August 16, 2006 / by emptywheel

 

How Was Rashid Rauf Arrested?

Atrios links to Andrew Sullivan being skeptical  who links to Craig Murray being even more skeptical. And Murray raised a point that I had raised earlier. Here’s Murray:

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance forover a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not justMuslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the needfor early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazingplot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, hadnot turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogatorsof the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing likecanaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the mostextraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to givethe interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effortto stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.

Now I’m frankly not as skeptical as Murray; Meteor Blades has made a pretty convincing case, after all, that we need to be skeptical in all directions (and I believe Meteor Blades unquestioningly). But I do want to raise a question I’ve already asked.

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2006/08/16/how-was-rashid-rauf-arrested/