Banks forced to reveal numbers of £1m staff

New laws created in the wake of Sir David Walker's report will compel banks to say how many of their staff earn more than £1m, but 'high end' earners' names will not be revealed

Banks will be forced to reveal how many of their employees earn more than £1m a year under new laws expected to show that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of City bankers are made millionaires each year.

But in introducing legislation to adopt the key recommendations of the City veteran Sir David Walker in his 167-page report published today, the government will allow banks to keep the identity of "high-end earners" secret. Ministers had suggested the top 20 highest-paid employees should be named and shamed.

Walker, who has been reviewing corporate governance at banks since February, will disappoint those who believe the pay levels should be revealed for the current financial year, as he is not expecting the ground-breaking changes to be implemented until 2011.

He insists, though, that he is creating "a more demanding regime than that currently in place in any other major jurisdiction". Asked how many people would be revealed as earning more than £1m, he said: "Hundreds, if you are asking me, certainly, but possibly thousands.

Alistair Darling, the chancellor, welcomed the report, which calls for shareholders to adopt a new code of stewardship. He intends to call major investors to the Treasury to demand compliance.

Tonight he said: "One of the fundamental causes of the financial crisis was bad management of some our major banks. Too many people around board tables did not ask the right questions; some chief executives did not fully understand the risks being taken by their traders; pay and bonuses encouraged reckless risk-taking instead of responsible behaviour.

"Tougher regulation will help to make our system safer. But the culture of the banks themselves must change."

The Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor, Vince Cable, said the report made "a few small steps towards transparency" but nothing like enough. He added: "Transparency should relate to individuals in the way that it already does to company directors. MPs and senior BBC executives have rightly had their pay packages exposed to public scrutiny but bankers also enjoy a taxpayer guarantee. There is no justification for withholding information on individual high-end employees from the public or shareholders."

Walker wants greater emphasis on the role of chairmen and women, whom he believes should devote two-thirds of their time to the banks they oversee. However, he risks being accused of forcing up boardroom pay after conceding that chairmen could demand larger fees for the extra effort involved. Bank chairs should also stand for re-election to the board each year ? more regularly than the three years currently stipulated ? to make them more accountable to shareholders.

The biggest change to the interim report in July is the £1m floor for disclosure of pay, which he admits was set arbitrarily but will include more bankers than his previous level of the average pay in the boardroom, more likely to have been closer to £2m. Employees will be bracketed in bands of £1m to £2.5m, £2.5m to £5m and in bands of £5m thereafter.

He urges voluntary improvements to corporate governance and boardroom behaviour rather than reform through regulation. "Major regulatory issues need to be addressed to assure the soundness of the financial system, but there could be significant downside if the regulatory pendulum swings too far," he says. "It could harm the ability of banks to provide customers with the financial services they need and lead to substantial increases in fees and charges."

Although his report makes 39 recommendations covering areas from bolstering shareholder oversight to the way boards operate and to keeping powerful chief executives in check, the two that will shed more light on excessive City pay are the only ones that will need legislation.

Banks in the FTSE 100 and the biggest building societies would be required to disclose total pay of more than £1m split between salary, a cash bonus, deferred shares, performance-related awards and pension contributions.

To ensure that big-paying US banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are included in the new requirements, he recommends that UK subsidiaries authorised by the FSA comply with any new law. These foreign-owned banks would also have to show pay received outside the UK to avoid any circumvention of the rule.

US rules require the highest-paid earners to be named regardless of whether they sit on the board, but Walker refused to adopt a similar practice for the UK. "No evidence has been produced that this would be likely to yield any enhancement in the governance of risk in major institutions," he said. Such information was known at Lehman Brothers and other US banks that ran into trouble.

His other recommendations can be tackled through the existing City code on corporate governance or a new "stewardship" code for institutional investors, which is likely to be overseen by the Financial Reporting Council. He wants to give the remuneration committees of bank boards responsibility for all staff pay, not just the boardroom and recommends that half of pay or bonuses should be paid in long-term cash schemes, with half vesting after three years and the rest after five years ? locking in employees for far longer than under the FSA's new code on City pay.

Labour plans to dismantle Whitehall

Exclusive: Review would cut senior civil servants and move thousands out of capital

Tens of thousands of civil servants may be moved out of London in a dramatic downscaling of Whitehall under Labour plans to cut public debts and instil a culture of "smarter government''.

Leaked sections of a report to be published in a fortnight reveal that the government wants a review into the possibility of relocating some of the 132,000 civil servants and 90,000 employees of "arm's-length bodies" currently based in London and the south-east.

The review, to be delivered in time for the next budget, would be guided by the principle that only those "required for ministerial support or personal interaction" would stay in the south-east.

