular business over many years but it did not recognise these structures and processes needed augmenting for the Olympic contract.

“The monitoring and tracking of the security workforce, management information and the project management framework and practices were ineffective to address the scale, complexities and dependencies of the Olympic contract. Together this caused the failure of the company to deliver the contract requirements in full and resulted in the identification of the key problems at a very late stage.”

G4S’s failure meant the British army was called in to provide security during the Olympics fortnight.

The G4S chairman, John Connolly, said the company admitted it had not delivered. He said: “G4S has accepted responsibility for its failure to deliver fully on the Olympic contract. We apologise for this and we thank the military and the police for the vital roles they played in ensuring the delivery of a safe and secure Games.”

Buckles faced heavy criticism when he appeared before the home affairs committee in July, where David Winnick MP told him the company’s reputation was in tatters.

The G4S board, though, has concluded that Buckles should not lose his job.

“Whilst the chief executive has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympic contract,” it said.

…

Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Friday 28 September 2012 08.08 BST

Find this story at 28 September 2012
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Report found monitoring and tracking of security workforce was inadequate
Also concluded that management failed to appreciate scale and exact nature of the project

The head of bungling security firm G4S will keep his job despite an independent review finding the company guilty of ‘mishandling’ its Olympic contract.

Embattled Nick Buckles, whose pay and benefits package was worth £5.3million last year, had been widely expected to lose his lucrative post over the fiasco.

But instead, two of his deputies will pay the price for the group’s failures during the Games.

The company’s UK boss David Taylor-Smith and events chief Ian Horseman Sewell have both resigned.

G4S signed a £284million contract to provide 10,400 Games security guards, but just 16 days before the opening ceremony it admitted it had only fulfilled 83 per cent of contracted shifts and could not deliver and the army was drafted in.

A damning report by accountancy firm Pricewaterhouse- Coopers found the company’s handling of the deal was ‘ineffectual’.

It said the group was ‘capable of fulfilling the contract’ but ‘did not recognise’ the scale of the work, and listed a catalogue of errors, including bad management.

Controversially, however, PwC said it was not ‘in the best interests of the company’ for Mr Buckles to leave, despite the fact he was twice dragged in front of MPs to explain the fiasco.

G4S said in a statement: ‘Whilst the CEO has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympic contract.’

Labour MP Keith Vaz, who is chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee and led the hearings into the G4S blunders, said the decision to keep Mr Buckles was ‘not closure’.

But G4S chairman John Connolly said: ‘[Mr Buckles] couldn’t be expected to in detail be responsible for every large contract.’

Chief operating officer David Taylor-Smith, pictured left, is one of two senior directors to have resigned after the G4S Olympics security fiasco

The report said the contract problems were largely specific to the Olympics, with the company not planning sufficiently for the scale and complexity of what was needed.

Taylor-Smith was responsible for the contract and for ensuring it was delivered on budget and on time, while Sewell was the account director who said just before the Games that the company could have delivered two events of that scale at the same time.

However, Buckles, who has been with the world’s biggest security group for 27 years, has been the face of the Olympic failure, taking to television and radio to apologise to the British public and twice being hauled in front of a Parliamentary Committee to explain what had happened.

London Mayor Boris Johnson told LBC 97.3 radio it was right the G4S bosses quit over the Olympics fiasco.

He said: ‘The rank and file, the troops on the ground, did a wonderful job, but when you look at what happened in the management of those hordes of G4S employees who did a great job, I’m not going to try and persuade them to stay this morning.’

G4S fulfilled 83 per cent of contracted shifts at the Games, but failed to provide the required 10,400 contracted security guards
G4S PRISONER ESCAPES

Police have issued a photograph of a prisoner who escaped from custody by climbing out of a window at a court.

Michael Davidson, 27, absconded from Tain Sheriff Court in the Highlands on Tuesday afternoon.

Northern Constabulary said that while he is not dangerous, he should not be approached.

They urged anyone who sees him to contact police immediately.

The force said that the man was the responsibility of security firm G4S at the time.

It is believed the prisoner escaped through a window in the building.

G4S said they are carrying out a full investigation into the incident and will be working closely with the Scottish Prison Service and relevant authorities to investigate the circumstances.

G4S has largely prospered under Buckles, who has presided over a share price rise of some 76 percent since being elevated to group CEO in July 2005.

But investors have worried that the Olympics affair could jeopardise G4S’s relationship with the government, a core customer, at a time when Britain wants to heavily involve the private sector in running public services.

Government deals account for over half of G4S’s £1.8billion of British revenue and make up more than 20 per cent of its pipeline of potential UK work, which includes prison management deals and electronic tagging contracts.

