Examination of Witness (Questions 20-39)
14 JULY 2004
SIR JEREMY
GREENSTOCK GCMG
Q20 John Barrett: I do not know who he
was either. The reason I am asking is to find out who knew what
and when. Obviously there have been reports. There have been questions
about what information was available in prisons and in detention
centres. There is a question about who knew what when. I cannot
name the military officer, but it has been referred to on a number
of occasions, again in the Australian Senate Committee meetings.
You are not able to throw any light on that at all?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Not from
your description, no. There was a British military lawyer inside
the Coalition Provisional Authority office of the General Counsel
to Ambassador Bremer. I seem to remember he was a member of the
Royal Air Force legal department and worked on certain issues
but was not brought into every matter inside that office. I had
my own personal, legal adviser that I asked the Foreign Office
for because I wanted advice on the legal side of political matters
that I was dealing with. There was an Australian in that same
General Counsel office called Colonel Kelly, but I do not recognise
the description or the hierarchy that you are describing in respect
of detainees.
Q21 John Barrett: Did any official raise
concerns about detainee conditions and treatment with you or did
you ever hear any unofficial information about mistreatment of
prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Basra or any UK or US run detention facility
in your time?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No, not
before the end of March.
Q22 John Barrett: Did the ICRC ever mention
the prisoner abuse allegations to you formally or informally in
meetings with you or your officials? Were you also aware of any
other ICRC documents that were circulating, apart from the reports
that have been specifically mentioned? Were there any working
documents that were circulated?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No to all
those questions, but let me explain one aspect of the delivery
of the ICRC report (that you concluded from that question) to
Ambassador Bremer. I was not aware that the ICRC were calling
on Ambassador Bremer; they did not make any mention of it to me
or did not ask me to be there, or send me a copy of the report.
The legal adviser who was in my office was invited at the last
minute to attend the meeting. He was not given a copy of the report.
Because he understood from the meeting that some British activity
had been referred to in the report, he got a copy of the report
and made sure that the parts of it that referred to British activity
in the south over the holding of prisoners were sent back to the
Ministry of Defence. He discovered that actually our military
arm in Baghdad were indeed sending those back to the MoD, so he
correctly double-checked that the British responsibility in this
area was being followed up and investigated. The copy of the report
that he had, he let me know that he had it in his office and he
sent me a minute, or showed me a copy of the telegram that he
had sent to London, reporting on the meeting and saying that there
were paragraphs or sections that referred to the British holding
of prisoners and that he had handled it in the way that he had
done, which I judged to have been the correct way. Because he
did not make any mention of the American side of the abuse story
or bring it to my attention I did not follow it up. I wish I had
done. It was not incorrect of him not to have done that, we were
all doing many other things at the time. So the report would have
been available for me to read if somebody had directly drawn my
attention to it, but they did not and I only learnt about it later.
Q23 John Barrett: Finally, would you
accept that the detaining power—that we were in the coalition
at the time—whoever arrested or took control of prisoners,
if these prisoners were then handed over to our coalition partners
would it not be the responsibility of the original detainee of
these prisoners to ensure the well-being of these prisoners?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I would
have to take legal advice on that in the precise circumstances.
A common-sense answer is that those who are holding them within
the coalition take over the responsibility for the correct and
legal handling of those prisoners.
Q24 John Barrett: Finally, would you
say that you felt you were in the loop? There have been media
reports of concerns that you felt out of the loop of major decisions.
Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, do you feel that you
were informed and kept adequately informed of all that you ought
to have been aware of?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: To do my
job in the political arena, yes, there was no doubt that I was
fully in the loop. Those media comments are speculative and even,
on some occasions, mischievous. I had a close relationship with
Ambassador Bremer, I was invited into a whole range of these meetings.
We had very good relationships between my office and all parts
of the CPA and I have got nothing to complain about in that respect.
Q25 Chris McCafferty: Sir Jeremy, you
stated in your Channel 4 interview with Jon Snow that reports
of prisoner abuse were assessed on the basis of how they related
to UK forces. If I could quote from the transcript, I believe
Jon Snow asked how come you had never read the report—and
you have just referred to that with my colleague. To quote: "I
could have seen it, if I'd had nothing else to read that day.
I thought there were bits about the Brits in there which I glanced
at, which were the Ministry of Defence's responsibilities . .
. But nobody told me there was all this stuff about the Americans,
the Americans got on with it within their own system and didn't
want us involved." Well, my question to you would be, do
you not think that detention issues being so important, even those
concerning only the Americans—given that we were involved
with the US as part of the coalition—had any bearing at
all on your role in Iraq?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No. I do
not think you can draw that deduction, that conclusion, from it.