The plan would meet the government's twin aims of cutting public spending and boosting localism, enabling civil servants to co-ordinate better with local communities while living and working in less expensive regions.

Other moves contained in the draft seen by the Guardian include:

? Reducing the "cost" of senior civil servants. The Treasury is concerned that the number of senior civil servants has risen from 3,100 in the 90s to 4,300.

? Cutting the number of quangos across Whitehall. The government is keen to reduce the number of skills services such as Lifelong Learning UK by 30 over three years; turn the 15 advisory committees on agriculture into a single board; combine the Sentencing Guidelines Council and Sentencing Advisory Panel into one body; and abolish two further legal service quangos.

? Bringing in new guidelines aimed at making it harder to set up a new quango. Ministers would have to make their case to the House of Commons. There would also be a new rule that would see any new quango disbanded within a year should it prove to have failed to perform its role.

? Merging the "backroom" operations of some government ministries, although the draft report does not suggest candidates for merger.

The report is being masterminded by the chief secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, who has been working on it for seven months.

Labour hopes the package ? to be unveiled two days before the chancellor's pre-budget report on 9 December ? will meet the Tories square on as the two parties battle to bring down public spending while reforming the machinery of government.

Byrne and his team are anxious to present their blueprint for scaling back the cost of public services as of a "kinder hue'' than Tory plans to slash the cost of central government, which Labour believes would see frontline services jeopardised.

At the Conservative party conference David Cameron also pledged to reduce the costs of Whitehall by one third and have a similar "bonfire of the quangos''. The government says there are 790 quangos but researchers claim to have identified more than 1,000, which Cameron says cost the taxpayer between £34bn and £60bn a year.

Any government programme of job relocation or reductions in the numbers of senior civil servants will meet fierce resistance from the unions, who have fought bitter disputes about past relocations of civil service roles.

Afghanistan campaign 'mishandled'

A former head of MI6 launched an attack on the government last night for under-financing and mishandling the military campaign in Afghanistan.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who was chief of the Secret Intelligence Service when British troops were sent into Afghanistan in 2001, said the Treasury had squeezed the defence budget over the following years.

The government had failed to properly explain to the public why Britain was at war, he argued, and had until recently given only "half-hearted" endorsement to its Afghanistan strategy.

A recent about-turn in policy, in which Gordon Brown had been much more emphatic about Britain's role in the war, was borne out of "political damage limitation", said Dearlove.

His comments came during a lecture at Gresham College in London in which he told an audience of academics that "the question of why we are at war with the Taliban is one of national security".

He said: "Our armed forces have been under-resourced. This is a basic fact from which there really is no escape. The Treasury has been squeezing the defence budget for approximately eight years.

"Until recently our political leadership has failed to explain satisfactorily why we are at war. Their advocacy of the policy has, I think, been half-hearted. Maybe now we see a change in their advocacy with a more confident position being taken, but the reason for change looks rather more like political damage limitation than vigorous belief in the policy."

Dearlove, who was head of MI6 from 1999 to2004, warned the government that it must deliver a strong message to its enemies to avoid the loss of more British troops' lives. "The Taliban, if they think we are wavering, will up the pressure and be encouraged to try to kill more of our soldiers," he said.

He did, however, praise the British's government's updated counterterrorism strategy, which was published, unclassified, in March this year.

He also questioned the extent to which Barack Obama had really changed US foreign policy, which, he said, remained "very aggressive and hardline".

He said: "I'm of the opinion ? I can't say this definitely ? there have been more targeted killings approved by Obama than by his predecessor from drones over northern Pakistan and certainly the full presidential executive powers are still used without restraint in carrying out interception."

But Dearlove suggested that al-Qaida's power may be on the wane. He said: "Though al-Qaida may still have some nasty surprises in store, it could be that the movement is passed its high point in its ability to mount mass casual attacks in the west. Now, that is a sort of risky observation for me to make, but I don't think any of us expected them to have, as it were, not been successful over such a long period of time in doing what was their primary aim since 9/11."

Dearlove, who became the second MI6 chief to be named publicly, after Stella Rimmington, came under fire after the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

MI6 was accused by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee of failing to respond with sufficient urgency to warnings that al-Qaida was planning a major terrorist attack.

G20 report lays down law to police

A blueprint for wholesale reform of British policing to create a service "anchored in public consent" was unveiled today by the inquiry prompted by Scotland Yard's controversial handling of the G20 protests in London.

Denis O'Connor, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, used his report to demand wide-ranging reforms and a return to an ideal of policing based on "approachability, impartiality, accountability and ? minimum force".

The findings received almost unanimous support across the political spectrum. The prime minister, Gordon Brown, said the government would "take the action" needed to reassure the public that policing is fair.

The report ? instigated after the Guardian revealed that a newspaper seller, Ian Tomlinson, had died after an attack by a police officer ? was broader and more critical than many had expected.

