Tag Archives: spectacle

Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo Renoir Screening

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The Socialist Film Co-op have will be screening Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo at the Renoir Cinema in Bloomsbury on Sunday, September 12th. The screening will be followed by an exclusive Q&A with former Guantánamo detainee Omar Deghayes and producer Polly Nash.

For more information, visit the London Socialist Film Co-op website.

“This is a strong movie examining the imprisonment and subsequent torture of those falsely accused of anti-American conspiracy.  It avoids common conventions such as dramatic narration, music or use of archive footage, delivering frank and understated accounts from the victims and forming an intriguing and emotive cross-section of life at Guantanamo Bay.”

Joe Burnham, Time Out

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Government tried to prevent disclosure of detention manual

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The government’s attempts to delay the current proceedings that have yielded highly classified documents for public consumption have received a rebuttal out of court. The failed attempt to suppress the information out of court, a ‘spin-off’ hope from the appeal court’s dismissal of the same case in May, has dented the coalition’s plans to restore confidence in the British Intelligence service who have been implicated in the torture of British citizens in Guantanamo and Afghanistan. It also follows previous failed efforts by David Miliband in October 2009 to prevent the disclosure of a CIA report that claimed that MI5 were fully aware that Binyam Mohamed was subject to ‘inhumane treatment’ during  interrogation in Morocco and Afghanistan, supplying information and questions to the Moroccans and Americans. Miliband was under pressure to protect the identities of those involved.

The inquiry, led by Sir Peter Gibson, will press ahead with raiding through the chest of 500,000 documents considered relevant to the judicial inquiry announced by David Cameron last week.  Among the documents that the government asked to remain undisclosed was the ‘Detainees and Detention Operations’ manual. The official document from MI6, which provides step-by-step guidelines that impressively manage to surf the boundaries of both legality and morality, contains a particularly chilling line regarding the jurisdiction of a particular detention that reads:

Is it clear that detention, rather than killing, is the objective of the operation?

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Silwood Residents’ “Frequently” Asked Questions…

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distressed resident waters her dying fig tree

Prior to having their gardens dug up and the topsoil replaced, residents of Silwood were sent a sheet of “Frequently Asked Questions” as an attachment to a letter from L&Q.  The FAQ sheet covers matters such as whether the residents’ houses will be entered during the works, what will happen to sheds and garden furniture, and if any fences will be moved. As various conversations with the residents suggest, (along with common sense, of course), the questions covered are not even close to the ones really requiring answers.

When explaining why the work is taking place, the sole answer given is that the present soil does not “meet current guidelines”. Surely it is necessary for the residents to know what the soil is actually contaminated with? Are there any health implications to eating produce from this soil? Due to lack of information, rumours of asbestos and cancer are spreading through the Silwood estate. Why were the residents given such short notice, eliminating the option of planning ahead and rescuing all possible plantations in time for the works?

The £250 compensation for “the inconvenience” is the final issue addressed on the sheet; but there is no detail what the compensation is for. The “inconvenience” is certainly longer than the two weeks stated. So will the compensation be more?

Would the residents really be more interested in whether they can “use the patio area” during the works, than if their physical health is under threat? Probably not, no.

Next blog: Will Higgins answer the frequently asked questions residents urgently need answering?

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Measured antipathy and treachery by British Intelligence

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An official report of an interview with Omar Deghayes confirmed his testimony, given in this interview with Spectacle back in December 2008, that British Intelligence were complicit in his torture during interrogation at a US airbase in Afghanistan.

The reports formally recognises Deghayes complaints that he suffered internal bleeding, and showed considered revulsion at Deghayes’ health visibly deteriorating during repeated visits to interrogate him in US custody, “Throughout the interview Deghayes expectorated rather disgustingly into a tissue as if he were still tubercular. These moments usually coincided with those answers were he was most evasive.”

Another report implicates the British Intelligence in calculated abandonment of Deghayes, stating, “We are due to see him 2100 local time on 4th March and propose that we treat this as our last opportunity to get the full truth from him. If he sticks to his story and just gives us a few more details, we propose disengaging and allowing events here to take their course.” Disengagement at this point meant rendition to lawless Guantanamo.

Deghayes is one of the former British Muslim detainees abducted and sent to US custody against their will despite being entitled to consular protection, and is one of seven former prisoners bringing cases alleging complicity in their torture against the Home Office, the Foreign Office and British Intelligence.

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To order the DVD Outside The Law: Stories from Guantánamo

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No-one’s really bothered, keep going

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“Public opinion has on the whole shown little concern about the welfare of the British detainees, or the legal terms of their detention. But the issue is clearly of sensitivity to Muslim opinion in the UK and abroad.”

The source of this quote is a memo circulated to the junior Foreign Office ministers, the Foreign Office press office and the department’s senior legal advisor, Sir Michael Wood on 4 January 2002, and refers to a number of British citizens and residents who at the time were being detained by US forces. The objective nature and breezy tone of the memo betrays a shocking disregard for the suffering of prisoners who, as revealed in several of the other documents, were witnessed by British Intelligence to have been in a rapidly deteriorating state.

What is more alarming is that the message was a clear signal to indulge in the illegality, secret acts of abduction and flying prisoner from cell to cell, on the grounds that they were getting away with it.

First hand video testimony of this process from Omar Deghayes documents the horrifying results of these decisions.

