A Hero's Welcome: Britain greets a Guantánamo detainee

A Hero's Welcome, by Janet Daley
Britain greets a Guantánamo detainee
The Weekly Standard, Mar 09, 2009, Volume 014, Issue 24

LondonWell, it wasn't quite Nelson Mandela's release from Robben Island, but the treatment was nearly as reverential. The news channels followed every detail of the progress of Binyam Mohamed, the first detainee released from Guantánamo by the Obama administration, from the moment it was solemnly announced that his plane had left the ground to return him to Britain--the country that had granted him asylum (but not citizenship) before his unfortunately timed journey to Afghanistan in June 2001--until the moment the private jet touched down at RAF Northolt in west London.

It was the works: minute-by-minute live coverage of Mohamed's deplaning, flanked by burly men who ushered him quickly to a waiting car. These proceedings were enlivened by an offstage chorus of demands from Labour MPs, human rights lawyers, and the liberal media that the government and the security services tell all they knew about Britain's alleged role in Mohamed's alleged torture at Guantánamo. A parade of activists, from the openly Trotskyite leaders of the Stop the War Coalition to the usual array of anti-American protesters and always-available legal experts, weighed in with speculation on everything from the released man's mental state after force-feeding during a hunger strike to the judicial implications of Britain's participation in torture.

Particularly notable was the psychologist who specialized in the study of torture victims. He had not met Mohamed, nor did he have any personal knowledge of the specifics of his case, but that did not prevent the BBC news presenter from engaging him in a lengthy discussion of the likely effects on Mohamed of the treatment he might or might not have endured at Guantánamo--which might or might not have involved the active assistance of the British security forces. The final exchange in this rather surreal dialogue went something like this:

BBC: Isn't it possible that a victim of torture could actually be radicalized by his treatment and led into terrorism, even if he had had no inclinations of that kind in the first place?

Psychologist: Oh yes. We often find that torture victims are so alienated by their experience that they turn toward active terrorism.

This speculative analysis is, of course, plausible. It just happens that neither the psychologist nor his inquisitor had the remotest idea whether it applied in any way to Mohamed. They were simply weaving a hypothesis. But the subtext of this flight of fancy is not insignificant: If Mohamed should, in the future, be found to be involved in terrorist activity, it will be argued not that this vindicates the U.S. decision to detain and interrogate him in the first place--but that he was radicalized by his (wrongful) detention and interrogation. So even if he turns out to be a terrorist, it'll be our fault.

By the time the main evening news came on, the BBC coverage had become a bit more skeptical. Judicious doubt was inserted into the accounts given by Mohamed himself and his eager legal team about the treatment he had received and his absolute conviction that British forces had been somehow complicit in it. But after another 24 hours, there was a new hyperbole in Mohamed's descriptions of his torture as "medieval" (the rack?) and an apparent acceptance by much of the media of his confident assertion of British involvement.

No one seemed inclined to ask the obvious question: If he believed so firmly that Britain had betrayed him ("Those I hoped would rescue me were allied with my abusers"), why was he so eager to return and make his home here? One sentence from the Guardian's coverage captures this paradox neatly: "Binyam was 'extraordinarily grateful to be back in Britain,' said [his lawyer] Stafford Smith, who said he had 'zero doubt' Britain was complicit in his client's ill-treatment."

How very strange: to be extraordinarily grateful to be back in a country which you believe to have helped to torture you. Now this is not inconceivable. People often have confused and contradictory emotional reactions to traumatic events. But it does seem odd that, in all the excitement of pursuing the British government over its possible engagement in torture, scarcely anyone has thought to raise this query.

Any doubts about the credibility of Mohamed's testimony were pretty well lost in the scrum of the early coverage. This story has everything: above all, anti-Americanism combined with the delights of British self-flagellation.

As one pundit put it, "Now that Binyam Mohamed has returned to the U.K. from detention at Guantánamo Bay, there must be quite a few Whitehall mandarins--not to mention some ex-ministers--who are wandering Westminster frantically trying to clean the blood from their hands." Bush and Blair meet Lady Macbeth: The image is irresistible.

Janet Daley is a columnist for the Daily Telegraph (London).