O'Connor warned of a "hardening" of policing style in recent years and the erosion of the British approach to policing developed by the 19th-century prime minister Sir Robert Peel and based on consent.

He criticised the way officers were trained for the use of force, saying they wrongly believing "proportionality" means "reciprocity". Through the ranks, there was a failure to understand the law on policing protests. O'Connor said the lack of national standards meant that a high-profile area of policing had been treated as a "cinderella" subject with inconsistencies from force to force.

He called for ministers to endorse and vocally support a consent-based approach ahead of the Olympics in 2012, when British policing will be on show to the world.

"It is time now for us to put the British model back on the table. The Home Office should be concerned by this drift, because members of the public are and I am trying to react to that," he said.

"Every police initiative, every decision about equipment should be examined to see if it complies with the principle of policing by consent ? we are in danger of being left with a shadow of what we had, asking ourselves: where did it go?"

Among the proposals to restore faith in policing, O'Connor called for:

? Immediate action from the home secretary, Alan Johnson, to issue guidance to all 44 police forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that ensures they facilitate peaceful protest in a consistent way.

? The creation of a set of fundamental national principles on the use of force to cover all police business, emphasising "minimum use of force" at all times.

? Radical change in public order training, with an emphasis on teaching the 22,500 officers who receive basic protest training how to manage peaceful activists.

? A shakeup of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) to make it transparent and accountable. He highlighted Acpo's three "domestic extremism" units, which collate information on thousands of activists and which, the Guardian revealed last month, were receiving £9m from the government.

He also said ministers should respond to privacy and human rights concerns surrounding Forward Intelligence Teams, the surveillance units that film, photograph and monitor activists at protests using spotter cards, and then store details on databases.

The prime minister acknowledged public anger over police behaviour. Speaking for the first time about Tomlinson's death, Brown said: "I know that the events at the G20 caused a great deal of anger and sadness for people when we had the casualty. It is important that policing is of the best and where mistakes are made or there are question marks they have to be answered."

Several police associations gave their support to O'Connor's findings, including Acpo, which said the report would "shape the future of public order policing". Climate Camp, the UK's largest environmental protest group, said the proposals were "a huge leap forward".

Iraq intelligence 'patchy', inquiry told

Days before the invasion of Iraq, the British government received intelligence that Saddam Hussein might be unable to use his chemical weapons, the official inquiry into the war was told today. And despite claims at the time by Tony Blair, intelligence about what Saddam was up to in the runup to the war was "patchy".

Questioned by the panel of the Iraq inquiry, Foreign Office officials said they believed Saddam's nuclear programme had been dismantled and they had no evidence of his trying to supply chemical or biological weapons to terrorists.

Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office's director of international security at the time, yesterday revealed that ministers were repeatedly warned over the limits of intelligence on Iraq. "We did, I think on 10 March [2003], get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly," he told day two of the inquiry in London. "There was a suggestion that Iraq might lack warheads capable of effective dispersal of agents."

The department's officials told how ministers heard that knowledge of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programmes was "sporadic" in the years up to the invasion of 19-20 March 2003. In September 2002 the intelligence "remained limited", they heard. Yet Blair that month described Saddam's banned weapons programme as "active, detailed and growing" and said the picture emerging was "detailed and authoritative".

In the government's dossier on Iraqi weapons, published that month, Blair wrote that he believed intelligence assessments had established "beyond doubt" that Saddam was continuing to produce chemical and biological weapons ? an assertion repeated up to the invasion.

However, Ehrman said that the intelligence warnings had not made any difference to the case for war. "I don't think it invalidated the point about the programmes he had. It was more about use," he said.

Tim Dowse, then head of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office, told the inquiry that Iraq was not seen as the main concern in 2001. "In fact, after 9/11, we concluded that Iraq actually stepped further back. They did not want to be associated with al-Qaida. They weren't natural allies," he said.

Asked about suggestions that the Blair government's 45-minute deployment claim had referred to weapons of mass destruction usable by Iraq to strike another nation, Dowse said: "I don't think we ever said that it was for use in a ballistic missile in that way." The inquiry panel member Sir Lawrence Freedman pointed out: "But you didn't say it wasn't."

Neither MI6 nor the joint intelligence committee explained that the 45-minute claim was speculative and referred only to short-range weapons. Ministe rs later claimed they had never asked what kind of weaponry the claim was about.

Over to the dark side of the web

In the 'deep web', Freenet software allows users complete anonymity as they share viruses, criminal contacts and child pornography

Fourteen years ago, a pasty Irish teenager with a flair for inventions arrived at Edinburgh University to study artificial intelligence and computer science. For his thesis project, Ian Clarke created "a Distributed, Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System", or, as a less precise person might put it, a revolutionary new way for people to use the internet without detection. By downloading Clarke's software, which he intended to distribute for free, anyone could chat online, or read or set up a website, or share files, with almost complete anonymity.