The memo is among 900 classified documents disclosed during high court proceedings this week as part of the official inquiry into the Labour government’s rendition of UK citizens, and goes on to say that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office should be, “seen as applying our normal standards of consular assistance as far as possible,” wholeheartedly asking its recipients not to be forthcoming about the fact that their government was knowingly allowing its people to be tortured.

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To order Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

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Post-birthday blues for Miliband

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Any cause for celebration for David Miliband as he reflected on another year of career expediency will have been cut short by fresh accusations about his level of knowledge of British citizens rendition and subsequent torture.

Despite his promise that the current version of the guidelines, for MI5 and MI6 on how to carry out interrogations. will be published when reviewed and made suitable for public consumption, he has refused to publish the old guidelines – which he claims were more ‘informal’ than the updated version published in 2004 – on the grounds that it would give ‘succour to our enemies’.

The withholding of the official guidelines to interrogation discipline and technique is an attempt to suppress implications not only of his own government but also of those that deem torture necessary in obtaining information, contradicting his insistence that Britain should not collude with other countries that have ‘different standards to our own’.

It also demonstrates a depressing resolve to follow US practices. As the classified documents that implicate the Labour government’s complicity in the torture of British nationals suspected of terrorism demonstrate, Blair – who overruled Foreign Office attempts to give consular assistance to the former detainees – allowed suspects to be transferred to localities were torture was known to take place. Now Miliband is purveying the US default patriotic response to allegations of unlawful secrecy by claiming that to release the how-to detention pamphlet would undermine national security, whose authority must not be challenged.

Miliband’s protestation that he was unaware of any rendition or mistreatment was weakened considerably by the revelation that Gulam Mustafa, a 48 year-old businessman from Birmingham, was sent to Bangladesh and tortured with the full knowledge of MI5 in May of this year. Miliband remains a candidate in the race for the Labour leadership.

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For more information and ordering DVDs of Spectacle’s documentary Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo

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Spectacle Presentation at the London Festival of Architecture

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Films from Spectacle’s Olympic project collection are being screened as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Interviews with Lance Forman on the Forman’s fish smoking factory and footage of the now destroyed Manor Gardens Allotments are playing as part of a temporary three-week museum about Stratford and in particular the past, present and future of the Olympic site.

The event, a collaboration between the London School of Economics Cities Programme and the Architecture Foundation, will showcase artefacts from prominent organisations and artists mapping the history of the area and will be situated in a lobby space over the Stratford Shopping Centre. Spectacle’s material will be shown not only in this capacity but also as a reference to the construction and demolition work taking place for the creation of the World Cup 2012 infrastructure, which you can read more about here at the Spectacle Blog.

The festival is already underway, and the museum opens this Saturday, 26th June.

Guantanamo Screening and Q&A – Tomorrow 27th May 7pm

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Guantánamo Moazzam Begg

“Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo” is being screened tomorrow at The Broca, 4 Coulgate Street, Brockley, London, SE4 2RW. This will be followed by a Question and Answer session.

For more information, see the Spectacle events page.

The Victorian Society Object to Power Station Plans

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The Victorian Society are the latest organisation to speak out against REO / Treasury Holdings‘ current plans for the re-development of Battersea Power Station. The Conservation Advisor of the organisation, Alex Baldwin, spoke in depth to Spectacle about their rejection of the assertion that the older structures, particularly the old pumping station, need to be pulled down despite their Grade II* Listed status, and her ideas on how the site could be regenerated. You can watch the interview here at Spectacle’s Battersea archive.

Alex also contributed her thoughts to a Planning Resource webzine article about the mixed response to the situation. Her comments are the latest in a growing number of objections to the plans (about which you can also see a presentation by REO here), and evidence that there is likely to be considerable formal resistance to the application.

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The Good. The Bad. And Section 106.

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Sil Workshop 28-07-05

Spectacle, having established the Silwood Video Group, have been an active presence on the Silwood Estate since 2001, and in nearly 10 years of voluntary film-workshops and attendance at Residents’ Meetings, we have seen the landscape of this slice of South-East London change, and change as a result of regeneration.

Since 2005 at the Residents’ Forum Meetings, which are now held quarterly, the residents have asked to see the business plans for development and to have access to details of Section 106, which was declared a ‘non-public document’ by the London & Quadrant NIT Manager on the Silwood. The statement was later retracted, but the Section 106 document, to date, has not been made available to residents.

Tower Homes, the commercial wing of London & Quadrant, won the planning permission rights to the land in the Silwood area, on which they intended to build luxury apartments. By law, this makes them accountable to Section 106 Agreement of the Town and Country Planning Act (1990), which states that if development is agreed upon, for example, Lewisham Council awarding planning permission to Tower Homes, then the new landowners must provide resources that are of benefit to the community that will be affected by the development. In the case of the Silwood, London & Quadrant was entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing the re-provision of community facilities, play areas/ parks, and youth centres on the Estate, which were demolished as a result of the regeneration process. The Lewington Centre was then built as a replacement for the former community centre and the Cyber Centre under Section 106.

Residents are currently being asked to pay relatively steep rates in order to use their new Centre, but the bone of contention lies in the fact that, according to the ‘Regeneration Project Initiation Document’, freely available from Lewisham Council, London & Quadrant allocated a fund of £2 million in order to meet their Section 106 obligations. On top of this, despite the claim of London & Quadrant representatives at Residents’ Meetings on the Silwood that these rates are essential to their business plan and the long-term running of the Lewington Centre, their business plan for 2009 shows that they have made a profit in the region of £120, 000. So why do they seem so unwilling to invest in fully rebuilding the local infrastructure?

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