The shame of Shaker Aamer's wrongful incarceration for 12 years.

Follow @JohnPlatinumG On Saturday I joined other protesters in London in concern for the shameful, illegal and immoral imprisonment of Shaker Aamer in Guantanamo Bay. Shaker has been tortured and considering the gravity of the offence of human-torture in this age of enlightenment from western states which peddle a myth that we live in a free society, it was rather surprising there were not more people present to mark the twelve years of this total injustice. There again, few spoke out about the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War.

Protesters pass the mosque where Shaker used to worship

Shaker's imprisonment is a total injustice because he is innocent of any crime, has been cleared for release twice by two separate US investigations, the first six years ago, the second four years ago, the latter during Obama's term of office. Obama himself has confirmed that it is an injustice to keep him in Guantanamo concentration camp. Barrack Obama is president of the United States, yet it seems he is answerable to some higher authority, because although he has approved Shaker's release, he has not acted on that approval. Likewise in the UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have called for Shaker's return. As one of the speakers, Guardian journalist Victoria Brittain, pointed out there is a likely conflict between the security services and government, because the UK security services are allegedly complicit in his torture when Shaker was first arrested. Anyway the UK is just a pawn in the US middle game, subservient and dispensable.

Also on the platform was independent journalist Andy Worthington who wrote The Guantanamo Files (Pluto Press 2007) and has been a doughty campaigner on human rights' abuses for many years. He made an impassioned delivery regarding the injustice and how frustrated we all feel that the best Cameron and Hague can do is write to Shaker in Guantanamo. Shaker remains in prison because the UK secret services are party to the torture of an innocent man, as is former Home Secretary Jack Straw, who must have approved this torture. So to protect the guilty an innocent man is made to suffer. He suggested, tongue-in-cheek that we should occupy William Hague's office. That is how frustrating it is becoming. What do we need to do to make our leaders do the right thing?

Hamja Ahsan speaking about his brother's imprisonment in a US Supermax prison

The brother of Talha Ahsan told of another injustice emanating from the desk of current Home Secretary, Theresa May, the extradition of Talha to the US together with Babar Ahmad. These wrongly-served men cannot see their families, have collectively spent 16 years in prison without trial, and are currently being held 23 hours every day in solitary confinement. I have covered their plights in previous blog-posts and with every passing day it is another day of injustice and torture for them and their families. One day justice might be seen to be done. The so-called 'war on terror' has been a turning point in the UK legal system because the anti-terrorism acts the 'war on terror' has spawned have led to breaches in the first principle of habeas corpus. These terrorist acts have not been committed by men with weapons but by the US and UK governments themselves. Shame on them!

My country's shameful and disgraceful treatment of Syed Talha Ahsan

Follow @JohnPlatinumG For seven long years Syed Talha Ahsan has had his freedom taken from him in one of the most diabolical miscarriages of justice ever. For more than six years he was held in custody in UK prisons without there ever having been a charge against him. As with Babar Ahmad, who has been imprisoned for even longer, such cases bring shame upon my country, and therefore upon me. This is not the way British justice used to be done. Over a month ago I raised a Freedom of Information request on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office seeking information connected with the extradition of Syed Talha Ahsan. By law they should have responded by 9 July 2013 but have not done, so I have asked for an internal review.

There are so many unanswered questions in this case. The most alarming is the fact that Talha Ahsan's case should have been heard in a US court in October this year, and if there was a clear-cut case against him there was no reason why it should not since there has been a decade in which to prepare a case, yet it has been put off until March 2014. All this time Talha Ahsan spends 23 hours a day, every day, in solitary confinement in a Supermax prison. My heart grieves for him and his family. Here is my request to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The questions are straightforward.

Extradition of Talha Ahsan

John Goss made this Freedom of Information request to Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Waiting for an internal review by Foreign and Commonwealth Office of their handling of this request.

From: John Goss

11 June 2013

Dear Foreign and Commonwealth Office,

This is a freedom of information request concerning the extradition
of Syed Talha Ahsan, a UK citizen, to the USA

Syed Talha Ahsan lost an appeal in the European Court of Human
Rights and was very quickly, the same day in fact, flown to the
United States of America.

1) Was any contact made with United States representatives of any
description to arrange the deportation of Syed Talha Ahsan before
the appeal verdict of the European Court of Human Rights had been
reached?

2) If the answer to question 1) is yes, which department of the FCO
and which personnel of that department had contact with which
personnel of which US department?

