The news this week was full of the controversy surrounding the British born suicide bomber Jamal al-Harith, formerly known as Ronald Fiddler. Al-Harith was picked up by American forces in Afghanistan in 2001, where he was suspected of fighting with the Taliban. He spent time in the U.S. detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, before being returned to the U.K. It seems that he subsequently traveled to the Middle East to join ISIS and launched a suicide bomb attack during the current battle with the Iraqi army for the city of Mosul.
Aspects to this story include whether security services had been monitoring his movements; whether the policies of previous Home Secretaries (including Teresa May) made it easier for him to do what he did; The Daily Mail’s ridiculous attempt to smear Tony Blair for being at fault; and the alleged £1m compensation paid to al-Harith.
It’s worth noting that, from a security policy point of view, there is very little controversy in this case. There was a decade between al-Harith’s return from Guantánamo and his departure for Syria and Iraq. That he was not deemed a threat by security services is not particularly remarkable and intellegence officials past and present are comfortable making this point.
However, the debate surrounding this case, kicked off by the Daily Mail’s hypocritical attack on Tony Blair, serves to put a confusing message into the public consciousness—that of ‘terrorists’ being paid ‘compensation’. This story will become another factoid that undermines the case for human rights protections. I will be very interested to see what contribution the Prime Minister makes to the story. I suspect that she will say something hostile to civil liberties, reinforcing the idea that the attempts of politicians and the police to keep us safe are being frustrated by pesky human rights laws. Teresa May has made this point consistently.
We need to push back against any such suggestion. We need to say that the compensation that was paid (in part) to Jamal al-Harith was right and proper in a society governed by the Rule of Law.
Guantánamo Bay is a civil liberties travesty and a stain on America’s reputation. It is known that the U.K. acquiesced to torture and other abuses of civil and human rights. This is a source of deep shame.
Jamal al-Harith was not convicted of any crime. There may well have been convincing intelligence that linked him to the Taliban or other violent groups, but no admissible evidence that could have been presented to him at trial. In law, then, he was no different from those Guantánamo detainees who had nothing to do with any terrorism, or indeed anyone suspected of a crime with little or no justification.
Habeus corpus is one of our oldest civil liberties. Magna Carta says that any imprisonment or punishment of a person “must only be carried out after lawful judgment of his peers”. Like many human rights, there is plenty of legislation and case law that sets out the limits on how long someone may be detained before a charge or before a trial, and other provisions for prisoners of war. But there is a clear consensus that Guantánamo Bay regime violated and continues to violate those laws. It is right that someone like Jamal al-Harith should have been compensated after being detained there.
That this compensation was paid to him makes me feel safe. If such payments happen even when the security services have intellegence that could incriminate a person, then that is a sort of insurance against more arbitrary or political detentions. It deincentivises human rights abuses.
The alternative would be a regime where people could be detained on the say-so of security personnel citing secret intelligence. That would be intolerable in a free society.
We should all be ashamed of what Jamal al-Harith, a.k.a. Ronald Fiddler has done and the manner in which he ended his life. He chose war and hate. He is the worst of Britain.
But his story teaches us other things too. First, it reminds us of the trade-offs and compromises that security services have to make when they assess the threat posed by individuals. There can be no state of absolute safety and security when we also respect civil liberties, and the al-Harith case is an example of reasonable decisions that unfortunately panned out badly.
We should also note that abusing someone, whether egregiously at Guantánamo Bay or through ‘micro-aggressions’ and smaller indignities (such as harassing Muslim-looking people at airports) can radicalise people against us. We can’t say whether Al-Harith’s treatment at Guantánamo Bay caused his defection to ISIS but I would be astonished if that experience did not catalyse the decision. Compensation – a sort of corporate apology – can mitigate feelings of alienation, and therefore may be useful and appropriate use of tax-payers money.
4 Replies to “I'm Glad That ISIS Suicide Bomber Jamal al-Harith Was Paid £1m Compensation By The British Government”
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I think you might be mixing up Guantanamo with the CIA black sites.
