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More Lying Lies on Rendition: Will they be reported now the bloody whale is dead?

Posted January 22nd, 2006 by ringverse
in

Well, now the Whale, which was clearly in breach of the exclusion zone defined by the latest anti protest legislation is finally dead, maybe the media can finally get round to reporting some of the News they have ignored whilst hounding the creatures every move.

The Rendition story might be a good place to start. Fresh from the New Statesman leak earlier in the week, we learn this weekend that the government have lied about the meetings that they have had with UN representatives about the issue:

Presumably HMG 'forgot' the visit they recieved from the UN Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur, to question the fact the government position on Extraordinary Rendion is laughably unbelievable. they also forgot that he was not satisfied with the UK government's answers, and that he promised to follow up...

Pressure over the use of British airports for secret CIA torture flights increased dramatically yesterday after it emerged that a Foreign Office minister misled Parliament over a meeting between the UN and UK civil servants about the issue.

The Independent on Sunday has learnt that Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, misled peers when he told the House of Lords that no such meeting had ever occurred.

But Martin Scheinin, the UN Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur, travelled to London to hold meetings with Home Office and Foreign Office officials between 21 and 22 November last year. He raised concerns about the issue of "extraordinary rendition" - the policy of moving terror suspects to countries that use torture - and is so concerned following the lack of disclosure that he is writing to ministers.

In his recent parliamentary reply to Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, the senior Liberal Democrat MP Lord Triesman said: "As far as we are aware, Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials have not held meetings with United Nations officials since 1 November on extraordinary rendition."

The Foreign Office admitted yesterday that the answer was incorrect and that one of its civil servants had been at a Home Office meeting with Dr Scheinin, where rendition was discussed, eight weeks ago.

Without the Whale dominating the news, perhaps we will hear more on this?
Not to mention 24,000 children on the DNA database, the Iraqi election results, the widely disbelieved UK forces casualty figures, the defeats in the Lords over ID cards, Ruth Kelly's burial of reports that show the education White Paper to be the farce that it is, Friday's Human Rights Watch report, Craig Murray's appearance at the Bush Commission, etc etc etc

But now we have Mark Oaten's demise to add to the heady mix!