 The Overseas Operations Bill was introduced to Parliament in March 2020. It provides legal protections to armed forces personnel and veterans serving in military operations overseas who cannot be prosecuted for their offences. We will give two well-documented examples of the night raids in secret prisons where British military violate human rights and international humanitarian law. We ask permission to show footage of night raids conducted by US forces. This is to illustrate how night raids conducted by the UK military happen as well. Permission granted. Theories of allegations about the use of night raids by British forces whereby they executed many civilians. An example of this is the case of Saiful Ayyar, whose family was shot dead in a night raid. Leak documents and emails point to the British military unit in Afghanistan employing a deliberate policy of killing Afghan men and boys. As international forces consider night raids to be uses of military forces, they are subject to international humanitarian law. While international humanitarian law permits some use of lethal force, it prohibits directing attacks against civilians or civilian objects. In the context of night raids, this means international forces should typically conduct such operations only against legitimate military targets, combatants or civilians who are directly participating in hostilities. There are numerous examples of British military being in clear contravention of this law. Secret prisons. Britain's secret prison was at its sizeable camp Bastion base in Helmand. Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, admitted that the British army was holding around 90 people indefinitely and without charge. This is a contravention to human rights law. Many of the prisoners have not been able to see a lawyer after months in prison. Hammond insisted that the British army was not obliged to grant detainees legal representation because they were not involved in a legal process. The father of one detainee told the Guardian newspaper how his son vanished and for two months he didn't know if he was dead or alive or where he was being held. Torture. Britain has also had a long standing allegations of prisoner abuse and torture. These cases have involved allegations of direct participation in abuse by British personnel as well as the provision of indirect support for abuses carried out by foreign government agents. Evidence has continued to emerge in UK court hearings and public inquiries of abuses such as torture by UK soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that appear to be war crimes. Hardly any UK national, neither senior military or political figure has been prosecuted, let alone convicted after 2001. Successive British governments have repeatedly interfered in criminal justice, most blatantly by ministers shutting down criminal inquiries into UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. We will now hear examples and allegations of the UK's deepened direct involvement in torture from our eyewitnesses, and we would like to begin by calling Mr Moazenbeck to the stand. I do solemnly sincerely and truly declare and affirm that the evidence that I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Please take a seat. Could you tell the court your full name and profession please? My name is Moazenbeck and I'm the Outreach Director for Advocacy Group, CAGE. Mr Beck, when were you when the twin tower attacks happened? I was in my house in Kabul in Afghanistan on September 11, 2001. Can you tell us your experience? There were no televisions in Afghanistan at that time, the Taliban had banned them. I didn't know what the twin towers were, had never been to America. I knew what the Pentagon was, but I couldn't visualize what these attacks were or who they'd been done by. When I heard on the BBC World Service and the Voice of America that America has been attacked and planes have flown into buildings, I initially thought that perhaps it's an invasion by a foreign country, but soon enough the finger started getting pointed at Osama bin Laden who was in Canada in the south of Afghanistan. What was your first encounter with British intelligence services? My very first encounter was not actually in Afghanistan, it was prior to Afghanistan, it was in 1998. British intelligence agents of MIF-5 came to my house with the British police and asked me about an individual, a Moroccan person who I'd known, who'd written to me from the Emirates, saying that he had forced to sign confessions that he's part of an extremist group, that there were British agents present during his torture and could I find him a lawyer? And that's how I first ever approached my lawyer, who became my own lawyer, Gareth Pierce. Apologies, may I just interject? For purposes of the live stream, Yulia, would you be able to move the microphone just a little closer? Unless you want to do it yourself. Great, thank you, thank you very much. Can you tell us about that first encounter? Yeah, it was about six o'clock in the morning, three people turned up, one of them identified themselves as police, the other really didn't say who he was until afterwards and they came and sat down with me in my house, I offered them a cup of tea and they spoke about this individual who I'd known who'd been detained in the Emirates. How were you first arrested or suspected of being involved in terrorism? The first time happened in 2000, I believe, I was arrested under the terrorism act and I was released immediately after initial discussions or questioning and it lasted literally for about a couple of hours and then they released me. And then what happened in 2001? In 2001 