GeekLawyer’s Blog

Tarek Dergoul is suing the British government over complicity in his his torture at Guantanamo by America. The story is the usual one: Mr Dergoul like so many other victims of the Evil Empire’s “War on Terror” was in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the US offers a ‘no questions asked’ large bounty on the heads of suspected Al Queda militants then the first thing enterprising locals do is grass up innocent foreigners in exchange for $5,000.

British citizens Moazzem Begg and Omar Deghayes suffered the same fate; mind you they were coloured, so obviously there was a much stronger likelihood of their guilt than for a nice pretty looking middle class white woman like Kate McCann.

MI5 & MI6 officers who used the false work names of “Andrew” and “Matt” interrogated Dergoul. No-one is suggesting that they sexually abused him, or insulted his religion, or beat him with baseball bats, or sprayed pepper spray directly into his eyeballs, or made him eat pork, or had a prostitute sexually humiliate him, or forced him to stand blindfolded in a stress position for 18 hours until he shit himself.

No. These agents of the British state interrogated a fellow British citizen, a citizen whom they had undertaken - and certified on his passport to do so, to protect. Rather, having been fully aware of what was being done to him waited until it had been done and then took advantage of his terrorized condition to pursue questioning in the hope that he was so weakened he might reveal if he was guilty or not. All in the interests of national security of course; and the government has unconditionally condemned torture. But not the incidentals of torture, it seems.

“Andrew” and “Matt” should be prosecuted. The government should be held liable.

But Dergoul will fail. Miserably. All the way to House of Sycophants Lords.