Moazzam Begg in the Guardian.

When I heard about Binyam Mohamed I felt a certain sense of relief that finally some of the truth was coming out into the public arena. But it's not a revelation to me as it's something I have maintained since my release: that the British intelligence services were present at every stage of my incarceration and knew what was happening to me and to many other British prisoners.

Guardian article.

The political storm over allegations of MI5 complicity in torture escalated tonight after Alan Johnson, the home secretary, accused the media of publishing "groundless accusations" and commentators of spreading "ludicrous lies" about the Security Service.

As defence lawyers prepared to challenge the government's success in suppressing severe criticism of MI5 officers made by one of Britain's most senior judges, the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, pointed the finger at the "very top of government" saying senior ministers had probably known about claims of Britain's involvement in torture but failed to take action to stop it.

Andy Worthington writes.

In December, lawyers for Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, won an important court case in which judges ordered the British government to release information in its possession regarding claims that MI5 agents were present in the US prison in Kandahar, Afghanistan, when Shaker Aamer was subjected to torture, prior to his transfer to Guantánamo.

Clive Stafford Smith gave a similar appraisal, explaining, as Cahalan described it, that the Harper's article "added to his belief the US government was afraid of what Mr. Aamer may reveal."

Stafford Smith added: This is merely confirmation, fairly stark confirmation, that the reason they wanted not to send him home to his family in England, but rather to send him to [his native] Saudi Arabia was simply to gag him. I have known Shaker for some time, and because he is so eloquent and outspoken about the injustices of Guantánamo he is very definitely viewed as a threat by the US. Not in the sense of being an extremist but in the sense of being someone who can rather eloquently criticize the nightmare that happened there.

Johann Hari in the Independent.

[...] a string of recent exposes has shown that Obama is in fact maintaining a battery of secret prisons where people are held without charge indefinitely -- and he is even expanding them. The Kabul-based journalist Anand Gopal has written a remarkable expose for The Nation magazine. His story begins in the Afghan village of Zaiwalat at 3.15am on the night of November 19th 2009. A platoon of US soldiers blasted their way into a house in search of Habib ur-Rahman, a young computer programmer and government employee who they had been told by someone, somewhere was a secret Talibanist. His two cousins came out to see what the noise was -- and they were shot to death. As the children of the house screamed, Habib was bundled into a helicopter and whisked away. He has never been seen since. His family do not know if he is alive or dead.

[...]

The Obama administration is appealing against US court rulings insisting the detainees have the right to make a legal case against their arbitrary imprisonment. And the White House is insisting they can forcibly snatch anyone they suspect from anywhere in the world -- with no legal process -- and take them there. Yes: Obama is fighting for the principles behind Guantanamo Bay. The frenzied debate about whether the actual camp in Cuba is closed is a distraction, since he is proposing to simply relocate it to less sunny climes.

[...]

Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does. Gopal reports that the abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan. They are so underground they are known only by the names given to them by released inmates -- the Salt Pit, the Prison of Darkness.

Henry Porter and Afua Hirsch in the Guardian comment on this very nasty article by Con Coughlin in the Telegraph.

See also this blog post by Obsolete and the Wikipedia page on Coughlin: both are interesting and informative.

This is not only an extremely nasty piece, it is the kind of knuckleheaded blathering you find in the American political discourse -- coarse, ignorant, seething and disreputable. What it shows is that the Telegraph harbours on its staff someone who seems to actively support sleep deprivation and all the rest of it.

Guardian article by Simon Jenkins.

Papers revealed by the high court depict a Foreign Office running about stamping on a stream of embarrassing disclosures, largely because Miliband was desperate not to seem a wimp in front of his hero, Hillary Clinton. We now know that both Miliband and the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, told an untruth in asserting, as the latter said last October, that British security services do not practise torture, "nor do we collude in torture or solicit others to torture people on our behalf".

Clive Stafford Smith in the Guardian's "Comment is Free".

Since I am not as temperate as a judge, I would not characterise the arguments made by Miliband as "irrational": after beginning with the term "foolish," I fear I would descend to epithets unfit to publish here. Suppressing any evidence of government criminality on grounds of national security sets a very dangerous precedent.

Guardian article.

Three of Britain's most senior judges have ordered the government to reveal evidence of MI5 and MI6 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed -- unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary.

Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic.

In a phrase: AIPAC's foreign policy, with Cheney's torture regime in place, to back it up. She has already stated that she wants more Israeli settlements and more Israelis in the West Bank, and is now hinting that she would also like a full-scale war with Iran.

Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times.

The Harper's report by Scott Horton is here.

Sullivan's comments at the Atlantic are here.

If there is any chance that these prisoners were accidentally tortured to death and their deaths then covered up as suicide, this is the biggest story in the grim annals of the Bush-Cheney era since Abu Ghraib. And yet, other than to carry a brief synopsis from Associated Press, no main US newspaper has delved into the Harper's cover-story.

And indeed, a year ago Hickman and his fellows went to Obama's justice department to explain what they believed needed to be investigated further. The FBI interviewed other witnesses who backed Hickman up. Last November, after months of waiting for a response, Hickman's lawyer got a call from the justice department. The case was closed. The NCIS report stood. When Hickman's lawyer asked why, he was told that Hickman's conclusions "appeared" to be unsupported.

This is the change we were asked to believe in.

BBC report.

Speaking on US television, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was going to "meet his maker" if found guilty.