I moved to Afghanistan with my wife and my children. This was part of a project that I had begun from the UK to build a school for girls in Kabul and also to build wells in the regions of the north west. We had purchased playground equipment from Iran, we bought computers from the UK, had them sent over, we produced a curriculum and bought vehicles to transport children from the schools to their homes and so by the time I got to Afghanistan the school was up and running. And what happened in the aftermath of the Twin Tower attack? After several weeks, when the bombing first began, sorry to backtrack a little bit, before the bombing began the US flew airplanes, bombers that weren't dropping bombs, they were dropping leaflets and you could see them from the sky, it was a weird thing to see but these millions of leaflets were spreading all over the place. And leaflets literally offered bounties of $5,000 for each person who a person may suspect of being Taliban or al-Qaeda. After that the cruise missiles landed in Kabul. I remember seeing the line of them coming in the dark, I remember the attempt of the Taliban to shoot them down with the anti-aircraft and then the explosion that shattered the windows of all the streets where my house was, including my own house and the aftershock. It was under that and then the bombing that followed, the aerial bombardment, the Daisy Cutters, the 15,000 pound bombs that shook, that felt like an earthquake even though they landed over a mile away. It was under that and because of that we evacuated eventually to Pakistan. And when were you then approached again by security forces? When I was in my house in Pakistan where we had set up again, I received a call from my friend and he said that MI5 have come and they are asking about you. This was in the UK. I gave him my details. I said, let them come. Let them come to where I am. I have nothing to hide. Literally two to three days later. There was a knock on my door. The date was the 31st of January 2002, midnight. I opened the door when somebody knocked and a group of people were standing there. One in uniform, no identification cards. They stormed in, one of them put a gun to my head, pushed me onto the floor on the ground, shackled my hands behind my back, shackled my legs, put a hood over my head. My wife and children were literally in the next room and they picked me up from the prone position and took me into the back of this vehicle. Inside the vehicle there were two people at the front. They turned around and they were wearing Afghan caps. It was evident to me they were neither Afghan nor Pakistani. When they spoke and when I saw their faces, when they lifted the hood, they said, you can either answer our questions here or answer them in Guantanamo Bay. Another one produced a pair of handcuffs. He shook them around and he said, I was given these cuffs by the wife of my friend who died in the Twin Towers attack. So then I knew that this is the CIA. What happened then? Where did they take you? It took me to a secret location about half an hour away in Islamabad in the capital. They kept me there for about three weeks. I was held by the Pakistani intelligence, the ISI, into services intelligence and taken periodically to a different house, hooded and shackled always where the Americans would interrogate me, the FBI, the CIA, but also British intelligence, the same intelligence officer at this point who had spoken to my friend was the same one here. Was it the same one that visited you in 98? The one that saw me in 98, I saw in an even more shocking state, which I'll explain. And when were you taken to background? So I was taken from here, from the Pakistani custody to a military air base in Kandahar. And that was the initiation process of being a U.S. prisoner. That's when they took me and several other prisoners. They stripped us naked by slicing off our clothes with a knife. They punched me and kicked me and shaved my hair off. They brought dogs close to me that are so close that I could feel the spit as they salivated. They laughed, they swore, and then they took pictures. And so after this process I was dressed in the signature jumpsuits that you know of U.S. custody. And I remained here for six weeks. In the first or second interrogation when they took me and the way they took me was with my hands behind my back with the hood of my head in a bowing position with two soldiers pinning their arms behind my shoulders so that they'd almost feel like they're popping out. They took me into this interrogation tent and this is at Kandahar air base. They put me onto my knees. They lifted the hood off my head and sitting right opposite me was the British intelligence agent who had come to my house in 1998 who had offered tea to. Did he speak to you? Of course, he came and he spoke to me at length. Can you tell us about that conversation? Yeah, he essentially said he seemed very uncomfortable that guns are being pointed towards me on my knees, that my hands are behind my back that I've obviously gone through this but he was also very much taking part of and taking advantage of this extrajudicial detention and so he started to ask me questions about people I knew in the UK. As I've said, I've never been to America so there was no questions about America and he essentially said that you have caused this to yourself that you, the only way you can extricate yourself from this situation that you have bought upon yourself is to do everything the Americans ask you and tell you to do. And did you? For a period, I didn't know what the Americans wanted. I understood it was a big fishing exercise. I understood that they were reacting