Jack Straw is facing a civil action over the alleged illegal rendition to Libya of Abdel Hakim Belhadj:
In an interview with Radio 4 last year, Mr Straw said the Labour government had been opposed to unlawful rendition.
“We were opposed to any use of torture or similar methods. Not only did we not agree with it, we were not complicit in it and nor did we turn a blind eye to it.”
But Mr Straw added, “No foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time.”
In an interview with the BBC, human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said: “This is one of a number of civil actions that are going to be terribly embarassing for M15 and M16.”
This story has been widely reported but seems to have been largely ignored by the blogosphere. Yet there do not seem to be any reporting restrictions (and do please let me know if I am wrong about this!)– so why the silence?