The Americans were running the show. We had British secondees
or British civil servants in a number of different jobs around
the coalition; they were doing their job in their own area. I
was not part of the Coalition Provisional Authority; what Bremer
chose to tell me or not tell me was his own decision. He would
use the British advice and British assistance in those areas where
he thought it would be useful.
Q26 Chris McCafferty: You do make it
sound as though our role in Iraq was rather a subservient one,
which to me, personally, is a matter of regret. Can you tell the
Committee, did you ever make representations yourself to your
US counterparts, the CPA and the combined joint task force about
allegations of mistreatment and, if so, when and to whom?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I have
already explained that I did not know about allegations of mistreatment
before I left Iraq, so I was not in a position to do so. I have
already said that Ann Clwyd and I and other Britons involved on
the ground did press the Americans quite regularly over the processing
of detainees—that is how quickly they were recorded as having
been arrested, declared to their communities, brought to court
or told of their charges and otherwise processed through the law.
In respect of your earlier comment, I think it is worth pointing
out, as I pointed out to government ministers a month after I
arrived in Baghdad, it is quite difficult to expect the British
to have equal responsibility and influence with the Americans
in a situation like that—shall we say 50% of the influence
because we held 50% of the legal responsibility—when we
put in 2-3% of the resources. If you want influence you must correlate
that influence with the resources that you are putting in. That
was not done.
Q27 Chris McCafferty: It has been suggested
that prisoner abuse was not picked up because of problems in the
lines of communication. In fact, some people have alleged that
there was a deliberate block—a firewall, if you like—in
the lines of communication between the ICRC and the occupying
powers, between officials and politicians, between the UK and
the US. What would be your view of that? Is that fair comment?
If it is true, what lessons could be learnt for the future?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I do not
think I know enough about it. It does not ring true to me. I think
there were problems of communication within the US military, between
the US military and the US civilian operation and there was a
disinclination to allow full access to international observers
in all parts of the prison system. That was my impression from
outside in a general sense and remains my impression now, but
I was not aware of all the detail.
Q28 Chris McCafferty: One last question
then: do you think the ICRC could have done more to get the message
across about prisoner abuse and should the procedures be reviewed?
Or do you feel that they are satisfactory as they are?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I wish
the ICRC had come to me directly. There was clearly not much thought
given, as they handed over the report to the Americans, to how
to make sure that that report was going to be taken seriously,
because I was in a position to do something that they did not
enable me in the way that they acted. We also have to remember
that the ICRC has to be very careful about politicisation if it
is to operate globally, and it is very careful about that and
I think that this was a constraint on their activity and a reason
for their relative secrecy about their handling of their own report,
but you would have to talk to them further about it.
Q29 Mr Robathan: Sir Jeremy, I think
you would agree that the allegations of prisoner abuse and the
photographs that appeared in the newspaper have done immense damage
to the cause (which I have to say I supported, of war in Iraq),
both in this country, in America but, particularly, of course,
in the Arab world and Iraq itself. This is something that people
need to know about. A report arrived in your office, and I would
not have expected you to have read everything that came into your
office, of course—I think of the piles and piles and reams
of paperwork coming through. I have got a report, and can I quote
one line? It has talked already about people dying through torture
and ill-treatment—"being paraded naked, acts of humiliation,
standing naked against a wall, women's underwear over the head,
being laughed at by guards, including female guards." I was
once a staff officer and if I had read that I would have been
amazed, and it would not have been just that I would report it
upwards, I would have talked about it with my colleagues. So there
must have been a large number of people, I am sure, who knew that
this sort of thing was happening. Now, how do you explain the
failure that this never reached your ears or the ears of the Government?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I was as
horrified as you were when I heard the details of what had gone
on. I think the explanation lies, to some extent, in the division
between the American military pillar and the American civilian
pillar. The CPA was not in charge of prisoners. I think that the
system that I witnessed within the CPA and the US military was
quite hierarchical. I am sure that if people had known more widely
about it it would have been very fully discussed. So, clearly,
when the report was received it was kept within a fairly narrow
circle within the CPA. I do not remember it ever being referred
to or mentioned at a morning meeting of general issues. My view
is that you should be asking those in the American system who
know about the detail if you wish to know further about the detail;
it is not, perhaps, for me to comment on it. However, my view,
having heard and seen the evidence of the abuse is that this was
not just abuse of human rights in a particularly despicable way,
this was thoroughly counter-productive for the objectives of the
coalition. I would have been horrified immediately on the spot
and I would have taken it up. It was just a chapter of accidents,
I suppose, that that did not happen.