to 9-11 but I didn't know what they wanted because I had understood and thought especially when the FBI was there and British Intelligence and other law enforcement agencies that they are going to accuse me of a crime that on this date, at this time, with this place, with this person, with this intent, you conspired to commit this crime but in all the years of captivity, interrogation they never presented one. So what they wanted was information. And not specific information, just information in general? Very general. In fact, I would say that they wanted somebody to teach them. Somebody to teach them history, somebody to teach them context, somebody to teach them the ideas, that pervaded this region. They were literally walking in blind and my initial response was to try to educate them but they weren't really looking for that part. They were looking for people they could say to the Pentagon, to the White House that we've caught this guy. He's involved somehow. It's easy for us to deal with this guy because he speaks English and the majority of the prisoners are not English speakers. So that's, in my view, what they were seeking and that's what they tried to do. Were you ever explained your rights? Was that ever discussed? On September, no, in the beginning, I'll tell you two things, in the beginning they told us when I was taken into Kandahar, they said and they shouted across the blocks, now the property of the United States of America and you have no rights. The second part is on September the 11th, the following year, they reiterated that and went to all the prisoners who were in the Bagram detention facility and told us to hold up our hands like this for hours and we did so because they wanted to reaffirm to themselves that these captives here are responsible for the destruction of the two towers. Can you tell us about your experience in Bagram? Yeah, after six weeks at Kandahar, I was moved to Bagram and I remained there for about 11 months. It was a closed facility built by the Soviets. You could still see the writing in Russian. The prison cells at that point were made of concertina or razor wire and there were about six cells, communal cells in which there were about six or seven prisoners in each. There was no access to light or dark. There was no hot food. Everything was like one of these military ration packs that you had to tear open with your mouth because they wouldn't give you a spoon to eat it with. We had no water to wash with. We had one bottle of water, a 500 millilitre bottle of water to drink a day. I saw two prisoners killed in Bagram. I saw one prisoner. He tried to escape from the rear of the cell where they'd given us a barrel that they'd cut in half to use as a toilet and at the back of it was barbed wire. He was somebody that was just desperate. He tried to sneak out. He got round the back and then two soldiers grabbed him. They caught him. He had a quran in his hand and they beat him so terribly that his body just slumped and they dragged his body in front of myself from round the back to the front to where the medical area is and then minutes later they carried his body out on a stretcher so we learnt that he died. I saw another prisoner in February 2003 get killed. He was a taxi driver. I learnt later his name is Dilawar. His hands, like most of us, were at some point tied to the top of the cage in what's known as the isolation area or the Sally Port which isolates the prisoner. They would do that to all of us periodically and to him they did it for approximately five days non-stop with just breaks to go to the toilet or to eat and they left him suspended there to the point at which his body slumped so his hands were tied above like this and his head just slumped down and when we alerted the soldiers and said that something's wrong they came over, they opened the Sally Port door and they started to punch him in the ribs and they came off to the isolation cells on the first floor and we didn't know it at the time but something terrible happened. The soldiers were running up and down they were saying something has happened and it was rumoured that he died but I didn't know. I later learnt of his death from American interrogators who came to my Guantanamo cell in 2004. They bought me a photograph of his body. They bought me photographs of the soldiers who were present that night during his abuse and they asked me if I could identify them and be a potential prosecution witness in any trial against them. We might come back to this later but just to mark it, do you think that was bait or were they actually trying to get some sort of justice for the law? I don't know, I just could not have envisaged in what circumstance could they present me somebody who's been held without charge or trial and faced my own abuse in any court as a witness. I think they were probably following procedure that they knew as law enforcement officers but they had now entered into this twilight zone of their own making and somehow tried to make me fit as a prosecution witness. Just to return to your time and background for a second did you witness any abuse against Uighur Muslims? Yes I did. I remember particularly, of course there were several Uighur Muslims who were brought into custody by the Americans and sold over for bounties and so forth. One particular man I remember on the cell next to me because these were communal cells. This cell next to me was actually empty and they used this empty cell. They bought in, first of all, this huge bracket it's like a giant heavy pipe bracket which took two to three soldiers to carry. They bought it into the middle of the cell and they left it there. Then they bought in a chain, a very thick chain, the likes of which I've not seen before and they bought it all the way through the saliport and they threaded it through this bracket. Then they bought in this prisoner who was hooded at the time and then they attached the chain to the prisoner through the waste and they left him attached to this for days on end. He couldn't reach, because of the tightness of the chain and the bracket he couldn't reach the toilet at the back of the cell so he had to defecate and urinate on himself. Do you have any indication that British security forces were aware of what was going on in Bagram to you, a British citizen? 