3) Can I have copies of any correspondence between the UK and USA
concerning the extradition of Syed Talha Ahsan please?

4) Was the FCO aware that two of the European judges, Lech Garlicki
and Nicolas Bratza, who sat in judgement on Syed Talha Ahsan, had
been at a 'closed-door' conference with US Supreme Court judges
Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor
in a conference called: 'Judicial Process and the Protection of
Rights: the U.S. Supreme Court and the European Court of Human
Rights'?

5) Does the FCO have any documents relating to the revelation in
question 4) and can I have copies please?

6) Was the FCO aware that also at the conference mentioned in
question 4) were "Derek Walton, who was representing the UK in
Ahsan’s European Court case, and the vastly influential Harold Koh,
who was serving as Obama’s appointed Legal Advisor to the State
Department." (New Statesman 21 February 2013).

7) Does the FCO have any documents relating to the revelation in
question 6) and can I have copies please?

8) Presumably the FCO would have had to be absolutely certain that
the case against Syed Talha Ahsan was a cast-iron copper-bottomed
guilty case to send a UK citizen to a country which has a
'concentration camp' at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where only 13 people
(out of 779) have ever been charged with a crime, and where 9 men
have died while in captivity. Would you not agree that given these
appalling figures the FCO would have to be certain that Syed Talha
Ahsan was guilty before sending him to the United States?

9) Considering our special relationship with the United States of
America has the FCO seen all the evidence held by the US in the
case of Syed Talha Ahsan?

10) Can I have copies of any correspondence regarding evidence of
the guilt of Syed Talha Ahsan held by the FCO please?

11) Is from the evidence that the FCO has seen there even the
slightest chance that Syed Talha Ahsan might be innocent?

12) If the answer is yes, on what grounds was Syed Talha Ahsan
extradited considering the uneven extradition treaty we have with
the United States?

13) Syed Talha Ahsan, had before being extradited been held in UK
prisons for six years without charge. Was the FCO notified of this?

14) If yes, can I have copies of the notification(s) please?

15) Did the foreign office seek assurances in this clear-cut and
convincingly-guilty case that Syed Talha Ahsan would be quickly
brought to trial?

16) Can I have a copy of any document relating to an expeditious
trial or any other documents in which the FCO has attempted to
protect the human rights of Syed Talha Ahsan in this case please?

17) US legal prosecution teams in a clear-cut and convincingly
guilty case have deferred the trial-date from October 2013 to March
2014 increasing the suffering of Syed Talha Ahsan. Did they notify
the FCO of this?

18) Can I have a copy of any such notification please?

19) Why did the Foreign and Commonwealth Office extradite Syed
Talha Ahsan to be held in a maximum security prison 23 hours a day
in a case in which the prosecution has not been able to gather
enough evidence in over a decade to bring Syed Talha Ahsan swiftly
to justice when his prison record in the UK shows that an ordinary
prison would have been adequate and better for Syed Talha Ahsan’s
health and welfare?

20) Was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office aware that Talha Ahsan,
a prize-winning poet, suffers from Asberger Syndrome?

21) Have any special provisions been made to cater for his illness?

22) Can I see any correspondence relating to this pleas?

23) Was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office aware that Gary
McKinnon, another UK citizen, was spared extradition because he
suffers from Asperger Syndrome?

24) Does the FCO operate a policy of racism towards Muslims?

25) Can you let me have any figures that show how many people
extradited at US requests, including those rendered abroad during
the Iraq War, over the last thirteen years, were Muslims, and how
many were not?

26) Did the UK try to get Syed Talha Ahsan into a more humane
prison instead of prisons which have been described as torture
chambers where more than 90% plea bargain (even confessing to
crimes they did not commit to avoid further torture)?

27) Can I see what correspondence took place regarding the type of
penal institution Syed Talha Ahsan was to be held in?

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

John Goss

The Good Samaritan

Follow @JohnPlatinumG On Sunday Anglican, Roman Catholic and other churches heard the parable of the Good Samaritan read as the gospel (Luke 10: 25-37) message. It relates to advice given to a lawyer who wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. He refers himself the old Jewish scripture "you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself." This the lawyer already knew but wanted clarification as to who his neighbour was. The answer was illustrated by a man who "fell into the hands of brigands" who took all he had and left him for dead.

First a priest arrived but passed by on the other side when he saw the man who had been mugged and was near to death. Similarly another priest, this time a Levite, passed by without going to the aid of the badly injured man. A Samaritan (a man from Samaria) came along and bandaged up the injured man, put him on the Samaritan's beast of burden and took him to an inn where he stayed with the mugged man till the following morning. He then paid the landlord to care for the man saying that he would settle any outstanding debt when he returned.

