Legal charity Reprieve has accused the Brown government of attempting to intimidate it into dropping legal action on behalf of torture victims.
Reprieve said in a statement: ‘After misleading Parliament and the public and forcing innocent families to suffer for six years, the British government is now attempting to intimidate Reprieve out of filing suit on behalf of rendition victims held indefinitely at the notorious Bagram Internment Facility.
‘The British government has admitted to rendering two men to Bagram in 2004 but bizarrely refused to reveal their names; last year Reprieve discovered the first man’s identity.
‘We have now identified the second victim, Yunus Rahmatullah (Saleh), who was apparently wrongly identified and mistakenly imprisoned.
‘Reprieve is today launching litigation on the preliminary claim that Saleh must be formally identified by the British government if he is ever to be retrieved from this legal black hole.
‘Saleh is suffering indefinitely in the mental health wing of Bagram, unable to contact his family or a lawyer.
‘The British legal aid system has not yet allowed Saleh’s family to bring a case because the proof is not sufficient that Saleh is the prisoner who was rendered to Afghanistan.
‘Yet the only people who can prove this without doubt are the British government – who refuse to do so. We are therefore in a circular Catch 22.
‘The indefinite detention of prisoners in a legal black hole such as Bagram is antithetical to the rule of law.
‘In public, Justice Minister Jack Straw takes a strong line on such issues, yet there is a dark side to the government’s position.
‘Reprieve has tried hard to avoid litigation, offering the government every opportunity to identify the prisoners and provide rudimentary assistance in reuniting them with the rule of law.
‘The government has rejected all of these overtures. Reprieve has therefore been forced to spend several thousand pounds to track down the victims and their families.
‘Now the government has threatened Reprieve that it will seek to impose costs on the charity if Reprieve brings litigation to enforce the prisoners’ basic rights.
‘This is an attempt to intimidate Reprieve into dropping the litigation.
‘On April 12, 2010, Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith wrote to Jack Straw seeking assurance that the government would withdraw this threat. It is now up to the Ministry of Justice to respond to that demand.’
Clive Stafford Smith, Director of Reprieve, said: ‘The government may think that bully-boy tactics will intimidate us. In truth, they merely steel our resolve.
‘Yunus Rahmatullah’s mother cries herself to sleep at night because the government refuses to do the decent thing, and confirm or deny whether her son is alive, and whether her son was rendered from Iraq six years ago.
‘We will never diverge from doing what is right because some misguided official decides to threaten us.’