100%. I say this because Andrew, the same individual who had come to my house who had seen in Kandahar, also came to Bagram and so did other of his colleagues. But probably the biggest evidence I have of their role is that when I was in Bagram British police came to my family home and seized a computer and they had tried to get a password from me to my computer which I'd refused to give when they first arrested me for that short time in 2000. In Bagram, after all of the torture and all of the abuse and all of the threats they asked me again for the password so I gave it to them and I didn't know at the time but when I came back home they showed me this document that the police had come to take this computer they checked it and then they returned it so the British police were acting directly on torture evidence that they had taken from me in Bagram. Were you ever subjected to torture either in Bagram or in Guantanamur? Yes. I would call the entire process torturous. I've described the initiation process of being taken into custody and I would call that torture without any doubt but for me probably the worst torture was in May 2002 when agents of the CIA one CIA agent and two FBI agents interrogated me and threatened to send me to Egypt or to Syria if I didn't cooperate and they told me that they had already done this with other prisoners and I have checked that they actually did do this in a particular period they had my hands they had the soldiers tie my hands behind my back to my legs so I was, as they call it, hog-tied and they then bought photographs of my wife and children that they'd seized from my house and they waved them in front of me while in the next cell there is the screaming of a woman and I don't know whether that's... I don't know what my wife would sound like from a scream like that but they're asking me about where do you think your wife is and the sound of the woman screaming next door where do you think your children are so this was a coupling of physical and psychological torture which they wanted to use in order to get me to sign a confession to say I am a member of Al Qaeda which I was not and never have been Did you ever alert British agents of this torture or Andrew who came to visit you on a number of occasions? Yes I did. I told him in detail. I told him exactly what had happened What was his response? He said that the only thing you can do is co-operate with the Americans We're not in control here. We're not in charge here. This is an American operation And again, no mention of your rights as a British citizen to protection under the Equality Act? No, the response of MI5 in general was where to sell to any welfare concerns was we're not social workers and we're not lawyers I see. Thank you. No further questions Thank you Mr Beg. Are you happy to answer some questions from the panel? Yes I would like to open it up to the panel. Do you have any questions? Thank you very much Mr Beg. You're free to go. The next eye witness for the prosecution is Noor His testimony was taken in 2020 and has been transcribed to be played by Hasib Ola Mohamed, an actor The transcript contains details of lived experiences of torture that some audience members may find distressing If you do need to leave, you will be readmitted Thanks I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and swear that the evidence I shall give as Noor shall be truthful to Noor's given testimony and shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth I am appearing before you in Noor's deed to protect his identity Thank you Will you please state your name to the court? Noor Thank you Noor, how long have you lived in the UK? I have been in the UK since December 2018 And where did you reside before arriving in the UK? In Kundus in Afghanistan Is that where you were born? I was born in Pansheir in Afghanistan I've never been there, but I grew up in Kundus And how old are you now? I think I'm 29 You think? I don't know for sure And why did you leave Afghanistan? I had a situation, I had to leave Afghanistan My wife is still there Can you tell the court about this situation? My dad was working with the Taliban That's why we moved to Kundus Because he was from there And the Taliban were defeated everywhere else I was working as a farmer I wasn't involved with the Taliban My father would always tell on the village And said he can help me get easy work by helping the Taliban But I didn't Because I don't agree with them I don't agree with the fact that they killed innocent civilians I had an argument with my father once Fereza stood up for me She asked my father to let me do what I want To study, or get a job Could you tell us who Fereza is? My wife She's still in Afghanistan Thank you, go on Afterwards my mum had a word with Fereza And told her I wasn't their real child So the man you thought was your father and his wife adopted you? Yes Fereza told me immediately But I didn't believe her But after I found out My father started treating me differently How did he treat you