"It seemed so obvious that that was what the net was supposed to be about ? freedom to communicate," Clarke says now. "But [back then] in the late 90s that simply wasn't the case. The internet could be monitored more quickly, more comprehensively, more cheaply than more old-fashioned communications systems like the mail." His pioneering software was intended to change that.

His tutors were not bowled over. "I would say the response was a bit lukewarm. They gave me a B. They thought the project was a bit wacky ? they said, 'You didn't cite enough prior work.'"

Undaunted, in 2000 Clarke publicly released his software, now more appealingly called Freenet. Nine years on, he has lost count of how many people are using it: "At least 2m copies have been downloaded from the website, primarily in Europe and the US. The website is blocked in [authoritarian] countries like China so there, people tend to get Freenet from friends." Last year Clarke produced an improved version: it hides not only the identities of Freenet users but also, in any online environment, the fact that someone is using Freenet at all.

Installing the software takes barely a couple of minutes and requires minimal computer skills. You find the Freenet website, read a few terse instructions, and answer a few questions ("How much security do you need?" ? "NORMAL: I live in a relatively free country" or "MAXIMUM: I intend to access information that could get me arrested, imprisoned, or worse"). Then you enter a previously hidden online world. In utilitarian type and bald capsule descriptions, an official Freenet index lists the hundreds of "freesites" available: "Iran News", "Horny Kate", "The Terrorist's Handbook: A practical guide to explosives and other things of interests to terrorists", "How To Spot A Pedophile [sic]", "Freenet Warez Portal: The source for pirate copies of books, games, movies, music, software, TV series and more", "Arson Around With Auntie: A how-to guide on arson attacks for animal rights activists". There is material written in Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and Italian. There is English-language material from America and Thailand, from Argentina and Japan. There are disconcerting blogs ("Welcome to my first Freenet site. I'm not here because of kiddie porn ? [but] I might post some images of naked women") and legally dubious political revelations. There is all the teeming life of the everyday internet, but rendered a little stranger and more intense. One of the Freenet bloggers sums up the difference: "If you're reading this now, then you're on the darkweb."

The modern internet is often thought of as a miracle of openness ? its global reach, its outflanking of censors, its seemingly all-seeing search engines. "Many many users think that when they search on Google they're getting all the web pages," says Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, one of a new generation of post-Google search engine companies. But Rajaraman knows different. "I think it's a very small fraction of the deep web which search engines are bringing to the surface. I don't know, to be honest, what fraction. No one has a really good estimate of how big the deep web is. Five hundred times as big as the surface web is the only estimate I know."

Unfathomable and mysterious

"The darkweb"; "the deep web"; beneath "the surface web" ? the metaphors alone make the internet feel suddenly more unfathomable and mysterious. Other terms circulate among those in the know: "darknet", "invisible web", "dark address space", "murky address space", "dirty address space". Not all these phrases mean the same thing. While a "darknet" is an online network such as Freenet that is concealed from non-users, with all the potential for transgressive behaviour that implies, much of "the deep web", spooky as it sounds, consists of unremarkable consumer and research data that is beyond the reach of search engines. "Dark address space" often refers to internet addresses that, for purely technical reasons, have simply stopped working.

And yet, in a sense, they are all part of the same picture: beyond the confines of most people's online lives, there is a vast other internet out there, used by millions but largely ignored by the media and properly understood by only a few computer scientists. How was it created? What exactly happens in it? And does it represent the future of life online or the past?

Michael K Bergman, an American academic and entrepreneur, is one of the foremost authorities on this other internet. In the late 90s he undertook research to try to gauge its scale. "I remember saying to my staff, 'It's probably two or three times bigger than the regular web,"' he remembers. "But the vastness of the deep web . . . completely took my breath away. We kept turning over rocks and discovering things."

In 2001 he published a paper on the deep web that is still regularly cited today. "The deep web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined world wide web," he wrote. "The deep web is the fastest growing category of new information on the internet ? The value of deep web content is immeasurable ? internet searches are searching only 0.03% ? of the [total web] pages available."

In the eight years since, use of the internet has been utterly transformed in many ways, but improvements in search technology by Google, Kosmix and others have only begun to plumb the deep web. "A hidden web [search] engine that's going to have everything ? that's not quite practical," says Professor Juliana Freire of the University of Utah, who is leading a deep web search project called Deep Peep. "It's not actually feasible to index the whole deep web. There's just too much data."

