Abu Ghraib: Blair Lied To Parliament

Peter Oborne writes:

As it's confirmed Blair lied to MPs over Ecclestone, I can reveal he lied to them again - and here's my proof

But for the collapse of the financial markets, last week's devastating revelation that Tony Blair lied to Parliament at the height of the Ecclestone affair would have had a far more deadly impact.

While prime minister, Mr Blair shamefully misled MPs by claiming the decision to exempt Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One motor sport from the Government ban on tobacco advertising was made through normal Whitehall processes - when the truth was that the decision was made by Blair personally within hours of a meeting with the millionaire tycoon in Downing Street.

Now I can provide compelling evidence that the former prime minister lied to Parliament over an infinitely more serious matter - the extent of British government knowledge of what was happening in the Iraqi prison, Abu Ghraib.

Bliar? Tony Blair told the House of Commons that the government were not aware of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib - but it has emerged there was a wide pool of ministerial knowledge of it weeks before the scandal became public.

This disturbing story dates back to May 2004, when leaked documents and shocking photographs exposed the maltreatment of Iraqi prisoners by their U.S. captors.

After the international outcry, the reputation of American troops and, more worryingly that of the whole coalition operation in Iraq, was irreparably tainted.

Yet when the news of the atrocities came to light in the Press, Tony Blair played dumb and merely expressed surprise. He told MPs that neither he nor any member of his government had known about the barbaric scenes.

'It is not correct that ministers or I were aware of those allegations in respect of American troops,' the prime minister told the then Tory leader Michael Howard.

However, I can prove that despite Tony Blair's glib assurances, his ministers knew what was going on inside Abu Ghraib.

Last week, Bill Rammell, who, at the time, was a junior Foreign Office minister and has recently been promoted to minister of state, issued a statement confirming that he had known the truth.

He had been briefed during a meeting in Geneva by the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which had been investigating the abuses.

This meeting took place seven weeks before the atrocities became public knowledge and Abu Ghraib became a byword for American brutality.

To his credit, Rammell says he was so shocked by the revelations that he immediately convened an emergency meeting of Foreign Office officials.

In his statement, he said: 'I was assured that defence ministers were already aware of the allegations and that actions were being taken by the Ministry of Defence to deal with the allegations, which was the case.'

The minister's comments this week were released in response to my column last Saturday, in which I accused him of doing nothing.

I now accept, in view of his fresh explanation, that Rammell behaved in a better light than I had suggested. But the irony is that, in the process of saving his own skin, he has impugned the honesty of his old boss, Tony Blair. For his version of events is impossible to square with the one that the former PM gave the Commons four years ago.

Thanks to Rammell, we now know that at the very moment when Tony Blair was claiming ignorance of Abu Ghraib, there was a wide pool of ministerial knowledge, including ministers at the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office. Such a deception is also, of course, a clear breach of the rules of the House of Commons.

According to the ministerial code, drawn up by Tony Blair himself in July 2001: 'It is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.'

Even if Tony Blair had innocently misled the House in his original statement of May 12, he never made any attempt to put the facts right.

As a result, the former PM's conduct appears utterly cynical and a blatant contradiction of all rules of decency and morality.

The Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, has already - very commendably - launched a Commons inquiry into revelations that Blair misled Parliament during the Ecclestone affair.

He must widen this investigation to embrace Blair's statement to the Commons about Abu Ghraib.

Furthermore, Bill Rammell's statement raises other serious questions. For example, who were those defence ministers who knew about the U.S. atrocities, and did they alert anyone else?

Yesterday, I sought to contact all four of the ministers who served at the Ministry of Defence at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal: Geoff Hoon, Adam Ingram, Lord Bach and Ivor Caplin. I asked what details they had known and what action they took. I also approached the Ministry of Defence itself.

By the time the Daily Mail went to press last night, none of these ministers had offered a reply that went beyond a refusal to comment.

Bill Rammell, a former junior minister in the Foreign Office, was briefed about the abuse seven weeks before it became public.

So what is the truth about Abu Ghraib? Why did Tony Blair mislead the House of Commons? Of course, it is impossible to give a clear answer. But I would guess all the key players in the British government knew that something had gone horribly wrong at Abu Ghraib by February 2004.

Ministers and officials would also have known that the correct course of action would have been to protest to our American allies in the strongest terms about their inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners.

But there was the problem that it was the Blair government's policy not to upset President Bush or the U.S. So the unspoken - and dishonourable - decision was made to pretend that Britain did not know what was going on.

This egregious course of events means that, from a very early stage, the British government was complicit with the Americans in the scandal of Abu Ghraib.

Moreover, this disreputable episode is not only a reminder of the shameful British dependence on the U.S., it also provides fresh evidence of how ready Tony Blair was to lie, and thus to degrade the standards of public life.

This week's embarrassing revelations are yet more evidence that the reputation of the Blair premiership is unravelling before our eyes.

In the coming weeks, this column will expose some other examples of how the former prime minister lied to Parliament.

And I for one look forward to them with baited breath.