Torture’s such an ugly word, isn’t it? Loaded with meaning. It suggests fingernails being ripped out, genitals being electrocuted and all kinds of unpleasantness. We need something a bit more user friendly, something that does away with notions of screaming and bleeding but instead suggests an atmosphere of friendly cooperation between suspect and interrogator.

So thank goodness for MI5’s head spook, Eliza Manningham-Buller and her “detainee reporting“:

“Experience proves that detainee reporting can be accurate and may enable lives to be saved.”

Detainee reporting. You know what it means. I know what it means. She knows what it means. But she can pretend it doesn’t mean what she knows it means and so can the rest of us if we like.

It’s a nice ambiguous, modern phrase that lets the likes of Manningham-Buller sleep at night. She can deny that human rights, presumption of innocence and just plain common decency are being sullied. By letting Algeria collect detainees’ “reports”, she keeps her hands clean (metaphorically), her staff keep their hands clean (literally), she doesn’t have to blow her departmental budget on Cillit Bang to shift all that blood from the floor in the basement, and she doesn’t have to say every ten minutes, “do shut the door, would you Perkins, those bubbling screams are giving me a frightful headache.”

There also seems to be a neat little get-out if you suspect information supplied by a foreign power may have been obtained through torture, but don’t really want to know: Don’t ask.

She points to information from Algerian agencies who questioned a man called Mohammed Meguerba. The evidence led to a raid on a London flat and the eventual uncovering of the so-called ricin plot.

…

But Ms Manningham-Buller says: “In those circumstances, no inquiries were made of Algerian liaison about the precise circumstances that attended their questioning of Meguerba.”

Easy, eh? Wouldn’t life be so much simpler if we all adopted the Manningham-Buller Gambit. I don’t want my partner to pay the gas bill this month because I’d rather spend the money on DVDs. So I won’t ask if she’s paid it.

That’s all fine though because, according to our top spy, the Algerian government wouldn’t have told us anyway:

“In any event, questioning of Algerian liaison about their methods of questioning detainees would almost certainly have been rebuffed and at the same time would have damaged the relationship to the detriment of our ability to counter international terrorism.”

Try it if you’re ever done for possession of drugs. Or for buying moody goods off a bloke in a pub. “Well, I would have asked but…” See how far it gets you. Probably not into a highly-paid position in MI5, if we’re honest with each other.

Anyway, Manningham-Buller is clearly not trying hard enough. A quick googling will tell her what goes on in Algeria’s jails. Amnesty International, for instance, could fill the gaps in her intelligence, if the Algerians won’t play ball. If googling doesn’t have the same cloak and dagger frisson that Eliza’s used to, she could always get a flunky to print the Amnesty report off and discreetly hand it to her inside a copy of The Times while she feeds the ducks in St James’s Park:

Despite the recent inclusion of torture as a criminal offence in the Penal Code and the reduction in allegations of torture and ill-treatment by the police and gendarmerie, the organisation has received a significant number of allegations about such abuses by officers of the Département du Renseignement et de la Sécurité (DRS), Department of Information and Security. These allegations include detention of the accused in places impossible for them to know the location of, and torture, including beatings and the torture known as chiffon. The delegation questioned the authorities about the fact that it could find no mention of these abuses in the medical reports written by the doctors responsible for examining detainees in these centres. If these allegations are confirmed, such breaches of duty would constitute grave violations of medical ethics.

“Chiffon”, in case anyone was wondering, is the delightful practice of tying a person up and forcing them to drink dirty water or urine. By a process of recycling, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

You needn’t even go as far as relying on intelligence from bleeding-heart liberals like Amnesty. As I’ve pointed out before, our very own chaps at the Foreign Office have got the Algerian Government’s number:

Alongside the violence committed by the Islamic armed groups over the last decade are numerous documented allegations of human rights abuses by the security forces and state-armed militias, including the enforced disappearances of at least 4,000 people, abductions, torture and extra-judicial killings.

Still, ignorance is, was, and always will remain, bliss. Whether it’s a state you want your intelligence service to be in, I’m not sure:

Prime Minister: Bond, a shadowy terrorist organisation has threatened to blow up London with a satellite made of diamonds. Do you know who’s behind it?

Bond: You know, I never thought to ask.

As excuses go, “We didn’t ask because we didn’t think they would tell us”, is a terribly poor one, even for the current the-public-are-dickheads-anyway establishment. It’s almost as if she doesn’t care that terrible pain is being inflicted in potentially innocent people, and that would be a terrible slur.

It’s like I’ve said before, we swallow all kinds hateful offal from The Greater Good that we would never accept from a child:

Little Johnny’s Dad: (Thinks) Hmmmm, these chocolates Little Johnny gave me are delicious. The thing is, he hasn’t had his pocket money this week. I wonder if Little Johnny stole them? That said, the questioning of Little Johnny about his methods of chocolate procurement will almost certainly be rebuffed and at the same time will damage the relationship to the detriment of our ability to enjoy The Simpson’s together.

The Nextdoor Neighbour: (Shouting through the letterbox): Oi, Little Johnny’s Dad! I’ve just seen Little Johnny nicking chocolates from the corner shop!

Little Johnny’s Dad: (Fingers in ears) La, la, la! Speak louder, can’t hear you!

Little Johnny: I’m just off down the shops again, Dad.

Little Johnny’s Dad: That’s great, son. Can we have some more of these fantastic chocolates?

Manningham-Buller says she doesn’t think the Algerian government would tell her how they get people to tell them things. There’s a way of getting people to tell you things when they don’t want to, apparently. It’s called Detainee Reporting. Couldn’t we just kidnap Algeria, take it to, I don’t know, Egypt or Jordan, and get them to put electrodes on Algeria’s genitals until it tells us how it obtains its information?

Posted on October 24th, 2005 at 9:52 am

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