An Interview with Louise Christian

CAGEPRISONERS.COM: Ms. Christian, Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. How would you respond to critics who say that you are defending those who threaten British security and who are, in Rumsfeld's words, "killers" and the "worst of the worst"? What motivated you to take up these cases?

LOUISE CHRISTIAN: I am a human rights lawyer and I believe that everyone has human rights. Those who abuse human rights will always seek to justify their actions by vilifying their victims. I am also motivated by my long anti-racist record and my belief that Muslims are being wrongly criminalised. The firm of solicitors headed by Sadiq Khan and myself, Christian Khan, is an organization in which people of different races and religions and of no religion, work alongside one another for the same human rights goals. Unlike Mr Rumsfeld, I believe it is impossible to pass judgment on people who have no voice, since they are held in a legal black hole with no access to a lawyer and a court. I would also say that the US re-writing of international law ignores that those who fought to defend Afghanistan may deserve to be classified as prisoners of war. The US has failed to convene a competent tribunal to decide on peoples status as required by the Geneva Conventions. The conflating of the Taliban (an army involved in a war) and Al-Qaida (a terrorist organisation responsible for September 11th and other outrages) sends the wrong message to the world. It was the US which invaded Afghanistan. That war (unlike the Iraq war) was probably justified in international law but that does not mean that those who were on the other side are all terrorists. A terrorist is someone who engages in acts of random violence against civilians and is a criminal, who deserves to be prosecuted in a criminal court with due process and, if convicted, sentenced to a long prison sentence. His or her position is totally different to that of a foot-soldier, defending a government under attack - even if the government is not one which should be supported and even if the attack is justified. This is not to say that people in Guantanamo Bay were foot-soldiers. It is clear that a number of people went to Afghanistan to offer humanitarian support, not to fight. And others may simply have been in the wrong place. We know that the Northern Alliance were offered money to hand over people they believed to be fighters and that the lure of the money must have overcome any scruples about who they were handing over.

CP: Can you give us some insight into the ordeal your clients they have endured for the past two years and how the detainees' absence has been felt by the families?

LC: The long campaign has been devastating for the families. I have lost count of the number of meetings I have been to with families with government ministers since the beginning of 2002. The position of the British government has been far worse than just not standing up for the rights of its citizens. They have been actively complicit in the whole enterprise of Guantanamo Bay from the outset by sending MI5 to interrogate people. Even when Zumrati Juma, Feroz Abbasi's mother, brought proceedings in the UK courts in 2002, they still said nothing. The UK Court of Appeal declined to make any order (we were asking them to order the UK government to make diplomatic protests) but the Court did condemn the illegality of Guantanamo Bay in strong terms. But still the UK government did nothing. Of course, I have seen Zumrati and others very distressed and distraught, particularly when they have stopped receiving letters and there are reports of the terrible conditions in the regime at Guantanamo.

CP: How much communication have they had with the detainees? What impression do they give of the conditions and treatment meted out, and their wellbeing from their letters?

LC: The letters tell the families virtually nothing. Whole passages are blanked out by the censor. It is apparent they are not allowed to speak of the conditions or what is going on. In one letter, Feroz Abbasi said there was a very good reason why he had not written to his family for several months but he could not say why. This was unbelievably distressing to his family.

CP: You mentioned in one interview that your client, Feroz Abbasi, had been tortured - what leads you to believe that?

LC: I'm not sure what interview this was. Until recently I was avoiding using the word torture because we did not know very much although it was clear that keeping people in cages was, at best, inhuman and degrading treatment. However, having read the accounts by Jamel Al Harith and the Tipton three (which were corroborated by what Tarek Dergoul was able to tell me), I have no hesitation in using the word torture.

CP: What was the response from the families whom you are acting on behalf of to the news that their sons were not amongst those to be released?

LC: The families of Martin Mubanga and Feroz Abbasi were devastated. There was no warning whatsoever from the British government that they were contracting only a partial deal with the US. Indeed, I was constantly told in correspondence that if a fair trial could not be secured they would be returned to this country.

CP: Do you feel that the return of the five Britons gives hope for the release of the other detainees or do you consider it, as Mr. Azmat Begg described, merely a "face saving gesture by the Americans"?

LC: I think the release of some of the detainees must give hope for the others, not least because the British government owes the same duty to all its citizens and has I believe failed the four remaining. I have written a long letter before action to the government on behalf of Martin Mubanga and Feroz Abbasi and am considering fresh legal action in this country.

CP: What was your response to the recent harrowing descriptions of Guantanamo from Jamal al-Harith and the three detainees from Tipton?

LC: I was sickened by the detailed accounts given of the regime in Guantanamo - not only people being treated like animals but the use of bullying, deception, beatings and the threat of being held in isolation to extract false confessions. The Tipton three actually "confessed" to being in a video with Osama Bin Laden but subsequently MI5 produced documentary evidence to show they were in the UK at the time the video was made.

CP: How did you respond to the relevations of the British intelligence services' involvement and how complicit do you believe the British government are, in light of the returnees' statements?

LC: It is very shocking that not only did the British government make no protest whatsoever about Guantanamo for over a year and a half but they also collaborated in the illegality by carrying out the interrogation in conditions of torture.