G4S, which has estimated its loss on the Olympics contract at around £50 million, is the world’s biggest private security company with more than 650,000 staff worldwide.

…

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 08:00 GMT, 28 September 2012 | UPDATED: 23:51 GMT, 28 September 2012

Find this story at 28 September 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Olympian hubris prompts world’s second-largest employer to sacrifice its senior executives. Kim Sengupta reports

Asked in an interview not so long ago what had been his best experiences in life, David Taylor-Smith responded that one of them was “being chased by a rhino”. The chief operating officer of G4S must have felt he was undergoing something similar in the aftermath of the Olympics debacle with the sensation perhaps not so enticing this time around.

The rhino has caught up with Mr Taylor-Smith with painful consequences. He is one of two executives who have paid the price for the security firm’s failure to provide enough guards for the London Games and the humiliation and opprobrium that followed.

The way Mr Taylor-Smith was treated at the end, say his friends, was grossly unfair towards someone who has worked hard for the company for the last 14 years. The news of his departure was leaked to Sky television 36 hours before the board made their decision public; he was, they held, being made a scapegoat for failings which go far wider in the management.

Mr Taylor-Smith’s detractors, and there are a few in G4S, hold that he was the author of his own misfortune and that the Olympics shortcomings were the result of his management style which was characterised by an unwillingness to listen to the views of others and surround himself with yes men.

Following the company’s failure to provide the 10,400 security guards for the Olympics, G4S commissioned an inquiry by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It found that G4S had failed to strengthen its management and its “structures and processes” to handle the “unique and complex” task it faced.

Although Mr Taylor-Smith and Ian Horseman-Sewell, managing director of global events, resigned, the chief executive, Nick Buckles, has kept his job, the board deciding on this “in the best interest of the company and all its shareholders”. Whilst the chief executive has ultimate responsibility for the company’s performance, the review did not identify significant shortcomings in his performance or serious failings attributable to him in connection with the Olympics contract.

Until the recent turn of events, allies of Mr Taylor-Smith hoped that he would one day succeed Mr Buckles, heading the world’s largest security company with branches in 125 countries, and, with 657,000 employees on its books, the third-largest global employer after Wal-Mart and Foxconn.

According to some former colleagues, a private dinner in January celebrating the chief operating officer post was described as in honour of “the king-in-waiting”.

The Olympics put paid to that. It is ironic that the military had to step in to make up the shortfall in the security numbers. Mr Taylor-Smith had been an Army officer and, during his tenure, there was a dramatic increase in the numbers of ex-servicemen who were employed with huge excitement, it was said, on his part if they were SAS or from the Special Boat Service. Some of these appointments, say colleagues, were successful. But others not.

After the Army, Mr Taylor-Smith worked in conservation programmes in Latin America and Africa – where he had his rhino experience – before joining Securicor, which later formed part of G4S, in 1998. In 2006 he was appointed CEO of G4S in the UK and Ireland when the company was undergoing rapid expansion which saw it swallow up firms such as ArmorGroup and Chubb.

One of Mr Taylor-Smith’s main claims to fame in the company, and a great boost to his upward trajectory was the acquisition of justice sector, contracts from the Government enabling them to operate detention centres. The business was highly lucrative but also led to controversy. There were highly publicised and embarrassing cases of prisoner escapes. Last year it was claimed that G4S guards had been repeatedly warned about the use of force on detainees and asylum seekers after the death of an Angolan deportee, Jimmy Mubenga, on a board a departing British Airways flight. An internal document urged management to “meet this problem head on before the worst happens” and that G4S was “playing Russian roulette with detainees’ lives.”

…

Kim Sengupta
Saturday, 29 September 2012

Find this story at 29 September 2012

The Independent
2 Derry Street London W8 5TT

© independent.co.uk

Taken on the beach at West Wittering, a small seaside resort in Sussex, the photograph shows a young Keith Richards giving a friendly hug to a man he knew only as ‘Acid King David’.

As his nickname suggested, the Rolling Stones’ mysterious new hanger-on possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the newest strains of LSD, combined with an almost magical ability to procure them.

For Richards, that was reason enough to embrace anybody, but the friendly smile of the ‘Acid King’ in that picture, taken on a cold Sunday afternoon in February 1967, belied the intent of a man who was far from all he seemed.

He had joined Richards, Mick Jagger and various of their entourage for a weekend at Redlands, Richards’s pretty half-timbered cottage, just a few miles away from West Wittering.

