Jack Straw, the former Foreign Secretary, is being ruled out as the author of a note on a government document that appeared to compare Israel’s policy on weapons of mass destruction with Iraq.Except that the basis for the story is that:
The JC understands from Whitehall sources that Mr Straw, then Foreign Secretary, did not see this draft...
A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture.
Disgust with the “war on terror” runs right through this book. The anti-war movement must get behind its author.Surely, it doesn't matter whose side Davies is on. He's either right or he isn't.
At the time of their extradition to face trial, the Natwest Three were portrayed by a well-orchestrated publicity campaign as victims of judicial over-reach by the US. A new treaty lowering the hurdles for extradition to the US caused unrest among British business and political leaders.
Critics of their treatment included the CBI's then director-general Sir Digby Jones, who said the trio posed "no threat to society" yet faced being "banged up in a US prison with rapists and drug addicts". When they were flown to the US two years ago, Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti described it as a case of "first they came for the white-collar worker, then they came for me".
But some legal experts now argue that the three bankers were poor examples of this extradition controversy. Luke Tolaini of Clifford Chance, who chairs the CBI's working group on extradition, said: "In the UK, we have relatively low barriers to extradition to the US and a relatively unequal relationship with the US. That remains a concern.
"But that was not an issue that really applied in this case because it seems that the evidence provided in the Natwest Three's case was significant and would have complied with the old extradition regime."
The government will hope that the publication finally draws a line under the sorry saga of the dossier, which led indirectly to the suicide of scientist David Kelly after he was identified as the apparent source of BBC reports that the dossier had been 'overspun' by Campbell.Meanwhile, the Independent quotes Williams as saying that
publication of his document would expose how members of Tony Blair's team were locked in a mindset that made military action inevitable.
The government thought "British lives on British streets" would have been at risk if an arms deal inquiry had not been dropped, court documents show.
Except that the documents actually show that,
In the documents released to the court, Helen Garlick, assistant director of the Serious Fraud Office, was quoted recalling what the Foreign Office told her about their fears of another bomb attack in the UK.
"If this caused another 7/7 how could we say that our investigation, which at this stage might or might not result in a successful prosecution was more important?," the notes quoted her as saying.
So the Foreign Office told the SFO that it feared that a bomb might be the end result. Does that mean they believed it? It sounds more like emotional blackmail to me.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports one of the judges in the case being very sceptical of the government's line:Lord Justice Moses, who is sitting with Mr Justice Sullivan, suggested a possible view was that it was "just as if a gun had been held to the director's head", and expressed surprise that alternative responses to the Saudi threats were not considered."As far as we know, we have seen nothing that suggests that anybody did anything other than just roll over in the face of that," he said.
Moses asked if the Saudi threat involved saying that Britain would not be told if the Saudis learned that someone was going to "blow you up". Sales replied the threat of withdrawal of cooperation was bigger than that.
The judge said there was no issue with the decision if there was a threat of "imminent harm", but if it was less than that, "any villain" might be able to take advantage of the situation.
At first, Dr Anthony Seldon, the Master of Wellington and Tony Blair's biographer, hinted the games are to be stopped because newly co-educational Marlborough was no longer up to scratch on the field.So a Blair sycophant seems to be taking the same approach as Blair. Perhaps that isn't surprising: Blair went to public school too. It seems to be a part of the ethos of at least some of them that when things go pear shaped you lie through your teeth to keep up appearances.
But yesterday Nicholas Sampson, his counterpart at Marlborough, hit back with the revelation that a "violent incident" had been committed by a Wellington player, which had soured relations between the two sides.
