News I Did Not Entirely Make Up.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, announced a controversial new initiative today in relation to the alleged complicity in torture of British officials and politicians. The scheme, provisionally labelled the Gravity/Amusement Jettisoning Project, will attempt to persuade the judiciary and the general public not to ask further awkward questions.

“In essence, it’s very simple,” a spokesman said, “unless people like Mr Mohamed will now just be satisfied with having crimes under the law committed against them and having the government refuse to acknowledge it, the government will have no choice but to throw all its toys out of the pram. No choice at all! NONE! WAAAAAAAAH!”

Asked to comment on Labour’s increasingly desperate attacks on the judiciary over this matter, the spokesman repeatedly demanded a biscuit and vomited on the correspondent from Channel 4 News.

The case of Binyam Mohamed has been extremely embarrassing for the government, as it has increasingly seemed likely that the evidence the government seeks to suppress may lead directly or indirectly to prosecutions for complicity in torture, or at the very least to serious embarrassment for still-serving members of the government and others now working elsewhere. In an earlier judgment, the judges said that: “the relationship of the UK Government to the US authorities in connection with Binyam Mohamed was far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing”.

“None of that is remotely important,” the spokesman said, “because this government will scream and wee on things until you stop listening to the nasty wiggy men who are bad and naughty and mean.”

Later, ministers staged a brief competition to see who could throw a small pink dinosaur the furthest. The winner was Jack Straw, although informed insiders say that former Prime Minister Tony Blair would have been able to beat Mr Straw’s throw by some considerable margin.

“WaaaaAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAA!” the spokesman concluded, “We’re NOT complicit in torture, wah wah, and even if we did break Article 4 of the Convention Against Torture we won’t play! Stop asky nasty questions! DON’T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT NO MORE!!! WAH WAH WAH.”

The judges in the case were not available for comment, but it is believed they find the whole performance utterly fatuous.

The initiative continues.

More news I made up, but which is alas factually accurate.

London, 16th October.

Jonathan Evans, the head of the UK’s Security Service (MI5) and Foreign Secretary David Miliband (seen here complaining) have come together this evening to announce a bold new initiative in the government’s War On English. The move follows a court judgment against the government in the case of Binyam Mohamed, a known taxi-driver who was arrested in 2002 trying to get the hell out of Pakistan before it was nuked leave Pakistan on a false passport. Mohamed reports that he was simply removed from a bus because he didn’t look Pakistani and rendered to Morocco for torture. The British government does not deny that it supplied questions and information to the US to be used in Mohamed’s interrogation while he was being cut on the genitals with razorblades in a location the CIA refused to disclose to MI5.

However, Mr Evans was at pains to point out this morning that this does not constitute ‘collusion’ in torture, and introduced Ralph Weezil, the leader of the government’s new Lexicographical Taskforce, which will take responsibility for dealing with troublesome words like ‘collude’, ‘torture’, and ‘warcrime’ and also with more involved incidents of verbal disloyalty by the English language such as phrases like ‘members of the government could theoretically be liable to criminal prosecution under the Convention Against Torture’.

The precise details of MI5′s involvement are not available to the general public because the government is weeing itself at the prospect of having them revealed it would jeopardise the UK’s intelligence relationship with the US to allow them to be published, according to Mr Miliband, who was spanked by two senior judges and sent home to explain himself to the British electorate extremely disappointed by the result today and plans to appeal.

Mr Weezil said:

“This sort of statement ought to be ashamed of itself. If the language isn’t going to do what the government wants it to – if it’s going to serve the law rather than the political necessity – then I’m afraid it can look forward to serious consequences. The Americans have already had to take steps with the term ‘suicide’ in relation to prisoners in Guantánamo Bay, for example – they now use the term ‘manipulative self-injurious behaviour’ – and of course we’re all familiar with the definition of torture as resulting in permanent maiming or organ loss. I’ve had meetings with several terms of interest – ‘collude’ and ‘justice’ among them – and I’m hopeful we can work this out without having to remove them from the dictionary.”

Can I have my government back, please? Because someone seems to have swapped them for the cast of Fawlty Towers.

Binyam Mohamed gave an interview to today’s Mail on Sunday in which he describes in greater detail what he’s been through over the past seven years. Among other things, he talks about a message he saw from the British counter-intelligence agency, MI5, to the CIA, giving a list of questions to be asked of him during interrogation while he was in Morocco.

In case you’ve been living in a cave for a few months, Morocco is where they apparently cut him with razorblades – in the places you would least wish to find a razorblade.

In response to which revelation, the authorities here are saying “oooh, no, we had no idea this was happening.”

Okay, so here’s what we absolutely know that they knew:

that this guy was in U.S. custody;

that he was not being held in Bagram, in Guantánamo, or on the U.S. mainland;

that the U.S. refused to divulge where he was;

that he was being interrogated;

that he was suddenly confessing to a lot of things, many of which were actually impossible;

that he had been transported across jurisdictions without his consent and was being denied access to, er, any kind of outside contact at all, in violation of, er, lots of laws. (more)

Not to put too fine a point on it, if our government and our intelligence services did not know what was happening to this guy, it is because they chose, actively and with an eye to this moment, not to know. And that is not better.

When a government – my government – is accused of collusion in torture, I want a better answer than an Andrew Sachs impression.

Also, it’s pretty clear that they did know.

Mohamed’s allegations that MI5 colluded in his torture have been upheld in the High Court where judges said the role of the Security Service went “far beyond that of a bystander” but documents detailing his treatment have been withheld by the Government at the request of the US. (link)

I’ll take my independent inquiry right now, please.