This chocolate-box country residence seemed bizarrely at odds with Richards’s hard-living vagabond image, but its name was about to become synonymous with one of the most notorious drugs busts in rock ’n’ roll history.

Many lurid details would emerge from the Redlands raid.

Most famously, there were reports that the police had discovered Mick Jagger’s then girlfriend Marianne Faithfull in a compromising position with a Mars Bar.

This story, pure invention as it turned out, has overshadowed a far more intriguing detail of the case.

As I have discovered, while researching a new biography of Mick Jagger, the Redlands raid was part of an extraordinary plot, orchestrated by our own MI5 and the FBI and designed to put an early end to the Rolling Stones’ career.

The details were revealed to me by Maggie Abbott, a British film agent based in Los Angeles.

During the Eighties, she befriended an eccentric figure named David Jove, producer of one of the earliest cable television shows, and the host of numerous fancy-dress ‘happenings’ at his cave-like studio in West Hollywood.

After swearing her to secrecy, Jove confided that his real name was David Snyderman and that he was the man known to the Rolling Stones as ‘Acid King David’.

And any doubt about this is dispelled by photographs of him in various of his strange avant-garde productions.

Although he is camouflaged by facepaint, his short curly hair and sensitive cheekbones are unquestionably those of the weekend guest photographed with Keith Richards on West Wittering beach a few hours before the bust.

In January 1967, according to the account he gave Maggie Abbott, Snyderman was a failed TV actor, drifting around Europe in the American hippie throng with Swinging London as his final destination.

At Heathrow Airport he was caught with drugs in his luggage and expected to be thrown into jail and instantly deported.

Instead, British Customs handed him over to some ‘heavy people’ who hinted they belonged to MI5 and told him there was ‘a way out’ of his predicament. This was to infiltrate the Rolling Stones, supply Mick Jagger and Keith Richard with drugs, and then get them busted.

According to Snyderman, MI5 were operating on behalf of an FBI offshoot known as COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) set up by the FBI’s director, J. Edgar Hoover, in the Twenties to protect national security and maintain the existing social and political order.

By 1967, COINTELPRO was focusing on the subversive effect of rock music on America’s young, particularly the kind coming from Britain, and most particularly the kind played by the Rolling Stones.

That they were such a target for the intelligence services had much to do with the machinations of their first manager, Andrew Loog Oldham.

As Beatlemania swept the nation, and the Fab Four appeared on the Royal Variety Show, respectfully ducking their mop-tops before the Queen Mother, he realised that The Beatles’ original fans felt let down by their mainstream success. Where was the excitement, the rebellion, in liking the same band your parents, or even grandparents did?

Oldham set about marketing the Rolling Stones as the anti-Beatles, the scowling flip side of the coin being minted by the Liverpudlians’ manager Brian Epstein like some modern-day Midas. ‘They don’t wash much and they aren’t all that keen on clothes,’ Oldham told the Press. From then on, the word that went ahead of them was ‘dirty’.

Nothing was further from the truth. Mick was utterly fastidious about personal cleanliness and Brian Jones washed his eye-obscuring blond helmet so religiously each day that the others nicknamed him ‘Mister Shampoo’.
Rolling Stones first manager Andrew Loog Oldham set about marketing the band as the anti-Beatles… ‘They don’t wash much and they aren’t all that keen on clothes,’ Oldham told the Press. From then on, the word that went ahead of them was ‘dirty’

The Stones were also fashion-mad but Oldham always insisted they should go onstage in the same Carnaby Street gear in which they’d arrived at the theatre. In an era when pop bands invariably wore matching suits, this appalled the parents of their young fans, but it was as nothing compared to the scandal caused by the Stones’ hair.

When they burst on to the music scene in 1963 it was in a Britain that still equated masculinity with the Army recruit’s stringent ‘short back and sides’. Curling over ears and brushing collars, the Stones’ long locks were almost as much as an affront to polite society as Mick Jagger’s unusually large mouth and vivid red lips. These seemed to have an indecency all of their own, even before they snarled out the Stones’ highly provocative lyrics.

In June 1965, their single Satisfaction created the greatest scandal in America since Elvis Presley first swivelled his hips exactly a decade earlier. With the line ‘tryin’ to make some girl’, it contained the first direct reference to sex in any pop song, an outrage compounded 18 months later when the Stones released Let’s Spend The Night Together.

There had been innumerable songs about nocturnal trysts but never one with so barefaced an invitation to get between the sheets. The furore was such that, when the Stones previewed the song on America’s Ed Sullivan television show in January 1967, Mick was forced to change the crucial phrase to Let’s Spend Some Time Together.