You can be the Archbishop of Canterbury and not do the right thing in cases where your neighbour has been injured. It might even be harder for the Archbishop of Canterbury because he is so steeped in pomp and jewels it is hardly possible for him to see what is actually needed at a basic level. Unless he chooses to ignore these problems in which case he is no different from the priests in the parable who pass by on the other side. His silence on matters of international concern is undignified. Today the brigands are the US and UK and other NATO countries who vilify and persecute Muslims and steal the oil and other resources from predominantly Muslim countries by portraying them as enemies.

Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, and others, are victims of the creation of an imaginary enemy to justify invasion to steal. The Bush and Blair 'war on terror' created a new enemy similar to the Soviet Union in the cold war years. Talha and Babar have been imprisoned without charge and without trial for years on end. Not having a case against them Theresa May thought the best option was to extradite them to the United States, to high-security prisons called Supermax prisons. John Pilger has written how 90% of prisoners in Supermax prisons plead guilty regardless of whether they have committed a crime just to be free from 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. The US probably has no case against them.

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has made no effort to seek the release of these men, and others like them. One can only assume he is a tool of government, a priest who walks by on the other side.

Torture is in fashion

Follow @JohnPlatinumG At a time when the tortured chickens of UN and CIA rendition are coming home to roost Gulnara Karimova flaunts herself as a dedicated follower of fashion and yoga exponent. She is also described as a diplomat, executing the duties of a UN envoy, a screenwriter, oh, and a jewellery designer. Keeping active is an important feature in the life of a dictator's daughter. She has always been conscious about her image even though two years back she was described, thanks to Wikileaks cables, as the most despised woman in Uzbekistan.

Her father is the notorious Islam Karimov, who has pretty well set himself up as permanent president of Uzbekistan and all the speculation suggests she is most likely to follow in his footsteps if he retires, being labelled in one Russian blog as the Mafia Princess. Karimov became president in 1990 and has no opposition, since serious opponents tend to disappear without trace. He is friends with US power-mongers and feels as comfortable in the presence of George W. Bush as Hilary Clinton appears in Karimov's company.


Photo courtesy of Dominic Streatfeild's, A History of the World since 9/11, published in February 2011 (UK) by Atlantic Books, August 2011 (US) by Bloomsbury Press.

The issue of torture in Uzbekistan was raised by Craig Murray when he was ambassador there but because of our transatlantic allegiance it was thought better to get rid of Murray than bring Karimov to international justice. Karimov's human rights record is even worse than that of the United States. As well as the disappearances of his opponents he has been criticised for his regime's widespread use of torture and the exploitation of children in the cotton fields.

Yesterday, both in Strasbourg and the UK, two torture victims were compensated for their ordeals.£2.2 million pounds of taxpayers money was paid in compensation to Libyan dissident, Sami al Saadi, for being illegally rendered back to Libya to face torture under the Gadaffi regime when Tony Blair was still friends with Gadaffi, while from Germany, Khaled el Masri, was rendered by the CIA to Macedonia where in front of Macedonian police, who witnessed the scene, CIA operatives buggered, shackled and beat him. The European Court of Human Rights ordered Macedonia to pay him €60,000 (£49,000) in compensation and requested that the US must apologise and make a voluntary contribution to Mr el Masri. Anybody see a connection that two cases are concluded at the same time? It is not a coincidence. The vast sums are paid to keep names like Jack Straw, and his culpability, off the record. It is hush money!

Today I co-wrote with editorial input an article concerned with Sweden's rendition programme at the behest of the CIA, concentrating mainly on the cases of Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al Zery, who were extradited to Egypt where they were both imprisoned and tortured. In both cases the men were paid compensation of 3 million Kronors. Mr. Agiza spent 10 years in prison. We have British citizens, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan, for whom this blog tried to prevent extradition, suffering in US supermax prisons because Theresa May extradited them to the US even though they had already spent unreasonable times in UK prisons without even being charged. They have done nothing wrong but in the US 98% of prisoners confess in plea bargains just to get a shorter sentence because of the harshness of conditions. It too is torture.