Harith wasn’t actually tortured. He says he was beaten, which would surely be illegal if true, but only if it was actually a beating. Detainees were frequently violent. A scuffle is not a beating if he initiates it. He also says other things unlikely to be true, like the water and medical care. I seriously doubt that the allowances you cite regarding British interrogation of prisoners who’d already been tortured could possibly be relevant here.
The guards understood that they were being watched. Not just by their sergeants and officers, but also by video cameras and occasional FBI personnel. Guantanamo was not Abu Ghraib.
The harshest treatment was only permitted for about six weeks from about December 2002 through mid-January 2003 (and only one got the worst of it at that point), until a version of that was used on one other detainee (Slahi) in Summer 2003. But even that six-week period came during a time when they had come to believe Harith should be released. He wouldn’t have been approved for any of the more harsh interrogation methods (like shaving) during that time.
Here is his statement:
http://humanrights.ucdavis.edu/projects/the-guantanamo-testimonials-project/testimonies/prisoner-testimonies/statement-of-jamal-al-harith-former-detainee-at-guantanamo-bay
Keep in mind that this was his statement before a more friendly panel, and it was almost certainly after coaching. Some of those things sound like he was regurgitating other stories. It’s true that he couldn’t phone his family, but they could write letters back and forth, and also send messages via the ICRC.
But let’s just imagine that he was radicalized at Gitmo, upset about being slapped around, supposely drinking lousy water, and having the air conditioner turned up too high. And then let’s say that these conditions made him mad enough to join a group that supports some truly horrific methods of torture in addition to slavery. Wouldn’t he then want revenge against the U.S.? In most of these cases, their victims tend to be non-Americans.
Like it or not, Guantanamo is legal under U.S. law and treaty obligations, which includes universal human rights. Although it was made more hospitable in 2003, much of what had been permitted there before then would still be legal under the law that President Obama signed in 2015. The CIA black sites are another story, of course, but Harith wasn’t in one of those.
Compensation – a sort of corporate apology – can mitigate feelings of alienation, and therefore may be useful and appropriate use of tax-payers money.
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I was cycling in North Wales (unnamed seaside resort) when a charming chap shouted ‘F**king P*ki’ out of the window at me as he drove by*. It hurt but it was also dangerous because it was on-road. Where’s my compensation? Because I’m beginning to hate Britain & I am a secular atheist. Every day I have to deal with micro-aggressions, on the bus, on the street, you name it. Where’s the compensation for my hurt feelings.
So when I have to read this article, I think, Robert, you can afford all the values I can’t because you are not in my position. For a start, what in God’s name was al-Harith (or Fiddler) doing in Afghanistan in 2001? On a cycle tour? Talk about guilt by association.
As Randy put it eloquently, (& I am no fan of the US), some monitor probably goes on at Guantanamo, & as he rightly points out, if al-Harith bore a grudge against the Americans, surely he should have directed his ire against them instead of his fellow Muslims.
Your final paragraph contradicts itself. In fact, I’d say the compensation probably emboldened al-Harith into believing that he could dupe the authorities. It should have left him feeling vindicated & actually trusting that British justice exists. Did it mitigate any feelings of alienation he might have felt? On the contrary, it would appear. No one is saying that some form of compensation shouldn’t be paid if cases of abuse can be verified, but it is the level & amount. No wonder the likes of Paul Nuttall/right-wing press et al. use this as grist for their noxious meal when British soldiers have to fill in bureaucratic forms to get compensation for lost limbs.
Personally, if I’d been given the purported amount given to Mr al-Harith, I would have bought a bottle of bubbly & toasted the British government, a bit like Eddie Murphy’s character does at the end of ‘Trading Places’ at my Euro-millions type lottery win. I certainly wouldn’t bother blowing myself up to kill other people for a group of Islam-fascists who, frankly, just used me as ‘cannon-fodder’ for their despicable aims. I think Patrick Cockburn, in one article, said IS cynically have been putting foreign volunteers in the front line because they didn’t lose their own home-grown recruits (former members of the Republican Guard, better trained fighters etc).
*Unfortunately, I couldn’t get his car registration but did shout a rather rude word back. It rhymes with runt.
typo:
some monitoring, Islamo-fascists
More typos (apologies)
grist for MILL/didn’t want to lose (final paragraph)