Back Towards The Locus

What gets Richard Littlejohn up in the morning? As he stumbles blearily around his Florida mansion, does he hear birds singing or vermin who’d be shot if it wasn’t for “yuman rights”? As he gazes at an infant do his cockles warm or does he feel that sudden urge to flee from the feral youth? Ach, I know that this is pap-psychology, but you should try to understand the mind of the beast before you attempt to confront it.

Hmm, I’m being optimistic anyway, Littlejohn doesn’t mean what he writes because he’s not that stupid. If you’re dipping your toe into politics, you can be forgiven for communicating in cliches. If you’re tackling a complex or multi-faceted problem it’s understandable to misapprehend or only cover things vaguely. If, however, you’re dealing with a simple, well-documented issue and have a long history of political writing, and then still gargle shit you’re communicating from bad faith, and boy does Littlejohn have bad faith: prejudice, pomposity and a will to stir up his fiery readership.

These are all clear today, as he ineptly tackles the case of Binyam Mohamed…

“Shortly after 9/11, he was arrested at Karachi airport carrying a false passport, trying to board a plane for London. He ended up at Guantanamo Bay and claims to have been tortured.”

It’s lovely how much you can skip over when you’re a columnist, isn’t it? As I have the space, I can add that Mohamed was held without access to lawyers or the Red Cross, and was then “rendered” to Morocco.

There, he states, he was stripped, burnt with liquid and had his stomach and penis sliced open with a scalpel. The Courts have admitted(pdf) that he has “an arguable case that he has been subjected to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatement by or on behalf of the United States Authorities“.

After about eighteen months he was transferred to one of the CIA’s infamous Dark Prisons in Kabul, where…

“It was pitch black, and no lights on in the rooms for most of the time … They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb … There was loud music, Slim Shady and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this non-stop over and over, I memorized the music, all of it, when they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds.  It got really spooky in this black hole … Interrogation was right from the start, and went on until the day I left there. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off …”

From there, he was transferred to Bagram and flown to Guantanamo Bay, two and a half years after he’d been arrested.

“Britain is now moving heaven and earth to bring him ‘home’.”

Er, actually they’ve requested his release and had a meeting with his lawyer. Yeah, really “moving heaven and earth” there.

“Yet he hasn’t lived here for eight years…”

And for over six of those he’s been imprisoned, mostly without charge but mostly with torture.

“…and left of his own free will.”

Er, yes, and he was just returning when this shit kicked off.

“By no stretch of the imagination is he a British ‘resident’, let alone a British citizen.”

That’s where you’re wrong, Richey boy. As da Law states, “in order to retain your UK residency staus you cannot leave the UK for a period longer than 2 years“. Mohamed left Britain in May 2001 and was about to return in April 2002, so that’s less than one year. Since then he’s been illegally detained, illegally “rendered” and illegally tortured, factors that, even as a layman, I’d say should be taken into account.

“We’ve got enough problems with foreign terrorists, not to mention home-grown headbangers, without working ourselves into a lather over the fate of an Ethiopian who was resident in Afghanistan when he was arrested in Pakistan.”

Yeah, but Richard, considering that “we” seem likely to have been party to his torturing and then actively conspired to smother his case, don’t you think we have – oh, I don’t know – some sort of moral responsibility? Even regardless of the fact that he is, after all, a resident?

“In the case of Binyam Mohammed, what we’re looking at is extraordinary rendition in reverse. Instead of flying terror suspects abroad to be tortured, we’re flying them here to be pampered.”

Er, no, some of “us” are making an effort to release a man who’s been kidnapped, tortured and illegally detained, and is on hunger strike, “just skin and bones. The real worry is that he comes out in a coffin“.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the definition of British ‘resident’ should apply to Osama Bin Laden. After all, he lived in London for a few years before moving to Afghanistan. Maybe we should offer to bring him ‘home’, too.

And if Bin Laden was discovered living above a kebab shop in Finsbury Park, he’d be granted indefinite leave to stay, showered with benefits and given access to the best ‘yuman rites’ lawyers taxpayers’ money could buy.

Duuuuuh, Richard made da funny! Dey bowf be terrrist after all! Dey bowf have beard, certainly. Nevva mind fact dat Osama Bin Laden live elsewhere for yeeers, and dat Binyam defence lawyer be from da US.

But, no, give him a big hand, folks. Richard Littlejohn: a man who can look straight at the case of a human being who’s been tortured, starved and illegally imprisoned, and then complain because he might be allowed back to his country of residency.

The terrible thing is what a blissful ride the Government is being given. Ignoring their shameful complicity in torture and then criticising the fact that might let the guy come back is like confronting a rapist and then condemning his dress sense. But that’s what comes from allowing the dumber Chuckle Brother to become Britain’s highest paid columnist.