Back to Gulnara Karimov and her repressive regime backed by the US and UK. Thankfully not everybody is as complacent as the UK and US governments in seeking to end this human rights abuse. While Gulnara has been posting pictures of herself in suggestive Yoga postures on Twitter, and telling the world how she does not eat meat, only chicken and fish, Andrew Stroehlein has been questioning her country's record, as Uzbekistan's envoy to the UN, on torture, the Andijan massacre of April 2005, child labour, lack of freedom of expression and a whole host of other serious abuses that are not going to go away. So perhaps when she's meditating after her next Yoga session, she can meditate on some of those issues.

Going global on racism

Follow @JohnPlatinumG Not having many followers I am pleased to announce that my cartoon on the racist duplicity of Home Secretary, Theresa May, appears to be going global. It has far outstripped any satirical cartoon I have produced to date even those related to the despicable treatment of Julian Assange. In its first day it took more than 200 hits, which by my standards is remarkable. It is too early yet to know where it is getting most support since those figures will not be available for a day or two.

Theresa May is the daughter of a Christian clergyman. You might therefore think she would have some Christian compassion. You might therefore think that she had heard of the parable of the Good Samaritan who helped a foreigner who had been set upon by thieves. Instead, anybody with a non-English sounding name, is temptation to her. She bangs them up in prison for interminably long periods of time, defying the basic tenet of habeas corpus, gets a retiring judge to forgive the police who beat up Babar Ahmad, extradites an Asperger sufferer, Talha Ahsan, to the United States where human rights are almost non-existent today, then to demonstrate just how racist she is, does not extradite a similar sufferer who has a UK-sounding name, Gary McKinnon. I am happy to see that Gary McKinnon was not extradited, but the same law should have been applied to the other Asperger sufferer, UK-born Talha Ahsan.

It is not just me who has noticed this two-faced racist approach to extradition. The Huffington Post and the Independent and probably other quality newspapers noticed these dual standards. And it is not just Theresa May that is racist. Racism is rife throughout the Tory Party. Dominic Grieve did not allow a debate into the Epetition supporting Babar Ahmad which had close to 150,000 signatures. These people bring disgrace on my good name as an Englishman.

Two extradited poets - Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan

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The poet Babar Ahmad was extradited to New York following an appeal against extradition that had all the hallmarks of a prearranged deal. It takes time to arrange flights to the United States and seems extremely unlikely that the flights that took 5 Muslims to face US injustice were not already scheduled by Theresa May in her 'War on Islam'. On board these flights were the poet Talha Ahsan who I mentioned in a post a few days ago. I have already written about how Babar was beaten by police, awarded £60,000 damages by the Metropolitan Police, but when a criminal case was brought against these policemen, the judge, who was just about to retire, exonerated them. This poem was published on the internet last Friday, the holy day of Islam on which Babar lost his appeal.

One Day - a poem by Babar Ahmad

Friday

One day...

The sun will shine again.

The flowers will blossom again.

The birds will sing again.

One day...

The rain will fall again.

The rivers will flow again.

The gardens will be green again.

One day...

The lips will smile.

The tears will dry.

The prayers will be answered.

One day...

The shackles will break.

The darkness will end.

The doors...

This is powerful poetry. It is not Oscar Wilde, whose Ballad of Reading Gaol was beautifully read yesterday by Alex Jennings on Poetry Please! Wilde had a unique voice, and like Babar, experienced unjust penal incarceration. How fittingly the following lines can be applied to all whose liberty has been removed. 

I know not whether Laws be right,
Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.

Talha Ahsan is also a poet. He suffers from Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism. He has however written for Ceasefire Magazine and published a volume of his poetry entitled This Be The Answer. While Talha still had hope in July 2011 he wrote a great poem Extradition. He was realistic enough to know the nasty nature of Theresa May, 'a feeble servant' to her masters in the US.

Theresa May, a minister at home

though feeble servant to her masters there;

a solitary torture chamber cell,

To put me in, she’ll simply say, ‘Away!’

So let me while I can devote my time

to work for my own justice over here.

(C) Talha Ahsan, HMP Long Lartin, 19 July 2011

And so it proved, Theresa May was that 'feeble servant' of the United States of America. The time has come for righteous people to speak out and get our British citizens back on British soil. Writers, poets artists, these are our brothers. Speak out for them!

http://www.facebook.com/groups/371661099578187/

Please join this group and get your friends to join too.

Hang your heads in shame if you're British

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I wrote to Lambeth Palace, the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, this week. My email read:

"It is of real concern to have heard nothing from the A of C's office,

and no directives to the Anglican Church regarding the wrongful

imprisonment of Muslims, accused by the United States as having

infringed the same laws that saw almost 800 people imprisoned in

Guantanamo Bay.  Think of the wrongful imprisonment of St Paul and then

let me know that my church is destined to remain silent on such an abuse

of human rights.

http://johngossip.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/english-justice-reeks-like-cesspool-it.html

I await your response eagerly,

John Goss"

There was no response.