He agreed to do so, but only with much pointed eye-rolling every time he reached the newly-neutered line.

All this was bad enough, but then came a truly unforgivable incident. A week after that appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, and just three weeks before the Redlands drugs bust, the Stones were invited to top the bill on Sunday Night At The London Palladium, the much-loved TV variety show which had been the making of The Beatles.

During rehearsals they announced that they would not take part in the hallowed tradition of acts waving goodbye to viewers from a revolving podium during the grand finale.

In the end they compromised — standing off the podium and waving, with clear sarcasm and disrespect. This highly rebellious act won them few friends.
The cumulative effect of the band’s many ‘outrages’ became clear when the FBI asked for MI5’s co-operation in getting Mick Jagger and Keith Richards charged with drug possession, thus ensuring that they would be denied visas for the U.S. tours which were essential if they were to remain at the top in the music business’

The cumulative effect of all these outrages became clear when the FBI asked for MI5’s co-operation in getting Mick Jagger and Keith Richards charged with drug possession, thus ensuring that they would be denied visas for the U.S. tours which were essential if they were to remain at the top in the music business.

By now MI5 was more than happy to assist in the thwarting of these public menaces, and the detention of David Snyderman at Heathrow Airport presented an opportunity too good to miss. Within a couple of weeks of agreeing to help the secret services, he had somehow become friendly with all the front-line Stones, although he was to prove far from an ideal agent provocateur.

The bait with which he had piqued Keith’s interest in particular was a new Californian-made variety of LSD known as ‘Sunshine’, said to provide a more tranquil and relaxing kind of trip. He duly arrived for that weekend at Redlands with a business-like attaché case containing quantities of the new drug, excessive consumption of which appears to have lowered his own guard.

He kept his cover throughout the Saturday but the following day he almost gave the game away, talking enigmatically to Stones’ photographer Michael Cooper about spying and espionage. ‘He was into the James Bond thing,’ recalls Cooper. ‘You know, the whole CIA bit.’

Fortunately for the Acid King, this was interpreted by the others as so much drug-induced rambling and all remained set for the trap to go ahead.

At around 5pm on the same Sunday afternoon which had found them all on West Wittering beach, a Detective Constable John Challen answered the telephone at West Sussex Police Headquarters in nearby Chichester.

An anonymous male voice, never since identified, informed him that a ‘riotous party’ was going on at Redlands and that drugs were being used.

Like most other regional forces, West Sussex did not have a dedicated drugs squad. The nearest they had to a narcotics expert was a Detective Sergeant Stanley Cudmore, who had recently been diagnosed with a brain tumour and given light office duties while he underwent outpatient treatment.

He had used the time well, reading up on the various illegal substances then said to be circulating in Britain, and was now summoned to join a task force of 18 officers descending on Redlands.
Detective Constable John Challen recalled being momentarily disoriented by the scene in Keith’s living room – the rubble of bottles, ashtrays, guitars, flickering candles and smouldering joss sticks, among which long-haired, long-robed figures of not instantly determinable gender reclined on large Moroccan floor cushions

The occupants did not hear the seven police vehicles draw up outside, or notice anything amiss, until a female detective’s face appeared at the leaded window of the big, high-raftered living room where they all happened to have gathered.

Even then, she was thought to be a Stones fan who, like many before, had got on to Keith’s property without difficulty and would be appeased by a friendly word and an autograph.

After thunderous knocking, the front door was opened to reveal the impressive figure of a Chief Inspector Gordon Dineley.

This was West Sussex’s first drugs raid and he had marked the occasion by wearing his full dress uniform, complete with white-braided peaked cap and military-style cane.

If Mick and the others felt shock and disbelief at the subsequent surge of police officers into the house, the raiders themselves were equally at a loss. None had ever been inside a rock star’s home before.

DC Challen recalled being momentarily disoriented by the scene in Keith’s living room – the rubble of bottles, ashtrays, guitars, flickering candles and smouldering joss sticks, among which long-haired, long-robed figures of not instantly determinable gender reclined on outsize Moroccan floor cushions.

Even Keith’s choice of paintwork to set off the old oak beams, not healthy-minded white or cream distemper but dark matte shades of purple, brown and orange, struck DC Challen as incriminatingly ‘strange’.

But one decorative detail above all mesmerised constable and chief inspector alike.

On returning from the afternoon’s walk to the beach, Marianne Faithfull had gone upstairs for a bath and rejoined the others swathed only in a fur rug pulled from one of the beds.

It was left to Detective Sergeant Cudmore, West Sussex Constabulary’s nearest approach to a sniffer dog, to inhale the air around Marianne for what he alone could recognise as the tell-tale odour of cannabis.

