Abstract
This is a shameful indictment of the British state, which has long prided itself on its rule of law and fair play. Prompted by increasing revelations of the UK’s support for the US rendition programme, Cobain set out to answer two questions: whether the British government had a secret torture policy; and, if so, whether the responsibility for it went right to the top.
He begins his story at the onset of the second world war. When facing a possible German invasion, the British intelligence services mobilised resources to set up two secret interrogation cells – the London Cage (at Kensington Gardens) and Camp020 (near Ham Common, southwest London). To his credit, in spite of the suppression of evidence, Cobain builds a credible picture of the men who commanded these centres and pioneered the torture techniques of sleep deprivation, sensory isolation and starvation, amongst others. These were used initially against suspected British Nazi sympathisers and were subsequently ratcheted up against German POWs to extract intelligence information and to recruit double agents. The voices of Germans who complained were silenced and any evidence destroyed.
The real horrors of the practices developed at Camp020 were revealed when interrogation centres were set up after the war in British-occupied Germany. The most prominent of these was at Bad Nenndorf, near Hanover. From 1946 to 1948, 372 men and forty-four women – most of them ordinary Germans and some Russian Communists – were tortured there in a manner reminiscent of the Gestapo. Some of these men, who are named, were dumped at a nearby hospital and died within days due to severe starvation. This raised alarm amongst the doctors who filed medical reports that worried the British occupation authorities. Cobain traces a survivor, Gerhard Menzel, now 83, who is still petrified when asked to recall his experience. To limit the damage, the government set up an enquiry followed by a court martial, which led to no convictions but enabled the perpetrators to leave government service quietly: the entire security establishment was united against allowing any convictions because what was done had been authorised by ministers.
The gloves came off completely when Britain faced uprisings in its colonies where racist settlers and colonial authorities alike viewed the natives as subhuman. Cobain describes chilling torture practices used to crush uprisings in Kenya, Cyprus and Aden. For the Kikuyu of Kenya demonised as the ‘Mau Mau’, bludgeoning with clubs, mauling by dogs, being dragged whilst chained to vehicles, castration for men and vaginal lacerations for women were added to the repertoire.
In a chapter headed ‘A Barbaric Assault on the Mind’, Cobain narrates how the cold war brought a search for more scientific ways of torture, with close collaboration between the scientific establishment and the intelligence services of Britain, Canada and the United States. Prestigious universities received CIA funding to research mind control techniques, including truth drugs, to gather intelligence – but also to convert enemies into loyal informers. Taking all this into account, Cobain says that British intelligence adopted five techniques of coercive interrogation: starvation; sleep deprivation; hooding; the use of an incessant hissing sound (‘white noise’); and a stress position (‘wall-standing’). Not only were these methods cheap; crucially, they did not leave any visible injuries. He traces how these vile techniques were disseminated by British intelligence services across the world, including to Third World dictatorships, through training and setting up interrogation centres.
These five techniques were applied in Northern Ireland, with the outbreak of disturbances in 1971, on selected internees after the introduction of internment without trial and the infamous Diplock courts. The testimonies of the victims were quickly leaked to the Catholic Church, forcing the government into two inquiries and a referral to the European Court by the Irish government which led to the ruling that the treatment of detainees violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Although the Heath government was forced to ban the techniques, Cobain recounts how all levels of the establishment, from the Minister of State of Northern Ireland to the Chief Constable, continued to interrogate using ‘torture-lite’ techniques under emergency regulations. For years to come, these techniques, which included the application of painful pressure on the wrists, slapping and exhausting physical exercise, were used to break the IRA. It took the intervention of the UN Committee against Torture to bring such shameful practices to an end.
The rules of the game changed drastically after 9/11 and the declaration of the global ‘war on terror’. The UK became a committed participant in the rendition and torture programme that was to target its own citizens. The US ran a global kidnapping programme involving dozens of countries, secret prisons, secret flights and interrogation centres like Guantánamo Bay. Hundreds of prisoners disappeared in this labyrinthine system. The stories of British residents, such as Binyam Mohamed and Moazzam Begg, have become iconic. Cobain unravels the outsourcing of torture by British intelligence after the July 2005 London bombings to its ‘liaison partners’ – Algeria, Egypt, Bangladesh and Pakistan. There, barbaric acts were carried out on named individuals with the full knowledge of British intelligence officers, who had full political and legal cover and ministerial authorisation when interrogating in these countries. With the invasion and occupation of Iraq, British forces went back to the future to crush Iraqi resistance by beating and torturing hundreds of Iraqi men, killing many. The case of Baha Mousa, who was left dead after thirty-six hours in custody with ninety-three injuries inflicted by brutal beatings, resulted in a public inquiry thanks to the relentless efforts of lawyer Phil Shiner, (whose name is surprisingly absent from the book). As is well known, the British government settled all cases of torture outside the courts in order to safeguard the intelligence services.
Cobain’s assertion that the British authorities resorted to measures of disproportionate barbarity in part because of their ignorance of their enemies is somewhat ambiguous. The evidence he presents demonstrates unequivocally that, when faced with any threat or resistance to their control and domination, the British authorities have used barbaric means of repression. This brutality was an essential feature of imperialism. The rationale for such repression was always ‘national security’ and its twin, the ‘state of emergency’. Cobain also believes that ‘One of the reasons why these crimes have been committed over the years is that the British public tend not to believe that it is happening, and the British media is reluctant to make them any the wiser.’ This widely underestimates the critical role of the corporate media in shaping public knowledge through monopolising the control of information in the interest of the power elites.
‘Torture,’ the author notes towards the end of the book, ‘can be seen to be as British as suet pudding and red pillar-boxes’, a comparison which evokes an apparent sense of resignation to this fact. I wish Cobain had robustly argued for a red line to be drawn under any form of torture. Nonetheless, Cobain gives a gripping account that is lucid and engaging, drawing on the testimony of victims, perpetrators, experts and witnesses, and wading through previously unseen archives. This book is, in the final analysis, a heavy weapon for campaigners to wield against the abuse of power by intelligence agencies.