Terrorist Lawfare Works Again

The Telegraph offers this depressing headline: “Guantanamo seven ‘paid off’ to halt legal action against Government.” Al Qaeda’s “lawfare” strategy has paid off handsomely so far, and Western countries, especially the U.K. and the U.S., show no sign of being prepared to respond in any effective way.

A group of former Guantanamo Bay detainees who claim they were tortured with the complicity of the British security services have been paid millions of pounds to drop legal action against the Government.

Al Qaeda directs its terrorists to make claims of “torture” whenever they are caught. Such claims are nearly always false.

Ministers will announce tomorrow that a deal has been reached with the men, at least one of whom is expected to receive more than £1 million of taxpayers’ money.
The former terrorism suspects, some of whom were foreign residents claiming asylum in Britain, were suing the Government for damages over their treatment while in custody. The security services are thought to have pushed for the settlement in order to avoid details of their secret activities being disclosed in court. …
The cost of a long running court case – which could have run into tens of millions of pounds – are also likely to have been a factor. …
Mr Cameron told MPs that the security services risked being “paralysed by paperwork” as they tried to defend themselves in lengthy court cases against allegations of complicity in torture.
MI5 and MI6 have had to draft in dozens of lawyers and take officers off front-line duties as they wade through an estimated 250,000 documents “page by page”, according to one official. They estimated that the court action could last five to 10 years as they worked through the documents and decided what could be disclosed and what could not.

Increasingly, our security depends on lawfare waged between dedicated, mass-murdering terrorists and their well-funded supporters on one side, and government lawyers and bean-counters on the other. The outcome is not hard to foresee.

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