Torturers Covering Up

And at the end of it all they are shuffling petrified pathetic dishonourable cowards who smear black marker over the truth of their crimes.

US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner’s lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man’s release in as little as a week.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent Obama evidence of what he called “truly mediaeval” abuse but substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it.

In the letter to the president [PDF] , Stafford Smith urges him to order the disclosure of the evidence.

Stafford Smith tells Obama he should be aware of the “bizarre reality” of the situation. “You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command.”

It is understood US defence officials might have censored the evidence to protect the president from criminal liability or political embarrassment.

I think in order to get action Stafford Smith is being very polite and giving Obama the benefit of a shitload of doubt, nevertheless his job is to get Mohamed released and if we have to play this game so be it.

Yet something stirs, the politicians are running scared of the shitstorm, is Binyam Mohamed about to be released? If he is killed by Gitmo the value of a witness being silenced (and they have made those calculations) is outweighed by the furore it will cause.