The "war on terror's" claim to defend freedom, democracy and the rule of law has been shown to mean precisely the opposite writes Piers Mostyn
Switching on the TV news recently you might have seen grainy images of a prisoner in a cage wearing an orange boiler suit. Without more information you wouldn't have known whether the story was about westerners held hostage in Irag or muslims detained without trial by the USA at Guantanamo Bay.
The US and British governments complain that Iraqi hostage takers are cynically using today's sophisticated media technology to manipulate public opinion. But there is an obvious irony in images of US and British human rights abuses being reproduced and fed back to the world.
Of course, thus far, the "coalition of the willing" has not been caught on video beheading it's hostages. But it's prisoners have been killed, tortured and abused - sometimes on film. And whereas a relatively high proportion of westerners held in Iraq are released unharmed after a short time, hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo and a score of other camps across the globe have languished for years incommunicado.
Where is the rule of law, let alone freedom, at Abu Ghraib or Britain's home-grown Guatanamo at Belmarsh prison?
When British engineer Ken Bigley and two Americans were taken hostage in September, the hostage takers demanded the release of women prisoners. In direct contravention of the Geneva Convention the US military authorities overturned a decision to release two women scientists.
This happened only days after the Iraq Survey Group officially announced there were no weapons of mass destruction and no WMD programme, so there could be no pretence that the women were still being held as part of any investigation into alleged war crimes.
The unfolding drama exposed London and Washington's refusal to lift a finger on behalf of their own -because to do so would have fuelled international and Iragi opposition to the occupation regime.
Blair and Bush still hope a few minor concessions might be enough to buy off a layer of opposition to the war and it's terror tactics. A few prosecutions have commenced against coalition soldiers for the torture and murder or Iraqis. A trickle of detainees have been freed from Guantanamo. Where is the rule of
law, let alone freedom, at Abu Ghraib or Britain's
home-grown
Guatanamo at Belmarsh prison?
A Belmarsh detainee has been freed. But these concessions are dangerous for the authorities. The prisoner releases beg the question why the detainees were held in the first place. If not a 'threat now, were they ever?
A recent article in The Observer reported that Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Christino, a US military intelligence officer of 20 years' experience who worked at the heart of the Pentagon's intelligence war in 2003, recently stated that prisoner interrogations at Guantanamo have not prevented a single attack. He said that Bush and Rumsfeld "wildly exaggerated" their intelligence value and that the process for determining which detainees should be held was hopelessly flawed from the get-go.
In Britain top judges are currently adjudicating on the lawfulness of detention without trial and of the use of evidence obtained from detainees through torture.
Whatever the outcome the British government is unlikely to make an orderly retreat from its assault on civil liberties.
It is ploughing funds into a massive expansion of surveillance, harassment and control of the muslim community; a new tranch of repressive measures is being planned; a big crack down on freedom of movement is being co-ordinated by the EU and the USA.
Protests against detentions without trial now need to be broadened to add the weight and numbers of the anti-war movement, the muslim community and unions. The fight is not Just to free the detainees, but to the scrap the anti-terror laws, stop them being extended and defend the communities under