While this was going on, her behaviour was almost tantamount to obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty. From time to time she deliberately let her fur rug slip down around her shoulders, showing ‘portions of her nude body’.

Each of the plain-clothes officers collared an individual house-guest to search while the uniformed element guarded the exits. There was some initial confusion when woman detective constable Evelyn Fuller approached a King’s Road flower child named Nicky Cramer, who wore makeup as well as exotic silk pyjamas, and mistook him for a female.

The first finds were made on Acid King David: a small tin box and an envelope containing what DS Cudmore recognised as cannabis. Yet as the police executed their search warrant to the utmost, rummaging minutely through every cupboard and drawer, the incriminating attaché case somehow lay undisturbed in the middle of the room.

…

By Philip Norman

PUBLISHED: 21:07 GMT, 30 September 2012 | UPDATED: 14:42 GMT, 1 October 2012

Find this story at 1 October 2012

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Take a trip back in time to when two governments(who once hated each other) teamed up in an attempt to assassinate the Rolling Stones‘ career. They attempted to do so before The Rolling Stones could fill the minds of the youth with rock & roll.

The Rolling Stones are celebrating 50 years of rocking, and now Philip Norman writes in his book ‘Mick Jagger’, that the FBI and MI5 plotted against the band. The author alleges the two agencies teamed up after Acid King Dave cooperated in lieu of going to jail. The failing actor, after being busted at Heathrow Airport with drugs, cut a deal with MI5.

Phillip says that led to dealing drugs to the Rolling Stones which turned into the infamous Redlands bust. The idea he claims was all the FBI’s who wanted to keep Keith and Mick off of American soil. Both did jail time, Keith Richards was convicted for allowing marijuana to be smoked at his estate and Mick Jagger for amphetamines.

They still couldn’t keep the Rolling Stones from rocking the U.S., but then guitarist Brian Jones did until his ‘misadventure’ death in 1969.

By: Kain | Yesterday
Find this story at 2 October 2012

It is one of the most intriguing chapters in the history of the Rolling Stones.

The drugs raid on a party at guitarist Keith Richards’s Sussex home, Redlands, more than 40 years ago very nearly destroyed the band.

And one of the 1967 episode’s unexplained mysteries was the identity of the man blamed by Richards and Mick Jagger for setting them up, a young drug dealer known as the Acid King.

He was a guest at the party – and supplied the drugs – but vanished after the raid, never to be seen or heard of again.

Jagger and Richards were arrested and jailed for possession of cannabis and amphetamines, though later acquitted on appeal.

Richards claimed last week in his autobiography, Life, that the Acid King was a police informant called David Sniderman.

The truth appears to confirm Richards’s long-held belief that the band was targeted by an Establishment fearful of its influence over the nation’s youth.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that Sniderman was a Toronto-born failed actor who told his family and friends he was recruited by British and American intelligence as part of a plot to discredit the group.

After the Redlands bust, he slipped out of Britain and moved to the States where he changed his name to David Jove, and lived in Hollywood, later working as a small-time producer and film-maker.

Maggie Abbott, a Sixties talent agent, met him in Los Angeles in 1983 and became his lover. He told her how he infiltrated the group but said he was now ‘on the run’.

She said: ‘David was a heavy drug user but had a quick wit. He was the perfect choice to infiltrate the Stones.

‘He never showed any remorse for what he did. It was all about how he had been “the victim”. He was a totally selfish person.

‘Mick had been my friend as well as a client and I thought about trying to persuade David to come clean publicly.

‘But he was always armed with a handgun and I feared that if I gave him away, he’d shoot me.’

His identity was confirmed by a scion of a family of American philanthropists,
James Weinstock.

Two years after the Redlands raid, ‘Dave Jove’ married Mr Weinstock’s sister, Lotus, in Britain.

‘They’d come up with some new way to make acid and decided to go to the UK and sell it,’ Miss Abbott said.

But David was caught carrying pot by Customs.

‘Some other guys turned up – he implied they were MI5 or MI6 – and they gave him an ultimatum: he’d get out of prison time if he set up the Stones.’

The British agents were in cahoots, he told Miss Abbott, with the FBI’s notorious Counterintelligence division, known as Cointelpro, which specialised in discrediting American groups deemed to be ‘subversive’.

On Christmas Day in 1969, ‘Jove’s’ new wife, Lotus, gave birth to a daughter, Lili. Their marriage lasted 18 years, though they never lived together.