differently? He didn't treat me as his own son anymore Is that what led you to leave Afghanistan? In 2015, Americans and British Helped the government forces take back Kundus from the Taliban Because my adopted father was working with the Taliban They arrested him Three days later they came and arrested me too Just for being my adopted father's son Who arrested you? I don't know Were they Afghan? Yes And what happened? I waited 40 days for my court hearing They put me in a very small cell Were you in solitary confinement? What? Were you alone in the small cell? Yes I was there for 40 days I only came out when they beat me Do you know who beat you? I don't know I didn't see them You didn't see who beat you? Their faces were covered How were their faces covered? With masks Do you know what kind of masks? Black masks with holes in them And hands covered They wore gloves Yes I never saw their faces or their hands And you said they would beat you? Yes, with feet, fists, rifles, anything They electrocuted me They held my throat so I couldn't breathe Did they strangle you? Yes Then they would ask, who do you work for? I said, I'm just a farmer, I'm poor You work with a Taliban, give us names I told them, ask my adopted father When you told them you were a father Why didn't they let you go? Because they didn't believe me They left me in a dark room No light, no sleep The hardest thing was not knowing whether it was day or night They wouldn't let me sleep They would play noises on the speakers So now the other inmates could sleep What sounds did they play? Crying, screaming, scary noises Music? No But screams like someone was getting murdered I don't know why I was there Did they continue to torture you? Yes They would come into myself, tie me to a chair Put a towel over my head, pour water on me They would electrocute the water at my feet My body was twisting from so much tension Every day I would pass out and wake up alone in myself And the same thing would happen the next day Again and again Every day I was there, I was tortured How would you say your psychological state was? Bad, I wanted to kill myself I didn't know where I belonged I had no name I had no household to belong to I thought I'm 25 I don't know who I am, who my family is That's the hardest part And to this day I don't know who my mum is Take your time I just want to be able to picture her face I don't know what she looks like It's hard not knowing my mum Not being able to remember After the 40 days you were detained for What happened next? Every day for 40 days They beat me, electrocuted me Every day for 40 days they beat me They electrocuted me until I went in front of a judge And then the judge gave me 10 years in prison When I was in prison I met my adopted father there I asked him to tell me about my real family And then he told me the truth What did he tell you? He told me that my real family My mother, my father, me, three brothers and a sister We were shopping in Kabul market This was during the civil war A rocket hit the market My mum, father, brothers and sister Passed away I was two and a half years old When they died I was injured and taken to the hospital My grandmother came for me He said my father has been Who said this? Sorry, my adopted father said My real father was an army commander So the Majaheddin were after my whole family They wanted to kill all communists My grandmother did not want the Majaheddin to kill any more of her family members So she gave me a way to a stranger Someone I didn't know That stranger, my adopted father looked after me I have a scar here Before I knew the truth They said it's from when I fell as a kid It's from the rocket So your adopted father came to visit you in prison? No, he was in prison My father-in-law came to visit me every week in prison And your wife? No, she never came Why? It would have been too difficult, too painful for the both of us How long were you in prison for? I was in prison and conduced for two years Then they wanted to transfer me to Kabul But my father-in-law, he bribed the prison governor And during the transfer I escaped my father-in-law He was a good man And then what happened? I escaped to Pakistan I found my real auntie there I was there for ten days I was happy Noor means light in Arabic What happened after the ten days? My father-in-law paid the human traffickers to take me to Europe And what was your journey like? I don't remember everything It took ten months, but once I was on a boat for 36 hours Then in Greece they arrested me again They kept us in prison much longer than other nationalities Who do you mean by us? Afgana o Pakistanen In Greece they kept us longer I was shocked I thought I was going to be in prison for years I would dream about my time in prison in Kundus I would dream about not knowing my mother I would dream about being tortured I would wake up in the middle of the night How long were you kept for? They let me go after a month I don't remember exactly But I found the smugglers And they kept leading me on I didn't know where I was I just followed the smugglers Then they put me in the boot of a car Then I got on to the ferry to come to the UK I didn't understand what anyone was saying Do you suffer any long-term effects on your health? I still have dreams about the torture I've been given medicine by the doctors But I still don't feel any better with the medicine Thank you Nothing further Thank you, you're free to go Nothing further Thank you This concludes trial session 5 We meet again at 5pm for trial session 6 Which will focus on the arms trade We will hear testimony from Habib Ahmadie Andrew Feinstein and Lawrence Wilkinson Thank you very much