Deception

From Richard Lutz

Britain says torture is illegal. And continually and stridently has it said that.

So there is no way that Tony Blair’s administration  has  ever kidnapped a man, his wife and his children, forced them onto a dark plane, flown them halfway round the globe, offered them up to a murderous tyrant and then allowed them to be tortured.

No way.

The UK would never so this. It runs against a moral fundamental underpinning this island of democracy and freedom.

So when  MI-6 and the government says it is not guilty of doing this to Sami al-Saadi and his family, I accept this.

Despite that  this country has handed him  £2.25m in blood  money, I accept it. We don’t kidnap. We are not an accessory to torture.

And though  Sami al- Saadi and his daughter have both given graphic accounts of their ‘rendition’ by  the UK secret service from Hong Kong to fascist Libya back in ’04, I accept that the UK will never do this.

But  it did.

Today, Blair’s reputation is in shreds. And today  Jack Straw’s reputation is in shreds. This country (and ahem..the voters) have been lied to and deceived. And today the present Cameron administration and its Whitehall servants have also been found out to be equally disingenuous and cynical with the simple truth. It won’t admit liability nor guilt.

The al-Saadi family have been given the money because  British Whitehall lawyers knew full well if the   case ever came to court, this country would lose. It is shut up money. It is, in essence, a bribe to a man mentally and physically crippled by torture; a man, by the way, who was a Libyan dissident  fighting against the mad tyrant Quaddaffi.

But it can never thought to be an admission of kidnap and conspiracy to torture. Britain would not do that. It is not the British way.