This is the text of a paper read by Jonathan Bloch at a meeting of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade in London in June 1985.
The purpose of this paper is to examine selected aspects of British involvement in the training of foreign police personnel both here and abroad.
Not much research has been done on this subject. What information we have is extremely scanty and scattered through Hansard and government reports. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has an Overseas Police Adviser, the present incumbent being a Mr Bryan OBE, ex Indian Army and a former Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police. His task is to co-ordinate foreign police training although day-to-day operations are carried out under the auspices of the British Council. Unlike military aid there is no separate vote for police training in the Overseas section of the budget so it is impossible to ascertain how much money is devoted to this activity other than through Parliamentary questions.
There is little money to be made in training other countries’ cops: the motivation for the training programs is political and ideological. This is particularly so in the Third World where the prime role of the police is often repression of opposition groups rather than crime detection. This statement is borne out by a leaked 1971 FCO document which stated:
“Development Aid and Training for Overseas Police Forces may be considered and has been accepted as a contribution to stability in the country benefiting from such aid and training as without an effective law enforcement organisation all other development aid is at risk.”
Currently no formal restrictions exist on the countries from which police officers might come for training. During the last Labour administration the then Minister of Overseas Development, Judith Hart, introduced a system of personal ministerial vetting, refusing to allow officers into the UK for training if their countries had a bad record, or if the individuals concerned were training for paramilitary or security branch work. This system was overturned by the incoming Tory administration.
In April 1984, Douglas Hurd, then a Minister of State at the Home Office, listed the countries whose police personnel had been trained in the UK during the previous four years. They included such ‘democratic’ countries as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iraq, Malawi, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Uganda. In all, police officers from 72 countries have received training in Britain over the past four years. However, a caveat was attached to the list – it might not be complete as details of all those receiving police training are not held centrally.
The annual reports of the Chief Inspector of Constabulary usually contain some information on the numbers and origins of foreign police officers at the Police Staff College, but does not give details of the training provided by the 43 local police forces of England and Wales. For this information we need to look at the annual reports of Chief Constables and they give little away. This is something that Police Authority members could usefully take up. The very least they could insist on is a complete list of foreign police officers training in their area by country of origin and courses attended.
A parallel area of training that we know even less about is the training of foreign Special Branch and intelligence agents. Security training is arranged through the Metropolitan Special Branch and MI5. Courses are also run by the Defence Intelligence Staff at Ashford, Kent. SAVAK agents were trained in England, probably at Ashford. More sensitive training has been farmed out by the Government and during the 1970s a company called Diversified Corporate Services trained intelligence agents from Oman, Nigeria and other countries at MI6’s behest.
It has been the training of Sri Lankan police officers which has caused the most controversy. Dave Nellist, the Labour MP has fired away Parliamentary questions with mixed results. The Government has listed the numbers of Sri Lankans attending courses and which courses. Amongst the Police Authorities providing these were West Yorkshire, Lancashire, West Midlands, Lincolnshire and Merseyside. Further questions attempting to elicit information on security cooperation have been stonewalled. In response to the question whether HMG has provided any facilities to enable Sri Lankan police officers to visit the UK to discuss collaboration in anti-terrorist activities, Ray Whitney, the then Minister of State at the FCO, replied blandly that while Sri Lankan police officers had attended standard training courses in Britain on the same basis as police officers from other Commonwealth and friendly countries, it was not government policy to comment on contact with other governments on security matters.
British police training takes place not only in the UK but also abroad, mainly in South East Asia and the Caribbean. After the American invasion of Grenada the British government gave the Grenadian authorities £500,000 to redevelop the police force. Two British officers have been stationed in Grenada undertaking this task. In Oman both the internal and external intelligence services are headed by former British operatives, while in the late 1970s it was disclosed that a special squad of 30 British officers had been working in secret in Turkey advising the Government there on anti-terrorist measures.
The British Government, however, does not always do things so directly. Several ostensibly commercial firms exist training police forces and paramilitary forces. In reality these firms enjoy close ties with the British Government. These firms are also usually involved in more traditional mercenary activities. A few years ago the SAS distributed a memo to its members informing them that “service in the regiment was incompatible with work undertaken” for eight named security firms. At the time the list was distributed, the firm at the top of the list, KMS, was supplying bodyguards to the Foreign Office. Several of these bodyguards were members of the SAS reserve and as far as I am aware no action was taken against them. The list was thus a convenient blind because it could be waved in front of journalists as showing “official displeasure” but at the same time not preventing any of these firms from operating. KMS has been more recently in the news for its training of the Special Task Force of police commandos in Sri Lanka. There have been several allegations that this British-trained commando grouping had engaged in systematic torture and harassment of suspects belonging to the Tamil minority. This practice is quite widespread as the following three examples illustrate.
In 1982 a company called Falconstar, run by former SAS/Guards officers was hired to train an offshoot of the Ugandan police force. Known as the Special Forces, this unit was trained for riot control and internal security functions. As in Sri Lanka there have been allegations of torture and killing. According to newspaper reports at the time, this contract had “the discreet approval of the Foreign Office.”
Shortly before the Libyan Embassy shooting a British corporation, AMAC, otherwise known for trying to supply riot control vehicles to Chile, was talking to the Libyan Government about training 17 of Gadhafi’s personal bodyguards. Unofficial approval was given for the £2.5 million contract by British intelligence who hoped to pick up valuable information from the trainees.
Lastly, a company called Argen Information Services, run by a former Rhodesian Special Branch officer, was hired in the early 1980s to train a Basque security force. Five ex Special Boat Squadron men trained this paramilitary police unit at a training camp in Northern Spain. This was at a time of heightened British and Spanish security collaboration because of IRA/ETA links.
What can we conclude from the above examples of British Government involvement in the training of foreign police people? Firstly, most of this training is carried out in secret – Governments cannot afford the embarrassment of having to admit that they are training torturers. Could anybody envisage a British Government issuing a statement along the lines of “HMG have decided in response to requests from the Sri Lankan Government for security assistance to send a team of MI5 interrogators to train Sri Lankan security forces in modern methods of extracting confessions.”? Secondly, given this secrecy, Police Authority members and MPs should use what limited avenues exist to ascertain the maximum amount of information. And finally, solidarity and human rights groups should press for the introduction of tighter controls on the training of foreign police officers. The reintroduction of personal Ministerial vetting would be a step in the right direction, but future control would have to go further than that. In no way should involvement in places like Uganda, Libya and Sri Lanka be tolerated. If Britain is to have an honourable record in observing human rights this must exclude the provision of aid and training to the paramilitary and police forces of states which consistently violate human rights.
Jonathan Bloch