The thing is – they knew. It was the US government's explicit policy to wipe away the Geneva conventions and subject the supposedly most dangerous captives to what were euphemistically called "aggressive" interrogation techniques – techniques that flouted international law. The people behind the policy are therefore, according to the British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, criminals who may well face charges should they choose to take a holiday in, say, France or Germany.
And who are they, these people? Top government lawyers who – at the behest of Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary – cooked up a means of bypassing Geneva and in effect allowed the interrogators on the tip of Cuba to do whatever the hell they wanted. And, at Guantanamo Bay, lowly, inexperienced lawyers on the ground who were left isolated to provide the legal regulation for what might constitute humane treatment and what might not.
Meanwhile some of the top military brass, including General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, were hoodwinked about what was really going on.
We may have suspected that the US government had approved all this stuff, but we didn't know for sure until the publication last week of a remarkable book by Sands, who works at Matrix chambers alongside our own lovable Cherie Booth QC, the wife of a man who – according to her fellow QC – knew full well what was being done at Guantanamo and did nothing whatsoever to urge a halt.
"Blair knew," Sands says, shaking his head. "Of course he knew. I mean, if I knew about it back then, Blair must have done."
Torture Team, Sands's book, published by Penguin, may well be the best bit of contemporary investigative journalism you will read: it is right up there with Woodward and Bernstein, a tour de force of relentlessly dogged pursuit, of interviews with guilty men acquired against all the odds, a beautifully told and humane narrative that follows a paper trail and nails the truth. What is perhaps most remarkable about it is the clear sympathy that Sands, a leftie, has for the succession of gung-ho, proto-Republican legal professionals who either deliberately or inadvertently allowed the torture of prisoners to take place.
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