[Cross-posted from European Tribune – where dissent is NOT troll rated!]
PM Theresa May puts Europe’s security back on the Brexit talks … EU leaders tell Britain to get its house in order …
A loyal Britain supporter PM Rutte: “I don’t want to talk in apocalyptic terms, but what I want to say is I believe the first, second and third priority now is to solve this issue of the Irish border.”
Theresa May tells EU leaders: you are putting lives at risk over Brexit
Brussels has insisted the UK will not be able to participate in information-sharing schemes such as Ecris (European Criminal Records Information System) and Prüm, through which EU authorities track criminals and terrorists, once it is a “third country”. The British government hopes EU capitals will put pressure on the European commission to take a more flexible approach.
A senior government official said the UK had received 163,000 requests from other EU countries for criminal records information in the ECRIS database in 2017 and provided 2,500 DNA profiles under the auspices of the Prüm treaty.
He said other EU countries had “put obstacles in the way of reaching an agreement on mapping the movement of terrorists and criminals, and sharing vital information”.May told her fellow leaders that, without a shift in the EU’s stance, “we will no longer be able to share real-time alerts for wanted persons, including criminals.
Continued below the fold …
… We would be able to respond less swiftly to alerts for missing people, either side of the Channel, and reunite them with their loved ones. And our collective ability to map terrorist networks across Europe and bring those responsible to justice would be reduced. That is not what I want, and I do not believe that is what you want either”.
The GCHQ chief, Jeremy Fleming, revealed recently that Britain supplied key information to break up terrorist networks in four European countries last year and suggested such information-sharing would continue after Brexit.
The importance of British Intelligence can be witnessed in our daily lives, the result of foreign adventures, stream of refugees from wartorn countries, global famine and a turn to the right in EU politics with populist themes as party platforms. How ugly can it get in inhumane tricks by our government, “dodgy” dossiers et all.
And that was under a Labour government with Tony Blair and Jack Straw …
From The Guardian, topic: UK security and counter-terrorism
UK’s role in rendition and torture of terrorism suspects – key findings
Two reports published by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee have found British intelligence agencies were involved in the torture and kidnap of terrorism suspects after 9/11.
Here are the key details from the reports:
- On 232 occasions UK intelligence officers were found to have continued supplying questions to foreign agencies between 2001 and 2010, despite knowing or suspecting a prisoner was being tortured or mistreated.
- On 198 occasions, UK intelligence officers received information from a prisoner they knew was being mistreated.
- In a further 128 cases, foreign intelligence bodies told UK intelligence agencies prisoners were being mistreated.
- MI5 or MI6 offered to help fund at least three rendition operations.
- The agencies planned or agreed to a further 28 rendition operations.
- They provided intelligence to assist with a further 22 rendition operations.
- Two MI6 officers consented to mistreatment meted out by others. Only one of these incidents has been investigated by police.
- In a further 13 cases, UK intelligence officers witnessed an individual being tortured or mistreated.
- MI5, MI6 and the military conducted up to 3,000 interviews of prisoners held at Guantánamo.
Criticism mounts over UK’s post-9/11 role in torture and rendition
British ministers and spy chiefs in power after 9/11 are facing new calls to explain their “inexcusable” actions after two damning parliamentary reports set out the scale of UK involvement in the torture and kidnap of terrorist suspects.
Theresa May is also under fire for blocking key intelligence figures from giving evidence to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC), which produced the two reports.
The committee found the UK intelligence agencies to be complicit in hundreds of incidents of torture and rendition, mainly in partnership with the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
In spite of restrictions on its investigation, the ISC produced a mass of detail that amounts to a major indictment of the intelligence services, not least that the UK was in breach of the international prohibition on torture.
This topic has been detailed in dozens of diaries in the last 15 years by now!
○ British government apologises to Libyan dissident Belhaj over rendition
○ CIA Heinous Crimes – A Trail of Blood
○ Obama Now Calls Rendition ‘Transfer’ and Shrouds It In Secrecy
○ Georgia: oil, neocons, cold war and our credibility by Jerome a Paris @EuroTrib on Aug 10th, 2008
Due to the American values “In God We Trust” many Democrats believe their government’s version of events why Hillary lost the presidential election … the Russians. So sad. The Republicans in Red State America believe in God, their women and … Trump. Btw, don’t let foreigners touch their Harley Davidson, another symbol of pride. Emptyness on values what matters across the globe: ice caps melting – waterlevel rising – drought – ecology – marine pollution – habitability of our planet. American First! stays silent. Coal and the donations by corporate moguls/oligarchs in a nation of lobbyists, bribery and corruption. Pointing fingers elsewhere … a narcissistic problem.
Further reading …
○ Why Macron Is Not the New Left
oaquabonita – the obsessive heckler here, here, here and here.
[Comments off-topic … want a flame war, do start your own diary]