But sheer scale is not the only problem. "When we've crawled [searched] several sites, we've gotten blocked," says Freire. "You can actually come up with ways that make it impossible for anyone [searching] to grab all your data." Sometimes the motivation is commercial ? "people have spent a lot of time and money building, say, a database of used cars for sale, and don't want you to be able to copy their site"; and sometimes privacy is sought for other reasons. "There's a well-known crime syndicate called the Russian Business Network (RBN)," says Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, a leading online security firm, "and they're always jumping around the internet, grabbing bits of [disused] address space, sending out millions of spam emails from there, and then quickly disconnecting."

The RBN also rents temporary websites to other criminals for online identity theft, child pornography and releasing computer viruses. The internet has been infamous for such activities for decades; what has been less understood until recently was how the increasingly complex geography of the internet has aided them. "In 2000 dark and murky address space was a bit of a novelty," says Labovitz. "This is now an entrenched part of the daily life of the internet." Defunct online companies; technical errors and failures; disputes between internet service providers; abandoned addresses once used by the US military in the earliest days of the internet ? all these have left the online landscape scattered with derelict or forgotten properties, perfect for illicit exploitation, sometimes for only a few seconds before they are returned to disuse. How easy is it to take over a dark address? "I don't think my mother could do it," says Labovitz. "But it just takes a PC and a connection. The internet has been largely built on trust."

Open or closed?

In fact, the internet has always been driven as much by a desire for secrecy as a desire for transparency. The network was the joint creation of the US defence department and the American counterculture ? the WELL, one of the first and most influential online communities, was a spinoff from hippy bible the Whole Earth Catalog ? and both groups had reasons to build hidden or semi-hidden online environments as well as open ones. "Strong encryption [code-writing] developed in parallel with the internet," says Danny O'Brien, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a long-established pressure group for online privacy.

There are still secretive parts of the internet where this unlikely alliance between hairy libertarians and the cloak-and-dagger military endures. The Onion Router, or Tor, is an American volunteer-run project that offers free software to those seeking anonymous online communication, like a more respectable version of Freenet. Tor's users, according to its website, include US secret service "field agents" and "law enforcement officers . . . Tor allows officials to surf questionable websites and services without leaving tell-tale tracks," but also "activists and whistleblowers", for example "environmental groups [who] are increasingly falling under surveillance in the US under laws meant to protect against terrorism". Tor, in short, is used both by the American state and by some of its fiercest opponents. On the hidden internet, political life can be as labyrinthine as in a novel by Thomas Pynchon.

The hollow legs of Sealand

The often furtive, anarchic quality of life online struck some observers decades ago. In 1975, only half a dozen years after the internet was created, the science-fiction author John Brunner wrote of "so many worms and counter-worms loose in the data-net" in his influential novel The Shockwave Rider. By the 80s "data havens", at first physical then online locations where sensitive computerised information could be concealed, were established in discreet jurisdictions such as Caribbean tax havens. In 2000 an American internet startup called HavenCo set up a much more provocative data haven, in a former second world war sea fort just outside British territorial waters off the Suffolk coast, which since the 60s had housed an eccentric independent "principality" called Sealand. HavenCo announced that it would store any data unless it concerned terrorism or child pornography, on servers built into the hollow legs of Sealand as they extended beneath the waves. A better metaphor for the hidden depths of the internet was hard to imagine.

In 2007 the highly successful Swedish filesharing website The Pirate Bay ? the downloading of music and films for free being another booming darknet enterprise ? announced its intention to buy Sealand. The plan has come to nothing so far, and last year it was reported that HavenCo had ceased operation, but in truth the need for physical data havens is probably diminishing. Services such as Tor and Freenet perform the same function electronically; and in a sense, even the "open" internet, as online privacy-seekers sometimes slightly contemptuously refer to it, has increasingly become a place for concealment: people posting and blogging under pseudonyms, people walling off their online lives from prying eyes on social networking websites.

"The more people do everything online, the more there's going to be bits of your life that you don't want to be part of your public online persona," says O'Brien. A spokesman for the Police Central e-crime Unit [PCeU] at the Metropolitan Police points out that many internet secrets hide in plain sight: "A lot of internet criminal activity is on online forums that are not hidden, you just have to know where to find them. Like paedophile websites: people who use them might go to an innocent-looking website with a picture of flowers, click on the 18th flower, arrive on another innocent-looking website, click something there, and so on." The paedophile ring convicted this autumn and currently awaiting sentence for offences involving Little Ted's nursery in Plymouth met on Facebook. Such secret criminal networks are not purely a product of the digital age: codes and slang and pathways known only to initiates were granting access to illicit worlds long before the internet.