‘I first met David when I returned to California from Bali, where I had gone searching for God,’ said James Weinstock, Lotus’s brother.

‘One New Year’s Eve, he showed me a gun and said he’d just killed a man who was messing with his car.’ Later he was rumoured to have murdered a TV personality, Peter Ivers, the presenter of a TV show that ‘Jove’ produced.

Miss Abbott said: ‘There was talk that Peter had decided to leave the show and David was angry. ‘I discovered “Jove” wasn’t David’s real name when he shot himself through his heel with his gun.

‘When we checked him into hospital, he used a made-up name and later I found out his real name was Sniderman.’

His first half-hearted admission was to Mr Weinstock: ‘He told me he was tight with the Rolling Stones in England, but had a falling-out with them,’ he said.

‘He was arrested for some serious offence, but managed to extricate himself, and he said it all looked very suspicious when the police busted the Rolling Stones. They froze him out after that.’

In 1985, Miss Abbott and an old friend, Marianne Faithfull, went out for dinner in Los Angeles.

Miss Abbott introduced her to ‘Jove’ – but Ms Faithfull soon told her she wanted to leave.

Miss Abbott says: ‘When we got into my car, she said, “It’s him, the Acid King. He set up the Redlands bust. Don’t ever see him again”. ’

Miss Abbott added: ‘Two months after the evening with Marianne, I finally had it out with him.
‘To my amazement, he told me everything. He said, “It’s a relief to be able to talk about it”. ’

…

By Sharon Churcher and Peter Sheridan
UPDATED: 13:46 GMT, 24 October 2010

Find this story at 24 October 2010

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd

Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd

The British government is up for questioning from Parliament over why it has handed over the Olympic Games’ security to a company accused of human rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

The UK-based G4S, which describes itself as the “world’s leading international security solutions group,” was selected as the “official provider of security and cash services for the Olympics.”

Moreover, it has already taken on 10,400 new employees for the 2012 Olympiad.

However, the company’s activities in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the UK considers illegal, have raised questions in Westminster.

The matter of fact is that G4S is a known provider of equipment for several Israeli military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank as well as for security systems at the Ofer detention center in Ramallah. That facility houses a jail and a military court, where Palestinian political prisoners, including children, are held and tortured. British Parliament strongly criticized the detention center for human rights abuses in 2010.

G4S also provides equipment to and secures the perimeter of several other Israeli prisons in which prisoners, illegally transferred from Palestinian territories, are held in breach of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

It remains unclear how a company with such a questionable reputation could have been chosen to provide security during the London Olympics. G4S seems to be “about the worst you could pick in the world to do this job,” investigative journalist Tony Gosling told RT.

“This is basically the privatization of the British police force. It’s being sucked in by the G4S,” Gosling says. He added that G4S are even “starting to operate police stations, they are also starting to do a lot of civilian support work for the police.”

And, Gosling adds, the company seems to be receiving the UK’s support – in the form of official contracts. “They are bidding for contracts in Birmingham and elsewhere to actually operate detention facilities inside existing police stations.”

G4S already runs six private prisons in the UK, where several hundred detainees are hired for full-time work paying under $3 a day. The privatization of prisons by companies like G4S creates a very dangerous financial incentive to criminalize poor people and “incarcerate them for private profit,” according to Gosling.

The parliamentary grilling next week will be led by Labour peer Lord Hollick. He will prepare questions to the government on Monday concerning steps it has taken to prevent G4S from continued cooperation with Israeli officials in the illegal Jewish settlements.

The move follows recent international condemnation of Israel’s settlement expansion. On May, 7 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to build another 850 homes in four settlements in the occupied West Bank. New settlements were said to be built to compensate for the “evacuation of 30 apartments” ordered by the Supreme Court.

The British government’s eager cooperation with G4S is in spite of the fact that in September 2011, the firm’s contract to deport migrants from the UK was canceled after it came to light that some 773 complaints of abuse had been filed against it, and following the death of Jimmy Mubenga, an Angolan asylum-seeker who died as a result of being “restrained” by G4S staff.

…

Find this story at 10 June 2012

Report of Human Rights Watch 2010

Published: 10 June, 2012, 01:43
Edited: 10 June, 2012, 01:43
© Autonomous Nonprofit Organization “TV-Novosti”, 2005 – 2011. All rights reserved.

Afghan man who lost relatives in missile strike says UK role in supplying information to US military may be unlawful

Britain’s role in supplying information to an American military “kill list” in Afghanistan is being subjected to legal challenge amid growing international concern over targeted strikes against suspected insurgents and drug traffickers.

