My colleague Craig Murray throws down the gauntlet;

There is an interesting link between Charles and I on torture … All the CIA rendition flights to Uzbekistan came from Szczytno-Szymany in Poland. We now know that the CIA had both use of that airbase and a secret torture prison nearby.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,621450,00.html

I was Ambassador in Uzbekistan, and Charles Crawford was Ambassador in Poland, at the time this torture traffic was happening. In Tashkent I uncovered it meticulously, reported it and protested against it. In Poland Charles made no protest. Either he did not know it was happening – in which case he was a lousy Ambassador – or he did not care – in which case he is complicit in the torture.

Charles may wish to let us know which it was – haplessly ignorant, or complicit?

Given his recent post on torture, plainly complicity would not have given him moral qualms.

More:

But Charles Crawford’s huffing and puffing cannot disguise his failure to answer the question I put to him. When he was British Ambassador to Poland, did he know about the CIA secret prison near Sczytno Szymany, about torture in it and about the extraordinary rendition flights through that airport? Until he answers those questions, there is nothing else to discuss with him.

Well, Craig, as you ask so nicely I’ll tell you. Then we can carry on discussing?

Let’s go back to the first posting you made on this subject (emphasis added):

I was Ambassador in Uzbekistan, and Charles Crawford was Ambassador in Poland, at the time this torture traffic was happening. In Tashkent I uncovered it meticulously, reported it and protested against it. In Poland Charles made no protest.

Which Ambassador do you want to represent you, British taxpayers? Huh? HUH?

Plucky Craig, the energetic principled uncoverer and reporter and protester of Misdeeds?

Or supine Charles, the qualm-free complicitous ignorer thereof?

Hmm.

Only one problem. A trifle really.

It looks to be the case that Craig learned about the CIA ‘secret rendition’ programme only after he finally left Tashkent in some professional dishonour yet with his payout from the taxpayer of £320,000.

How do I know that? Because this is what he himself says in his book Murder in Samarkand (Mainstream Publishing 2007 edition, p 362):

From other journalists at this time [sc when he had already left Tashkent in mid-2004 and was back in the UK, formally suspended from duty – see p 359] … I learnt the first details of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme …

I now believe that in protesting about intelligence obtained by torture in Uzbekistan … I had stumbled unwittingly across the the extraordinary rendition programme, and my objections were therefore threatening the legal and political basis of major CIA strategy in the War on Terror.

In other words, despite what he explicitly claimed on his site, as HM Ambassador in Uzbekistan Craig did not uncover, report and protest against this programme, meticulously or otherwise!

Why? Perhaps because he knew nothing whatsoever about it?

So much for his forlorn attempt to rewrite history and set himself on a higher moral unrenditioning aircraft than the rest of his FCO colleagues on this subject.

For the record, my situation was quite different.

I was the British Ambassador in an EU partner and NATO ally, namely Poland. Poland’s former communist centre left government led by Prime Minister Miller had supported the intervention in Iraq.

The media started to carry allegations of different shapes and sizes that these US ‘rendition’ flights were going on, including with Poland’s possible involvement, claiming that HMG and various other European governments were turning a blind eye to or even helping them despite the fact that the flights went through or across Europe.

In the clamour of protest on this subject, it was not always obvious what actually was meant to be wrong. Were the flights wrong/unlawful because the Americans had no permission from any of the governments concerned to behave in this way?

Or were they improper under wider international standards even with the necessary national permissions?

Were legally authorised flights wrong only if one or more of the prisoners being transported had been or might be mistreated at Guantanamo or somewhere else?

Or was the secrecy of the whole programme itself wrong and suspicious?

Was the whole thing a political stunt to get at the Bush Administration?

Or combinations of the above, and more?

Because HM Government too were under heavy fire on this subject, we UK diplomats in eg Poland were in an awkward permission.

The democratically elected Polish government at the highest level flatly and repeatedly denied the allegations. We could not run around like investigative journalists in a friendly European host country ‘meticulously’ to uncover the facts (if indeed there were any) in a way which might look like interfering in that country’s very private business with the USA. 

HMG too were denying complicity in the whole business, so not surprisingly (if I recall correctly) we were not getting strong if any instructions to pursue this sensitive subject with the Polish authorities.

Plus there were good relations between the UK and Poland ‘on other channels’ – any concerns we had about their programme (or any concerns they might have had about ours) could have been dealt with separately that way.

In late 2005 the USA confronted their NATO allies in senior confidential briefings with a strong explanation of its policy and a large amount of the concern being expressed by some of them promptly abated for a while.

In short, other than the Embassy promptly reporting to London in the usual way the issue and statements as seen in Poland when new facts and insights could be added by my team and me at that stage, not much would or could or should have been done. Or was done.

Quite right too. That’s how a Foreign Ministry and its embassies work in post-modern EU Europe.

But we did not shirk our moral and political responsibilities in other areas. For at the same time as this issue was bubbling up, we made a major effort to ensure that senior Polish WW2 veterans were included with full honours at the commemorations in London to mark the end of WW2.

The point here was that in London in 1945 the democratic Polish forces who had fought alongside the Allies were not invited to participate in the Victory Parade, lest that cause problems with Stalin, who by then was busy deporting and brutalising and torturing tens of thousands of Poles. A stunning betrayal of Basic Principles by the British Government, far eclipsing anything seen in the rendition problem 60 years later?

Putting that right – albeit very belatedly and symbolically – by bringing in to the 2005 commemorations at Horseguards Parade and Buckingham Palace a few valiant surviving victims of Soviet torture and terror was a fine use of Embassy effort in 2005.

And, yes, I am proud of that.

Charles may wish to let us know which it was – haplessly ignorant, or complicit?

I’ve done my best to explain. You all decide.