To libertarians such as O'Brien and Clarke the hidden internet, however you define it, is constantly under threat from restrictive governments and corporations. Its freedoms, they say, must be defended absolutely. "Child pornography does exist on Freenet," says Clarke. "But it exists all over the web, in the post . . . At Freenet we could establish a virus to destroy any child pornography on Freenet ? we could implement that technically. But then whoever has the key [to that filtering software] becomes a target. Suddenly we'd start getting served copyright notices; anything suspect on Freenet, we'd get pressure to shut it down. To modify Freenet would be the end of Freenet."

Always recorded

According to the police, for criminal users of services such as Freenet, the end is coming anyway. The PCeU spokesman says, "The anonymity things, there are ways to get round them, and we do get round them. When you use the internet, something's always recorded somewhere. It's a question of identifying who is holding that information." Don't the police find their investigations obstructed by the libertarian culture of so much life online? "No, people tend to be co-operative."

The internet, for all its anarchy, is becoming steadily more commercialised; as internet service providers, for example, become larger and more profit-driven, the spokesman suggests, it is increasingly in their interests to accept a degree of policing. "There has been an increasing centralisation," Ian Clarke acknowledges regretfully.

Meanwhile the search engine companies are restlessly looking for ...

Khmer Rouge chief 'sorry' for deaths

Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, expresses wish in court to meet families of those tortured and murdered

The Khmer Rouge's executioner-in-chief, the prison boss allegedly responsible for the torture and murder of more than 12,000 people, appeared in court today to express his "excruciating remorse", asking that he be allowed to meet his victims' families to apologise in person.

Kaing Guek Eav, known as Comrade Duch, told a courtroom packed with about 600 people ? many of them survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime ? that he took full responsibility for the torture and murders that occurred at the Tuol Sleng prison in the 1970s.

"I am solely and individually responsible for the loss of at least 12,380 lives," he said. "These people, before their deaths, endured great and prolonged suffering and countless indignities. I ? forever wish most respectful and humble apologies to the dead souls.

"As for the families, I [am] asking you to kindly leave your door open for me to make my apologies. May I meet with you to allow me to share your intense and enduring sorrow any time in order to express my most excruciating remorse?"

The apology, broadcast live on national TV, left many Cambodians cold. Bou Meng, one of only a dozen people to have walked out of Tuol Sleng alive, said he doubted Duch's sincerity.

"We've wept together," he said, "I know my tears are coming from sorrow. But I don't know about Duch's tears."

As a child, Norng Charnpal was rescued, filthy, starving and frightened, from Tuol Sleng when it was liberated. His mother died there. He told the Guardian he did not want Duch to apologise.

"I don't want to hear this. It is not real and it is not enough for my family. Look at him, he is an old man, he has had a long life. The way he talked, I do not believe he is genuine."

Dressed in a carefully ironed blue shirt, Duch, a former mathematics teacher, spoke calmly and coldly, his evidence littered with casual references to "the wishes of the party".

As head of Tuol Sleng prison, a converted high school also known as S-21, Duch explained that his role was to "smash" people presumed disloyal to the Khmer Rouge movement. Every prisoner was assumed guilty, Duch explained, effectively "already dead".

They were to be tortured for false confessions, usually that they were traitors working for the CIA or KGB, through electric shocks, beatings and whippings, water-boarding, having fingers cut off or toenails pulled out. The victims were then executed, most driven to nearby Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields, where they were bludgeoned to death with ox-cart axles and buried in mass graves.

"Those people were the innocent, the clean, the very honest," Duch admitted. "I don't believe they had committed any wrongdoing, as they were accused."

Speaking from a handwritten speech that ran to more than 10 pages, Duch said he found himself unwittingly caught up in a revolution he came to despise, and was forced to do his job at Tuol Sleng against his wishes, out of fear he would be killed if he refused.

"I could not withdraw from it ? I am very terrified."

Earlier in the day, prosecutors asked that Duch be jailed for 40 years ? in effect, a life sentence for the 67-year-old. He will be sentenced next year.

The lead prosecutor, William Smith, refuted Duch's claim that he was acting only out of fear for his own life, telling the court "the accused was neither a prisoner, nor a hostage, nor a victim. He was an idealist, a revolutionary, a crusader ? prepared to torture and kill willingly for the good of the revolution."

Throughout the trial, Duch has listened attentively but impassively as the evidence of the murderous regime he oversaw is laid bare before the court. As the court heard this week of his orders that inmates who soiled themselves be forced to eat their excrement, Duch appeared inscrutable, taking meticulous notes of all that was said.

Thun Saray, head of the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, said no Khmer Rouge victims or victims groups had expressed any desire to meet Duch to accept his apology.

He said a truth and reconciliation commission-style body, where victims could face accusers and seek apologies and explanations, had been proposed for Cambodia, but rejected by the people.

"The majority of people are not interested in forgiveness. They want to see justice," Saray said.

The ultra-communist Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia for four years between 1975 and 1979. The regime killed ? through starvation, overwork, disease and murder ? an estimated 1.7 million people, one-quarter of the country's population.