An Afghan man who lost five relatives in a missile strike started proceedings against the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the Ministry of Defence demanding to know details of the UK’s participation “in the compilation, review and execution of the list and what form it takes”.

Legal letters sent to Soca and the MoD state the involvement of UK officials in these decisions “may give rise to criminal offences and thus be unlawful”. They say Britain’s contribution raises several concerns, particularly in cases where international humanitarian laws protecting civilians and non-combatants may have been broken.

“We need to know whether the rule of law is being followed and that safeguards are in place to prevent what could be clear breaches of international law,” said Rosa Curling from the solicitors Leigh Day & Co. “We have a family here that is desperate to know what happened, and to ensure this kind of thing never happens again.”

Targeting Taliban commanders in precision attacks has been an important part of Nato’s strategy in Afghanistan, and it has involved US, British and Afghan special forces, and the use of drones.

But who is put on the “kill list” and why remains a closely guarded secret – and has become a huge concern for human rights groups. They have questioned the legality of such operations and said civilians are often killed.

Soca refused to discuss its intelligence work, but the agency and the MoD said they worked “strictly within the bounds of international law”. Its role in the operation to compile a “kill list” was first explained in a report to the US Senate’s committee on foreign relations.

The report described how a new task force targeting drug traffickers, insurgents and corrupt officials was being set up at Kandahar air field in southern Afghanistan. “The unit will link the US and British military with the DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency], Britain’s Serious and Organised Crime Agency, and police and intelligence agencies from other countries.” The 31-page report from 2009 acknowledged the precise rules of engagement were classified.

But it said two generals in Afghanistan had explained they “have been interpreted to allow them to put drug traffickers with proven links to insurgency on a kill list, called the joint integrated prioritised target list”.

“The military places no restrictions on the use of force with these selected targets, which means they can be killed or captured on the battlefield,” the Senate report said. “It does not, however, authorise targeted assassinations away from the battlefield. The generals said standards for getting on the list require two verifiable human sources and substantial additional evidence.”

The legal challenge has been brought by an Afghan who believes his relatives were unlawfully killed in a case of mistaken identity during one “kill list” operation. A bank worker in Kabul, Habib Rahman lost two brothers, two uncles and his father-in-law in a US missile attack on their cars on 2 September 2010. They had been helping another member of the family who had been campaigning in Takhar province in northern Afghanistan in the runup to the country’s parliamentary elections. In total, 10 Afghans were killed and several others injured.

Rahman says most of those who died were election workers. But the attack was praised by Nato’s International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf) which said the target had been a man in the convoy called Muhammad Amin. The US accused him of being a Taliban commander and member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and said the people who had been travelling with him had been insurgents.

A detailed study of the incident by the research group Afghanistan Analysts Network contradicted the official account, saying Isaf had killed Zabet Amanullah. Amin was tracked down after the incident and is still alive, said the study’s author, Kate Clark. “Even now, there does not seem to be any acknowledgment within the military that they may have got the wrong man,” she said. “It is really very bizarre. They think Amin and Amanullah are one and the same.”

Rahman’s lawyers acknowledge they do not know whether information provided by Britain contributed to this attack, but hope the legal challenge will force officials to be more open about the British contribution to the “kill list”.

The letters to Soca’s director general, Trevor Pearce, and the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, point to the Geneva conventions, which say that persons taking no active part in hostilities are protected from “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds”.

They also draw on the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has said anyone accompanying an organised group who is not directly involved in hostilities “remains civilian assuming support functions”.

The legal letters, the first step towards seeking judicial review, say “drug traffickers who merely support the insurgency financially could not legitimately be included in the list” under these principles. The lawyers believe that, even if Isaf had targeted the right man, it may have been unlawful for others to have been killed in the missile strike.

“The general practice of international forces in Afghanistan and the experience of our client suggest that proximity to a listed target is, on its own, sufficient for an individual to be considered a legitimate target for attack. Such a policy would be unlawful under the international humanitarian law principles,” they say.

Curling said: “Ensuring the UK government and its agencies are operating within their legal obligations could not be more important. Our client’s case suggests the establishment and maintenance of the ‘killing list’ is not in line with the UK’s duties under international humanitarian law. Our client lost five of his relatives in an attack by the international military forces as a result of this list. It is important that the Ministry of Defence and Soca provide us with the reassurances sought.”

…

Find this story at 9 August 2012

Nick Hopkins
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 August 2012 19.56 BST

© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Family accuses Met Police of whitewash and racism and awaits result of a third inquiry

Scotland Yard has been accused of a “cover up” after it emerged that its own review into the controversial death of a man believed to be an informant did not address key evidence which suggested officers bungled the investigation.