I have blogged, almost ad nauseum, to try and get justice for these men, who have been in prison for interminably long times without being charged, more than 8 years in the case of Babar Ahmad and 6 in the case of Talha Ahsan. Compare that with the short time it took to charge Mark Bridger of the murder of the little girl, April Jones, in Wales. These men are not suspected of murder but have been imprisoned on the say so of the United States. It is Friday and millions of Muslims have been praying in the mosques while Khateebs have been asked to remember them in Friday prayers.

As well as the corruption of the judiciary it is particularly disturbing and cynical that Theresa May and her friends the justices chose the Muslim holy day to deliver the verdict, which was not arrived at in court. Thank God Julian Assange is safe in the Ecuadorian Embassy, or he would be illegally sent with them. I am ashamed to be British. There is a law for some, and a law against Muslims. Shame on the law-courts. Shame on Theresa May. Shame on Dominic Grieve. It is not a war on terror. It is a war on Islam.

English justice reeks like the cesspool it is − the poet Talha Ahsan

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A man has been imprisoned for more than six years without being charged with any crime. His name is Talha Ahsan. He suffers from Asperger syndrome. Despite that he has become something of a celebrity as a recognised poet. The significance of this will soon be apparent. His imprisonment is all due to Tony Blair having removed a piece of English law that has formed one of the mainstays of our legal system for more than 300 years: habeas corpus. My layman's understanding of what habeas corpus means is that a person imprisoned should be brought before the court within a short or reasonable period of time after his, or her, arrest and charged with a crime, or released. It is protection against perpetual imprisonment. The last time habeas corpus was suspended was in the late eighteenth century, partly out of fear of the French Revolution spreading to England and partly in response to social unrest at home. The intellectual corresponding societies were targeted and, like today, many spies and agents provocateurs were deployed to try and trap people into saying or doing something for which they might be taken into custody. This included the interception of mail. The suspension of habeas corpus came on 7 May 1794.

Interestingly, like Talha Ahsan, many of the people targeted in what became known as the Treason Trials were poets and writers who belonged to corresponding societies, and as the name suggests, wrote to one another on radical issues of the day. However this was interpreted by the attorney general, Sir John Scott, as being seditious libel and treason, crimes which carried a rather horrific death penalty. Thomas Holcroft, one who was arrested and imprisoned, was well-known for his then popular plays and novels. Another was the poet and political writer, John Thelwall, and even the novelist William Godwin, father of Mary Shelley, was fortunate not to have been imprisoned under the suspension of this legal protection. Over thirty men were arrested and imprisoned and could have been held until February 1795 without being charged or brought before a court. As it happened all the cases were dropped before that time due to the defence of Thomas Erskine who argued that it was not a violent revolution these intellectuals sought but a revolution of ideas. Erskine was a powerful orator and had previously defended Thomas Paine over his Rights of Man publication in 1792. On that occasion the defence was unsuccessful, leading Paine to seek refuge abroad.

Reading the above it will be noticed that although habeas corpus had been suspended in 1794 these thirty men were not in prison for even a year, though they were still in prison for longer than they should have been. Today, in this enlightened age, the poet Talha Ahsan has been imprisoned for more than six years. Another person arrested under war-crime terrorist Tony Blair’s so-called anti-terrorism laws is Babar Ahmad whose case I blogged about earlier this year. Babar Ahmad has been in prison for more than eight years. This is disgusting. Even a High Court judge has said so.

Arguing the case of these neglected men, like Thomas Erskine, is a very talented defence lawyer, Gareth Peirce, a descendent of the Fabians, Beatrice and Sydney Webb. She puts a very strong case against the USA and in favour of those imprisoned without charge, and includes in her arguments the lack of balance in US and UK extradition laws. I quote from her extremely well-argued article for the London Review of Books entitled America’s Non-Compliance published two years ago, in which she asks two very pertinent questions about the country to which Theresa May wants to extradite UK citizens.

“We read, year after year, obscene details of executions in the US: most are successful, but there are also descriptions of frustrated attempts, hour after hour, to find a vein to inject. For a long time, the UK had no cause for complacency. Capital punishment was abolished here in 1965, but Britain continued to extradite to countries that retained the death penalty, and would have continued to do so had not the European Court determined in 1989 in the case of Soering v. UK that the ‘death row’ phenomenon, in which a person might spend years awaiting execution while the legal process was exhausted, constituted inhuman and degrading treatment according to Article 3 of the Convention. Since then no European state has been permitted to extradite in the absence of an assurance that conviction would not bring the death penalty.