CP: What was your reaction to the recent allegations from the US embassy that the four Britons, far from being innocents, "toted AK-47 rifles in the ranks of al-Qaeda or the Taliban... ready to take on Allied troops"?

LC: The Press Counsellor of the US Embassy wrote on behalf of George Bush to the Sun newspaper, the most downmarket and scurrilous of our tabloids, to make these allegations. All of them were in general terms and were presumably based on things people had "confessed" under coercion in Guantanamo Bay. I think it is quite disgraceful that the most powerful country in the world which claims to be fighting for democracy and freedom stoops to making crude propaganda of this kind.

CP: Mr. Derghoul has understandably avoided the glare of the media since he returned - can you shed some light on his state of mind at present and how is he adjusting to life back in the UK?

LC: People who have been tortured or ill-treated often find it very difficult to talk about it. I have been taking statements for years from asylum seekers who have suffered torture and this is a common feature. I put out a statement on behalf of Tarek Dergoul saying that his account included botched medical treatment, interrogation at gunpoint, beatings and inhuman conditions while he was detained in Bagram, Kandahar and Guantanamo Bay. I can say that his account, so far as he was able to give it, corroborated the account given by others.

CP: Is your client planning to take further action against the British and US governments?

LC: Obviously this will have to be considered although it would be difficult to take action against the US government in a British court and I understand it is not very possible to seek compensation for false imprisonment in US courts.

CP: What do you believe are the main factors preventing the return of the remaining British detainees?

LC: It is not clear whether it is the British government who have failed to bring them back or whether it is the US who is refusing to allow them back. If it is the former, then it is a betrayal by the British government. If it is the latter, it shows that our willingness to be the US's closest ally in war does not carry with it any ability to restrain them, even on behalf of our own citizens.

CP: What is your view on David Blunkett's latest proposals for Anti-Terrorism legislation in the UK? Do you think these measures are being rushed in to be applied to the remaining Britons if they were to be released?

LC: The statements made by David Blunkett suggesting that he might bring in legislation to extend the existing power to detain foreign nationals indefinitely without trial to British citizens might have been linked to a plan to apply this to the remaining four once they return. However, there is increasing unease both among the public and the judiciary that we are the only European country to bring in the draconian measures applying to foreign nationals - in effect our own version of Guantanamo Bay. A Privy Council committee set up to scrutinize the legislation said the indefinite detention could not be justified. One of the fourteen detained known as M has just been set free by judges.

CP: One of your clients, Feroz Abbasi, is amongst the 12 facing military tribunals. What is your opinion of these tribunals?

LC: The military commission tribunals proposed breach international norms for a fair trial in every respect - they are not independent, there is no free choice of defence counsel, the rules of evidence are not protected, there is no independent right of appeal - and most importantly the result of interrogation in the coercive conditions of Guantanamo Bay will be allowed into evidence. The best hope that these tribunals will not go ahead is if the Supreme Court in the US, which is due to hear cases starting in April and ruling in June, intervenes to stop the illegality of the whole thing. The trials are suspended for British citizens like Feroz Abbasi and it will bring shame on the British government if they allow them to go ahead.

CP: Can you tell us how the legal cases for the British nationals differs from those of the five British residents? What do you believe to be the responsibility of the British government towards them, and how supportive have the governments of their native countries been?

LC: The British government is refusing to accept responsibility for the long term British residents without nationality even though one of them is Iraqi and the British are one of the occupying powers in Iraq. I am acting for Jamel Abdullah who is a Ugandan citizen, but his mother is a British citizen and he lived in the UK for ten years from the age of fourteen. The Ugandan government has also refused to accept responsibility for him because so far we have not been able to give them the number of his travel document.

CP: Can you elaborate on one of your earlier statements, that, in Guantanamo, you are better off having a Pakistani passport than a British one - could you elaborate on this?

LC: Well over a hundred people have been released from Guantanamo, most without any requirement for them to be detained in their own countries. Most of these have been Pakistani and there have been some Afghans. The Pakistan government made strenuous diplomatic protests unlike the British government and has been listened to because the Bush government needs the support of President Musharraf maybe more than they need the support of Tony Blair.

CP: You've authored a number of articles related to the detention in Guantanamo - what response have they met from the British public?

LC: I have had hundreds of emails from members of the British public, expressing outrage about the detentions in Guantanamo Bay and wanting to know what they can do to help. I have also had similar emails from all over the world.

CP: What do you think that the average person can do to assist the detainees in Guantanamo?

LC: I urge all the people who write to me to write letters to our Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Attorney General, to the US embassy and Donald Rumsfeld, and to give support to campaigns for the detainees such as your own, that headed by Corin Redgrave's Peace and Progress organisation, Amnesty and (in respect of the foreign nationals detained here) Liberty.

CP: Finally, what do you think of our site?

LC: I think your website is brilliant - I use it myself to find out information from press articles. A lot of work must have gone into it because it looks very professional. It is absolutely appropriate that it provides a focal point for Muslims to discuss what they can do about the outrage of Guantanamo Bay and other detentions without trial and injustices being meted out to Muslims around the world. There are over 600 people in Guantanamo Bay but around the world thousands are also being detained without trial (many of them in Iraq). We must keep remembering all these forgotten people and doing whatever we can for them.