Kester David, 53, was found burned to death under railway arches in north London two years ago. Police concluded that he had committed suicide, but his family claim that he was murdered, possibly connected to him being a police informant, and that detectives failed to carry out a proper investigation because he was black.

In response, Inspector Brian Casson conducted an internal inquiry into the initial investigation. He found that officers had made a “catalogue of errors” that amounted to “a failing in duty”.

However, The Independent has established that the Met then ordered another review, carried out in March this year by DSI Keith Dobson, which did not address Casson’s findings.

Dobson’s report, obtained by The Independent, says: “I have not discovered anything which would have altered the ‘course and direction’ of the original investigation or alter the conclusions and findings which are documented by the investigators and experts involved…Based on all the information supplied to me I concur with that conclusion.”

Last night Mr David’s brother Roger Griffith described the Dobson report as an attempted “whitewash” by the Met and part of a sustained attempt to cover up the failings of the original detectives, whom he believes were motivated by racism.

He said: “The Dobson report was a cover up which ignored everything Casson found and concluded that the original investigation was a good job. It was a complete whitewash.”

He added: “How is it right that two police officers who failed us so tragically are still on the streets? They seemed hell bent on not investigating and putting forward that it was suicide…The two officers should be suspended now, so that no other mother has to go through what our mum has been put through.”

An inquest into Mr David’s death recorded an open verdict in January 2011 amid unanswered questions and a missing DNA report. After the critical Casson report was leaked to the press, Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe ordered a new inquiry, which is still ongoing.

Inspector Casson, who was investigating the family’s complaints, found two key witnesses who had called 999 with evidence that pointed to foul play, but were never interviewed by the detectives.

One man, who was awake feeding his baby daughter, reported hearing two screams of ‘no’ by a man who sounded panicked, frightened and in pain at 4.20am. He was first interviewed by the Inspector Casson – almost 18 months after the incident.

The second caller was a Morrisson’s supermarket night shift worker who had seen a white Mercedes van in the car park, which borders the Travis Perkin yard where Mr David was found, and two men walking towards the yard at 3.45am. He had never before seen a vehicle in the car park at that time of night. The CCTV footage was never recovered.

Mr David’s burnt body was found without shoes but there was a pair of white Reebok trainers found close-by, which his family said did not belong to him. The detectives concluded that they were his because, they told the coroner, DNA taken from the shoes “would have” belonged to a close relative. This was not true; there is no mention of a close relative in the excerpt of the DNA report quoted by Casson, the same report apparently lost by the detectives so never seen by the coroner or family.

The forensic scientist actually found two DNA profiles, one was dominant so most likely belonged to regular wearer of the shoes, but this was not run against the police DNA database. Casson’s inquiry found that it was perfect match to a white man from the travelling community.

At the inquest, Detective Kirk told the coroner that the CCTV footage showing Mr David buying a canister of petrol a few hour before he is believed to have died, pointed to a planned suicide. The inquest was not shown footage from a few minutes later which showed an RAC van attend as Mr David’s car had broken down because it was out of fuel. This footage was “not discovered” by the original investigation.

Casson also found that crucial mobile phone analysis was not done.

The Casson report recommended “a severity assessment” be conducted in light of his findings. Even the Dobson report recommends they are “considered for local management action” because of the insensitivities shown to the family and the inaccurate information they passed on. But both still remain on full duty.

They family do not understand why the IPCC, which is currently investigating five alleged cases of racism, decided not to get involved pending the outcome of the criminal investigation. The IPCC said it was reviewing this decision following the family’s request not to delay the investigation.

The Met did not comment on Mr Griffith’s view that the Dobson report was a whitewash and an attempt to cover up the actions of racist officers but said: “There is a fresh on-going investigation into the death of Kester David by the Specialist Crime and Operations Directorate (SC&O1)… detectives retain an open mind about the circumstances surrounding the incident.

“An investigation into an unexplained death of this nature is reviewed as a matter of course after 28 days, usually internally, but in this case by an external police force ensure Mr David’s family is as reassured as they can be about the effectiveness of our investigative process.”

She added: “The investigation into this complaint has not been completed… the Directorate of Professional Standards awaits the outcome of the [criminal] investigation. No action has been taken against any officer at this stage. No disciplinary action can be considered until SC&O1 have finalised their investigation.”

Timeline: Kester David Case

7 July 2010 Kester David dies around 4am. His burnt body is found under railway arches of Palmers Green station, north London, at 11am.

…

Find this story at 7 July 2012 

Nina Lakhani
Saturday, 7 July 2012

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