But what of extradition to a future of total isolation? Can we comfortably, and within the law, contemplate sending men to that fate? . .”

Following the attempt to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden on trumped up charges, from a Supreme Court decision presided over by another High Court judge on the point of retirement, my concern is that the legal system in this country has simply become an extension of central government which is in hock to big business party donors. I have therefore set up a Facebook group for poets, writers and artists to oppose extradition for UK citizens. Please show your support.

Judge John Deed and other old retiring farts

Follow @JohnPlatinumG There were only 29 episodes of Judge John Deed, a BBC drama that got close to the true nature of the judiciary, with all the corruption, leverage and manipulation that goes on in chambers. The plug was pulled probably because it was more like what actually happens than fictional drama, and Martin Shaw has demeaned his talent to play a dreadful sixties' policeman in a drama series with a mediocre script that isn't worth the licence fee. In real life there is so much persuasion goes on in the High Court upwards that individual lives are regularly put at risk. And the most recent of these has been that of Julian Assange.

What governments get High Court and Supreme Court judges to do just before they retire is something pretty damned nasty. So Lord Hutton presided over an Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, delivered a verdict of suicide from the accounts of unsworn witnesses, and retired to do charity work, when by law there should have been an inquest. Likewise, when Liam Fox was forced to resign and there was another whitewashed inquiry into the Atlantic Bridge financed foreign affairs trips and defence meetings at which Adam Werritty, without Whitehall clearance was attending, they got Gus O'Donnell to chair the inquiry, later found by Craig Murray to have been a real whitewash. Meetings between Werritty, Fox, Miliband, Gould and others were not included and were possibly set up to ease us into what now seems like an imminent War on Iran. Gus O'Donnell had already retired by the time the truth came out. In another disturbing case Judge Geoffrey Riflin QC acquitted four policemen of assault on Babar Ahmad for whom the metropolitan police had already paid damages of £60,000 for the assault in a private case. Riflin  retired straight after the case.

And who is retiring to one of the most despicable and oppressive states on the planet, Qatar, where slavery is still rife? The judge who presided over the Assange extradition appeal, Lord Phillips. Believe me, he is unlikely to be finding in favour of the poor slaves. So he did his dirty work here before retiring to continue abroad. And that is despite today's article in the Daily Mail which shows at least one of the women who accused Assange of rape was lying. As my short satirical video also claimed.

Adnan Latif - rest in peace

Follow @JohnPlatinumG Six days ago Adnan Latif became the eighth prisoner to die in Guantanamo Bay, a torture camp of the United States of America, where people are held without charge, with very little hope of freedom, and no hope whatsoever if they come, as Latif did, from the Republic of Yemen. Until this week any person, including US citizens, could be held indefinitely without trial in any US penal institution, not just Guantanamo Bay for which excuses have been found due to it not being on US soil. Thanks to a number of major writers, including Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Chris Hedges, and philosopher and historian, Noam Chomsky, the permanent detention act signed off 'reluctantly' by Barack Obama has been judged to contravene the first amendment by district judge Katherine B. Forrest. This, however, will not bring Latif back to life.

It is doubtful that the US government will try again to establish this in law since the statute was condemned by judge Forrest for its vagueness. In other words they cannot find any justifiable words to describe the grounds for indefinite detention: thank God. Nevertheless they will still find measures, delaying measures like those which have failed to bring Bradley Manning to trial since his arrest and detention in May, 2010, and now postponed till February or March 2013. And all that time these young lives are wasted in prison while war-criminals like Tony Blair and George Bush are free to wallow in the oil riches stolen from the Middle-Eastern and North African countries they invaded for that purpose. These same countries are among those from which some of the US detainees were arrested before being subjected to rendition and torture in complicit outposts around the world. Then as a final insult to humanity they were banged up with no hope of release in Guantanamo Bay. Welcome to the United States.

Five years ago Marc Falcoff, Adnan's lawyer, wrote about Latif and other poets in Guantanamo Bay and included a few lines from his poem about the hunger strikers, of which he was one.

They are artists of torture,
They are artists of pain and fatigue,
They are artists of insults
and humiliation.
Where is the world to save us
from torture?
Where is the world to save us
from the fire and sadness?
Where is the world to save
the hunger strikers?