Duch is the first Khmer Rouge cadre to face trial. Four more senior leaders ? including the regime's former second-in-command, Nuon Chea ? are in jail awaiting trial, but there are concerns they may not live long enough to face a courtroom in 2011. A report this week by the Open Society Justice Initiative has said allegations of corruption among court officials, and the Cambodian government's open resistance to more trials, could derail the trial process.

Mumbai remains defiant, one year on

Indian city will come to a halt to mark anniversary of massacre by Pakistani militants that left nearly 180 dead

Ransley Santhumayor can no longer bear being in crowds: strange faces frighten him. The 29-year-old telecoms manager recently sold his motorbike and moved back to the family home. He wistfully recalls Saturday nights when he went clubbing. Now he prefers to meet his friends at their homes.

His life changed for ever a year ago in the Mumbai terror attacks ? 26/11 as it is known in India. Shot and left for dead in the Leopold cafe, Santhumayor spent two months in hospital while doctors attempted to rebuild his shattered right leg.

Six operations later, he still has a 30cm (12in) steel rod jutting out from his shin and cannot walk without crutches. "The doctors say I could be left with one leg shorter than the other. But I am alive," he said.

The emotional scars are even slower to heal. "The gunmen did not kill me but 26/11 changed me. Crowds scare me and I have never been back to the Leopold. I still think it could happen again. It's a day I want to forget."

That mixture of defiance and fear is common in India's financial and film capital, a sprawling megacity of 19 million people which is still marked by the trauma of the attacks.

Today, Mumbai will come to a halt as it marks the anniversary with a day of prayer and commemoration for those who died.

Almost 180 people were killed ? among them 28 foreigners from 10 countries ? as 10 Pakistani militants launched a string of attacks across the city. For more than 60 hours, the gunmen roamed freely, killing at random ? much of it broadcast on live television ? while Indian security forces seemed powerless to stop them. The terrorists sprayed the platforms of the main railway terminus with bullets, attacked bars frequented by foreign backpackers and killed hostages in five-star hotels and a Jewish centre.

One year on, the main train station is a blur of human motion. Touts offer tourists day-long tours along the "terror trail" for 1,800 rupees (£23). One of the first stops is the Leopold cafe, where the bullet holes and grenade blast marks have been preserved as a badge of honour.

The owner, Farhang Jehani, who was in his office at the cafe during the attack, said that sales were up 15% because of its new fame. "We were surprised, but people started coming just to say that they want to support us and don't want terror to close us down," he said.

The defining image of the attacks was that of the burning Taj hotel, whose distinctive gothic red domes had been set ablaze by the gunmen. Now, the hotel is being painstakingly restored and rooms in its 1935 heritage wing, where some suites cost £1,000 a night, will be opened to the public in January.

Security has been stepped up, but not a single staff member has left their job as a result of the violence, said Karambir Kang, the hotel's general manager. He lost his wife and two sons in the attack, but decided to return to his job. "I don't think I will ever heal but this is my family [now] and being here does help me," he said.

The only place where normal service has not been resumed is Chabad House, the Jewish centre where six people were killed, including Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who was five months pregnant. Their two-year-old son, Moshe, survived after being rescued by his Indian nanny, Sandra Samuel.

Because the assailants had detailed knowledge of the layout of the centre, police believe they or their accomplices had previously stayed there disguised as Jewish travellers.

Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, the director of the Chabad Mumbai Relief Fund, said: "We will reopen it somewhere. We want it to serve the whole community in Mumbai ? to serve the poor. We will be raising $2.5m (£1.5m) to make sure it remains a symbol of humanity and hope."

The one issue almost everyone agrees on is that Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only terrorist captured alive, should be hanged.

Kasab, the baby-faced militant who was photographed striding through the railway station with a machine gun, was eventually overpowered by a police constable whom he had shot five times.

The other nine terrorists were killed by Indian commandos and their bodies remain in the city morgue. Local Muslims said they would not let them be buried in city cemeteries.

Kasab's trial began in May and has been a public relations triumph for India over its arch-rival Pakistan. He has provided a wealth of information about the operations of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a proscribed Islamist terrorist group, and how Pakistani-based handlers planned and orchestrated the attack, staying in constant telephone contact with the assailants throughout.

The trial, which is being heard by a single judge, is taking place in the heavily fortified Arthur Road jail complex in central Mumbai. The prosecution case against Kasab runs to 11,000 pages, and the Indian government has handed Islamabad seven dossiers of evidence pointing to Pakistani involvement.

Yesterday, Pakistani prosecutors charged seven men with planning and helping to execute the attacks. They are all believed to be members of Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistani security agencies also detained a former army officer after evidence emerged that he was in contact with two men arrested in Chicago on terrorism charges. According to US court documents, the two men had planned an attack on a Danish newspaper and visited Mumbai and several other Indian cities to carry out reconnaissances in the months before the November assault.

