Teaching James Bond a lesson in human rights
The fact that members of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) get up to some shady business should come as a surprise to no one.
For some they are the protectors of national security at a time when the gloabl political climate has never been more uncertain but for others these spooks are an outmoded threat to democratic values in a society that should be trying to become more open not less.
Whatever your thoughts most would agree that it is for everyone's benefit if these agencies operate within certain parameters and abide by a clear set of rules. Not only does this mean that their own missions are likely to run smoothly but it also guarantees a level of accountability to democratically elected government ministers.
Unfortunately any sort of infrastructure that did used to exist has broken down in recent years and there is no better example of this than the case that we are looking at in this week's podcast episode.
Abdelhakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife were in Malaysia when they were arrested by the CIA and rendered back to Libya thanks to a purported tip-off from intelligence analyst Sir Mark Allen. Once there he was tortured in jail until he was released in 2011 and became a senior leader in the uprising against the oppressive regime of Muammar Gaddafi.
Not only were the British complicit in this serious breach of Belhaj's fundamental human rights but there was also a failure to properly account for the actions to then foreign secretary Jack Straw.
The motivation for this slapdash approach was short-term political gain as Tony Blair was due to meet with Gaddafi only weeks after the tip-off and eventually struck the infamous 'deal in the desert' that secured the removal of Libya's chemical weapons.
Blair still denies that he knew anything about Belhaj at the time but that is hardly the point. We are delaing with institutional issues that are inherent to British intelligence and undemrine the long-term interests of the country on the international stage for the sake of doing political favours for whatever dictator we want to cuddle up to.
The response of the current government is not good enough.
Their solution is to provide training to operatives on human rights and as much as I would like them to watch my video on the European Convention on Human Rights they should really already know if their actions are going to end up with someone getting tortured.
The only way that we can prevent this from happening again is if we ensure proper accountability to Parliament from the highest levels of the intelligence services and put foundational rules in place that have severe consequences if breached.
A failure to act now will only cause more people to question the value of secret intelligence in the future.
Episode link: http://uklawweekly.com/2018-uksc-33/
Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/uk-law-weekly/id1137316725?mt=2