Adnan Latif was in his thirties, a young man, who should have had a bright future. Instead he has been abused and tortured, until death released him, by a country that thinks of itself as the greatest democracy in the world. He spent one third of his short life in Guantanamo Bay. Theresa May has fought relentlessly to send UK citizens, Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan, another poet who happens to suffer from Asperger's Syndrome, to this 'greatest democracy in the world'.

Why the UK has not extradited Julian Assange directly to the US

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In deference to its transatlantic master the UK government would dearly have loved to have banged Julian Assange on a plane to the United States where he would have been imprisoned and most likely, if not forgotten about, at least remembered less frequently, over time. Many commentators with an interest in the Assange story use this as an argument to justify his extradition to Sweden. The argument goes something like this. “If the UK wanted to extradite Julian Assange it would be easier to extradite him directly from the UK.” If this is true, why then was this option eschewed? There are several reasons.

First of all it is a myth to think it would be easier to extradite Assange from the UK. In the present climate Jack Straw and the UK security services are fighting behind the scenes to exonerate themselves from the extraditions authorised by them that enabled the rendition and torture of civilians emanating from Middle Eastern and North African countries. How many were sent back to their homelands where they were on the wanted list of the regime in power it is not yet possible to say. Rest assured, it is much higher than the one or two who are challenging Straw’s decision to have sent them back to be tortured. The fate of some may never even be known. It will be noted that Mr Belhadj and Mr al Saadi were living respectively in China and Hong Kong at the time of their renditions, and after their arrests and imprisonments they were tortured for years in Libya, before Blair’s love affair with Gadaffi came to an end; and NATO forces exploded a path to exploit the oilfields of Libya. This was the act which liberated Mr Belhadj and Mr al Saadi from prison.

Guantanamo Bay, a gulag or concentration camp by any other name, has left a legacy of mistrust towards the United States and the way the US administers justice.  Its injustice has also been costly to the UK taxpayer. British citizens like Moazzam Begg were extradited on the instructions of the United States. As with Mr Belhadj and Mr al Saadi the arrest was made abroad, this time in Islamabad. Moazzam Begg, who witnessed two inmates at Bagram being beaten to death, or nearly beaten to death, was himself tortured and abused before his imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay.

Another whistleblower, who like Assange is a thorn in the side of authority, is the messianic Jew, Mordechai Vanunu. In 1986 Vanunu revealed to the Sunday Times Israel’s nuclear weapons’ programme having worked at the nuclear plant in Israel where the manufacturing process was facilitated. The full facts as to how he was arrested are sketchy but there was no known extradition request from Israel to the UK. Instead Vanunu was enticed to Italy where MOSSAD agents were lying in wait for him. He was arrested and spent 18 years in an Israeli prison, subsequent years under virtual house arrest, and still does not have the freedom to go where he wishes.

Jewish banking families, the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, call the tune for UK and US governments, and they are the real decision-makers. It was one of the Rockefellers who informed the late Aaron Russo that there was going to be an event which would lead to a new world order in the Middle East. It was also known that seven countries were to be destabilised to achieve this aim. Of those seven only Syria and Iran have not been fully destabilised yet. People like Mordechai Vanunu and Julian Assange, being opposed to such actions, do not fit in with these bankers’ dreams, so are taken out of circulation to stop them spreading further truths enabling the banking giants to complete their evil intentions.

To do things properly long-winded procedures have to be followed in this country. Despite its abominable human rights record the US has requested the extradition of UK citizens, nearly always of Asian extraction, including Babar Ahmad and Talha Ahsan (a poet and sufferer from Asperger’s syndrome), who Theresa May has pledged to hand over to her US masters. The US made requests for extradition six years ago in the case of Ahsan and even longer ago in the case of Ahmad. Both men have been in prison without a single charge being brought against them. Ahmad was beaten by UK police and awarded damages. Although their cases have gone to the European Court of Human Rights, and extradition has shamefully been endorsed by that court, their appeals have yet to be heard.

This is why neither the UK nor the US want to extradite Assange directly from the UK. It is much easier to ship him to Sweden on trumped-up charges, where he would be picked up by CIA agents, whisked off to the United States, and put in prison for a very long time. It would happen, as it did with Vanunu, very quickly. William Hague has almost certainly clandestinely agreed to this. When Assange sought asylum not only did Hague behave like a baby who had dropped his dummy, but made vague threats to storm the Ecuadorian Embassy. Hague has been repeatedly asked to guarantee that Assange would not be extradited from Sweden but the only guarantee Hague would give is that Assange would not be executed. Assange could see this coming and he pre-empted them.

