Peirce, Gareth - short clip - BritishInvolvementinMoazzamBegg'sKidnappingandDetention
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
(marker scratching) | 0:00 | |
(keyboard keys clicking) | 0:04 | |
(distant gentle music) | 0:08 | |
- | January the 31st, 2002, | 0:18 |
I had a telephone call | 0:24 | |
from a friend of his in Birmingham | 0:29 | |
to say that Moazzam had, with his wife, | 0:33 | |
managed to escape from the invasion of Afghanistan | 0:38 | |
and settle in Pakistan | 0:42 | |
where they were living. | 0:45 | |
And that men had come to his house | 0:47 | |
and kidnapped him, | 0:51 | |
and they had not taken his phone. | 0:54 | |
And I think from the boot of a car | 0:57 | |
he had managed to telephone his father in England. | 1:00 | |
And so it was within hours of that I | 1:06 | |
heard what had happened and immediately got in touch | 1:13 | |
with the foreign office to say, | 1:18 | |
"A British citizen has been kidnapped in Pakistan, | 1:21 | |
"Would you please intervene with the Pakistani authorities?" | 1:26 | |
And for the next nine months to 12 months | 1:33 | |
the British authorities steadfastly maintained | 1:41 | |
that they could get no information. | 1:46 | |
He managed to get a message from the Red Cross | 1:49 | |
to say that he was in Bagram Air Base. | 1:55 | |
So he had been subject to rendition. | 1:59 | |
He had been entirely unlawfully kidnapped in Pakistan. | 2:02 | |
Habeas corpus proceedings were initiated in Pakistan. | 2:09 | |
Every ministry, everywhere I looked into authority | 2:13 | |
said that they did not have him. | 2:17 | |
And then a letter came through the Red Cross | 2:20 | |
from Bagram to his father. | 2:25 | |
Throughout that year I went with his father | 2:30 | |
to the foreign office here to demand | 2:33 | |
that they intervene for him. | 2:37 | |
And they maintained they had no information. | 2:40 | |
They put that in writing. | 2:45 | |
They told it to our face. | 2:47 | |
And it was not until | 2:51 | |
post Rasul v. Bush in the U.S. Supreme Court, | 2:56 | |
post the | 3:02 | |
ability of lawyers to go into Guantanamo | 3:05 | |
and find out from the detainees | 3:08 | |
something of their history, | 3:12 | |
it was only then that we discovered | 3:14 | |
that the British had been throughout, | 3:17 | |
the British had tipped off the Americans | 3:19 | |
where he was living in Pakistan. | 3:23 | |
British had been there when he was first interrogated, | 3:28 | |
still in Pakistan with the Americans. | 3:31 | |
The British were there in Bagram. | 3:35 | |
The British were there in Guantanamo. | 3:38 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund