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You know, the likes of David Miliband and Alan Johnson can whine all they like about being outed as the friends of torturers and butchers while trying to supress the details of Binyam Mohamed’s treatment, but it’s not as if New Labour don’t have previous form on this.

To suggest that the government fought this case to avoid embarrassment or save face is just plain wrong…

…is weapons-grade horseshit from our estimable Foreign and Home secretaries.

Tell it to Sandy Mitchell, Les Walker and Bill Sampson who were tortured by the Saudi Arabian government in 2002. The then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the mens’ families ‘not to rock the boat‘. Labour hired top-notch lawyers to make sure then men didn’t get redress. Was that to avoid embarrassment or save face? A bit of both considering we sell billions in arms to our Saudi mates.

Tell it to Craig Murray who, as UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was smeared and sidelined for saying he wasn’t too happy that the Uzbek government (our pals in The War Against Terror) had a thing for boiling people to death. Jack Straw had a hand in that as well. His fingerprints were all over these torture cases back in the day. Was Murray’s treatment to avoid embarrassment or save face? Again, arms sales figured in the equation as did the fact that Uzbekistan borders Afghanistan and was the ideal location for coalition air bases.

Tell it to the Egyptian asylum seekers who Tony Blair wanted to deport despite being told the people faced torture and execution. ‘This is crazy. Why can’t we press on?’ said the great man of God. Avoiding embarrassment and saving face? That and appeasing the right-wing press and securing freebie holidays.

This squalid little crew always worked hardest when it came to avoiding embarrassment and saving face. If only they’d put as much energy into running the country.