How much of a puppet of the United States has the UK become? The US, where human rights have reached an all-time low, have a one-sided extradition agreement which enables UK citizens to be extradited to the US, without having to make any case against those citizens. Conversely the US would never − never ever − allow the UK to have one of its citizens extradited here. The whole Cameron, Hague, May outfit is a Muppet Show and it is very clear to whose tune they are singing and dancing.

To sum up, the examples cited above show that it is much easier to arrest somebody outside of the UK for extradition purposes than it is here.  This answers all those who make the argument: “If the UK wanted to extradite Julian Assange it would be easier to extradite him directly from the UK.”

Rough, tough, I've had enough justice

Follow @JohnPlatinumG The law-courts of the world should be dismantled and anarchy should rule!

There is an excellent argument for anarchy ruling since the legal institutions of the world are there simply to protect the interests of one section of society - the super-rich, neo-con, Zionist elite. Good people are in western prisons because of this injudicious system of law.

Bradley Manning, who allegedly leaked the footage of US military operatives opening fire on and killing  unarmed civilians, is in prison for allegedly revealing the truth to the world. Babar Ahmed, beaten up by British police, has been in prison for 8 years and now faces extradition to the most corrupt country on God's earth. Julian Assange, to whom the whole world should be thankful for his Wikileaks - the only source of accurate information - is now in danger of being extradited to Sweden on trumped-up charges. Sweden will sell him to their Yankee masters to try and plug the leak in Wikileaks and gag Assange himself.

We pay these overfed judges huge amounts of taxpayers money to make it as difficult as possible for honest people. Take the Assange case just heard in a British court. In the laugh-a-minute report from this case, Assange versus the Swedish Prosecution Authority, which finds in favour of the latter, there is the following paragraph:

“Everyone arrested or detained in accordance with the provisions of
paragraph 1(c) of this article shall be brought promptly before a
judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power
and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time…”


So how has this kind of justice been applied to Babar Ahmed in this country, and Bradley Manning in the US?

Babar Ahmad – a shameful case of injustice

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The disgusting case of the imprisonment of Babar Ahmad is a blight on the British judicial system. He has been held in prison for eight years without ever having been before a court on any charge. Not since the Treason Trials of the late eighteenth century has the principle of habeas corpus been suspended in this manner. Then too it was for unfounded fears – namely that the revolution in France would spread to England – and today it is because there are fears that any Muslim with an interest in current affairs and unjust wars, is a terrorist. The Americans, who have a one-sided extradition agreement with the UK, where suspected American terrorists are not sent here but suspected UK terrorists are sent from the UK to face trial in the United States, have a disgusting recent history of injustice towards suspected terrorists. And they do not have to provide evidence to have a UK citizen extradited.

Guantanamo Bay, the US gulag, or concentration camp, on Cuban soil, has been a prison to nearly 800 suspected terrorists since 2002. How many of these have been tried and convicted of any crime? One. Eight have died in custody. More than six-hundred have been repatriated without trial. Many have been subjected to US torture like water-boarding, often rendered to one of America’s many foreign-based torture facilities, which makes it impossible to have them tried in a US court, since accusations of information obtained under torture is not admissible in a US court. Six have been convicted by military commissions – military trials are not tribunals with any real basis in law but the same kind of kangaroo courts that tried, for example, Saddam Hussein, or soldiers shot for cowardice during the First World War. The latest edict from president Obama’s administration is for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be tried by one of these military kangaroo courts. It is suspected that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has been tortured to extract a confession to having been the mastermind behind 9/11. If convicted, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his alleged co-conspirators, will be executed. This is an easy way to exonerate the US from allegations of torture. Increasingly, however, many people suspect that 9/11 was a false-flag joint US/Israeli engineered destruction of the twin towers and other buildings to create an unnecessary ‘war on terror’ almost a euphemism for ‘annihilating, occupying and stealing from oil-rich countries’.

The United States is the country to which they want to extradite one of our UK citizens, a country where there is no justice for anyone except Americans; a country steeped in racism; a country despised by many who suffer its bases on their soils. Today is Good Friday. 2000 years ago a terrible injustice was perpetrated against an innocent man. Don’t be party to another. Protest on behalf of Babar Ahmad. He is British. Make sure the justice he faces is British too. And make sure he goes to court. As the King’s apologist against republicanism, Edmund Burke, ought to have said but didn’t: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women] to do nothing’.