Q30 Chairman: There is rather an important
point of international law here, is there not? You say, "Take
it up with the Americans"; you did not know about it and
there was only the Americans dealing with it. You, quite fairly,
early on in your evidence said—and we will have to read
back through the transcript to get the exact words—words
to the effect that we might not have gone into this endeavour
in this way again. The fact of the matter is that we were part
of the occupying powers under the Geneva Conventions. The fact
that we were simply occupying one part of Iraq and the Americans
were occupying another part of Iraq, we were still, collectively,
the occupying powers, were we not, and equally and jointly responsible
and, indeed, liable for any failure under the Geneva Conventions
of any part of this occupying power?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It just
did not cross our imagination that these things were going on.
Q31 Chairman: I am making a rather important
and pedantic point. The fact of the matter is that we were as
much part of the occupying powers as the United States. It is
no defence to us under the Geneva Conventions to say "Terribly
sorry, guv, these were our allies, we didn't know about it."
That might be some mitigation but it is not a defence to prisoner
abuse, is it?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I think
you have to distinguish the theoretical from the practical. We
were not in charge on the ground, we did not prepare the plans,
and we were not giving the instructions. We were not informed
of everything that was going on.
Q32 Chairman: Is that not putting us
in the worst of all possible worlds? Perhaps that is not a fair
question to you, as a former official, but is one for ministers.
However, here we were as part of an occupying power (that is what
we were, an occupying power under the Geneva Conventions) and,
effectively, what you are saying is that we were part of an occupying
power where we simply did not know what was going on.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It does
not happen like that on the ground. Are you going to address that
question—
Q33 Chairman: With respect, clearly it
did happen like that on the ground because you very fairly told
us that you did not know what was going on on the ground.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It does
not happen like that on the ground that every coalition partner
is told of everything that is going on; there are too many things
going on—rightly or wrongly. There are 39 other coalition
partners who all had a political responsibility, not a legal responsibility
under UN resolutions. The flow of information was not very strong.
Q34 Chairman: In Freetown there is a
special court being conducted under the auspices of the UN on
war crimes. One of those on trial was effectively a former government
minister—they are not all rebels. There came a point when
his conduct was deemed to go over the norms of what was acceptable
and to constitute a war crime. There must have come a point, or
there may come a point, where the treatment of prisoners, prisoner
abuse, ceases to be that which is acceptable and becomes a war
crime. It is not a defence to us, as part of the coalition, in
those circumstances, that we did not know what was going on. Is
it?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It may
be. You would have to take legal advice on that as to where the
responsibility lies in a particular operation, the responsibility
of which has been taken on by a particular part of the coalition
and where direct orders may or may not have been given within
that area. You cannot say that because you are a member of a group
you take legal responsibility for everything that any individual
member of that group does. It is a question of law in the particular
circumstances as to whether or not that is the case. I am not
competent to answer that for you.
Chairman: Maybe one of the things that
this Committee may need to look at is what are the responsibilities
of occupiers under the Geneva Conventions because it does seem
to have become an increasingly grey area.
Q35 Hugh Bayley: Just an observation.
I am not a lawyer, far less an international lawyer, and I have
not looked at the responsibilities, but if you look, as an analogy,
at the post-Second World War occupations there were undoubtedly
some dreadful things done by the Russians. I have to ask the question
of our witness: were we as a joint occupying power in Germany
at the end of the Second World War responsible for the dreadful
things done to people who were repatriated to Russia?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I am afraid,
Mr Bayley, I take that as a rhetorical question.
Q36 Tony Worthington: I hope you can
give us some reassurance. We keep reading about things like why
Guantanamo Bay should not have the application of the Geneva Conventions,
or redefinitions of torture. Can you give us a reassurance that
as far as any British personnel were concerned there were no attempts
whatsoever to do anything other than subscribe to the Convention
on torture or follow the Geneva Conventions; that none of our
people were party to anything that was weakening the rights of
prisoners?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I cannot
possibly give you that assurance, from my personal viewpoint,
because I do not know enough about what was happening in the British
military in the south. You would need to talk to the Ministry
of Defence about that because nearly all the things you have been
talking about this afternoon have been in the military area. Within
my team in Baghdad I never saw any evidence of anything but a
very courageous, proper and principled approach.
Q37 Mr Robathan: Sir Jeremy, I have great
sympathy with your position because you cannot, of course, know
everything that happens in your headquarters, but when you say
that we the British representatives in Iraq did not know what
was happening at Abu Ghraib, I put it to you that this report
was sent in February 2004 to your headquarters.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Sent by
whom?
Q38 Mr Robathan: The ICRC report.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It was
not sent to us. I have just told you that earlier this afternoon,
sir.
Q39 Mr Robathan: But you said that somebody
raised the issues of British treatment of prisoners as well.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, he
found a copy of the report, having attended the meeting, as an
afterthought, and followed up responsibly those areas that might
be directly the British responsibility.
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