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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 5/21/15

In the Same Week, the U.S. and U.K. Hide Their War Crimes by Invoking "National Security"

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Colonel Ian Henderson was a British official dubbed "the Butcher of Bahrain" because of atrocities he repeatedly committed during the 30 years he served as chief security official of that Middle Eastern country. His reign of terror began in 1966 when Bahrain was a British "protectorate" and continued when the post-"independence" Bahraini King retained him in the same position. In 1996, The Independent described him as "the most feared of all secret policemen" in Bahrain, and cited "consistent and compelling evidence that severe beatings and even sexual assaults have been carried out against prisoners under Henderson's responsibility for well over a decade."

A 2002 Guardian article reported that "during this time his men allegedly detained and tortured thousands of anti-government activists"; his official acts "included the ransacking of villages, sadistic sexual abuse and using power drills to maim prisoners"; and "on many occasions they are said to have detained children without informing their parents, only to return them months later in body bags." Needless to say, Col. Henderson was never punished in any way: "although Scotland Yard launched an inquiry into the allegations in 2000, the investigation was dropped the following year." He was showered with high honors from the U.K.-supported tyrants who ran Bahrain.

Prior to the massacres and rapes over which he presided in Bahrain, Henderson played a leading role in brutally suppressing the Mau Mau insurgency in another British colony, Kenya. In the wake of his Kenya atrocities, he twice won the George Medal, "the 2nd highest, to the George Cross, gallantry medal that a civilian can win." His brutality against Kenyan insurgents fighting for independence is what led the U.K. government to put him in charge of internal security in Bahrain.

For years, human rights groups have fought to obtain old documents, particularly a 37-year-old diplomatic cable, relating to British responsibility for Henderson's brutality in Bahrain. Ordinarily, documents more than 30 years old are disclosable, but the British government has fought every step of the way to conceal this cable.

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[Subscribe to Glenn Greenwald] Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,former constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times bestselling books on politics and law. His most recent book, "No Place to Hide," is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents around the world. His forthcoming book, to be published in April, 2021, is about Brazilian history and current politics, with a focus on his experience in reporting a series of expose's in 2019 and 2020 which exposed high-level corruption by powerful officials in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, which subsequently attempted to prosecute him for that reporting.

Foreign Policy magazine named Greenwald one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. He was the debut winner, along with "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman, of the Park Center I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism in 2008, and also received the 2010 Online Journalism Award for his investigative work breaking the story of the abusive (more...)
 

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