LONDON: A determined attempt by the British Ministry of Defence (MoD) to transfer insurgents to Afghan jails was blocked by the high court in London on Friday after it heard evidence that they would be handed over to a notorious torturer and alleged killer.
The court heard how the Foreign Office Minister Lady Warsi — the former Conservative Party co-chair — had failed to question assurances by Asadullah Khalid, the head of the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), even though he was alleged to be widely known to have been personally involved in torture.
An urgent hearing was requested by lawyers acting for an Afghan prisoner tortured in breach of assurances made to British officials. James Eadie QC, for the MoD, told the hearing: “Both the secretary of state for defence [Philip Hammond] and the baroness [Warsi] were briefed on the allegations. But the fact of the matter is, he is head of the NDS.” He added: “We have to deal with the NDS: it is to the NDS that insurgents are transferred. Therefore, it is obvious that whatever the truth of the allegations, the government engages with the body it engages with.” Khalid is reported to be a close aide of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
Lord Justice Moses intervened to say Warsi had done a deal with a man responsible for prisons where there were “very live concerns”. Eadie accepted the point.
The court heard that a senior Canadian diplomat in Afghanistan had made public allegations that the head of the NDS “was known to personally torture people” in a “dungeon under his guest house”, “had people killed who got in his way” and was “running a narcotics operation”. Khalid has previously denied the allegations.
The court hearing — in a case of the kind likely to be heard in secret if the government’s justice and security bill is passed — was requested by the law firm Leigh Day and the legal charity Reprieve, acting for Serdar Mohammed, tortured by the Afghan security services after being transferred to their custody by UK forces.
Following Mohamed’s allegations, the government placed a moratorium in 2010 on all transfers of prisoners to the NDS.
The MoD now wants to lift that moratorium. Eadie argued there was a “pressing need” for British forces to transfer detainees to the Afghan prison at Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province. From there, they might be transferred to jails in Kandahar and Kabul, where prisoners had also been tortured, the court heard.
Eadie said delays in transferring the prisoners to what he called “a sovereign state’s criminal justice system” could damage the UK’s relations with the Afghan government. Some detainees might have to be released if they could not be handed over to an Afghan jail, thereby endangering the lives of British soldiers and the local population. Safeguards, including monitoring of Afghan jails by UK officials, had been put in place, Eadie said.
Dinah Rose, QC for Mohammed, repeatedly described the head of the NDS as “Mr Khalid the Torturer”. Warsi must have received a Foreign Office briefing before meeting him, she told the court: “Baroness Warsi shook his hand, and I hope she washed her hands well afterwards.”
Eadie suggested two whips found at Lashkar Gah jail last year were insufficient evidence for a reasonable prospect of success at a full court hearing into the matter scheduled for later this month.
Two suspicious lengths of hose pipe had also been found in interrogation rooms when MoD inspectors visited on two occasions earlier last year, the court heard. Moses said this “spoke to a culture” of abuse. Documents disclosed to the court showed Britain’s deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, Catherine Royle, met officials from the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan in June and asked them to name Khalid as a torturer in a report.
Guardian News