In Mumbai, 250 witnesses have given evidence in Kasab's trial. "I think we will have a sentence passed within two to three months," said Ujwal Nigam, the public prosecutor. "We have clinching evidence and I will be seeking the death penalty."

Kasab, a thin, wan figure, has sat through the trial largely indifferent to the testimony, although he has complained recently that his food might be laced with poison. His lawyer Abbas Kazmi, appointed in the teeth of public hostility, described Kasab as a "vulnerable young man" prone to mood swings. "We will mount a strong defence," he said. If found guilty, Kasab would be entitled to an appeal, but according to Narayan Rajadhyaksha, dean of Mumbai University's law faculty, "public pressure would be immense to execute him".

"The last man hanged in India was a rapist who murdered in 2004. His appeal took 14 years but this case is totally different. Kasab's trial has proceeded very quickly. If guilt is proved, I cannot imagine he would not be hanged," he said.

Mandelson hobnobs with Gaddafi Jr

He talked of being "intensely relaxed" about the filthy rich, and no one could say that Lord Mandelson doesn't like their company. After twice facing criticism for consorting with billionaires in Corfu, it emerged tonight that the business secretary joined Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son at a country house shooting party.

Mandelson and Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi were guests at Lord Rothschild's Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, the Spectator said. The magazine reported that Cherie Blair was also in attendance, although neither she nor Mandelson are reported to have taken part in the shoot.

Mandelson is particularly close to the Rothschilds and spent part of the past two summers at the family's villa in Corfu. In 2008 he infamously spent time there with the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and the shadow chancellor, George Osborne.

The opposition questioned tonight whether Mandelson should be associating with a man who played a key part in Libyan jubilation over the release of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

Conservative MP Greg Hands said: "This extraordinary revelation, if true, raises serious questions for Peter Mandelson. Once again, he is mixing up his private associations and his public duties."

A spokesman for Mandelson said: "We do not offer a running commentary on Peter Mandelson's social engagements, but we can confirm that he has never taken part in a pheasant shoot and never will. He has always said he is happy to see Saif Gaddafi again if the occasion arose."

Wikileaks publishes 570,000 9/11 messages

? Website reveals archive of pager communications
? Files give new insight into trauma of day's events

The mental and emotional storm that struck America on 11 September 2001 with the attacks on New York and Washington has been recreated with the release of more than half a million pager messages sent on that day.

The whistleblowing website Wikileaks published the messages over a 24-hour period beginning on Tuesday at dawn, releasing them in batches in chronological order as if in real time. The massive archive includes thousands of messages from US officials including Pentagon workers and New York police, as well as members of the public from all over America, which together provide an insight into the initial chaos and confusion, followed by a dawning horror as 9/11 unfolded.

The released messages begin by underlining what an ordinary day it had started out to be. At 7.55am CNN puts out its world news headlines: Israel has surrounded yet another West Bank city; Michael Jordan is making yet another return to pro basketball "for the love of the game".

By 8.18am, four minutes after American Airlines flight 11 was hijacked en route from Boston to Los Angeles, the country is gearing itself up for work. "Not good yesterday goal $21,175. actual $11,455," came one message.

At 8.46 and 46 seconds, six seconds after flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre, the following message is paged: "Market data inconsistent ? Cantor API problem Trading system offline." The global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald had its offices on the 101st to 105th floors of the north tower and lost 658 employees in the devastation.

Quickly, the media began catching up with events, and viewers were picking up on the news. At 8.50am Karen sends out a message saying: "CNN SAID THEY THINK IT WAS A PLANE THAT HIT THE BLDG."

Most of the messages put out by Wikileaks have nothing to do with the events of that fateful day, being routine service messages and random communications between individuals. But amid the fog of thousands of messages, they build up a picture of a pre-eminent event in history.

The website has declined to reveal how it obtained the documents. All it would say on the subject was: "It is clear that the information comes from an organisation which has been intercepting and archiving US national telecommunications since prior to 9/11."

It added: "We hope that its entry into the historical record will lead to a more nuanced understanding of how this tragedy and its aftermath may have been prevented."

Several of the pager messages point to the mass of confusion and rumour-mongering that set in after the first plane hit the north tower. At 8.50am a message says that a bomb has been detonated in the World Trade Centre.

A minute later, Teresa messages: "THE WORLD TRADE CENTER HAS JUST BLOWN UP, WE SEEN THE EXPLOSION OUTSIDE OUR WINDOWS."

By 8.53am, seven minutes after the plane went in, the New York police operations division is still in the dark. "POSSIBLE EXPLOSION WORLD TRADE CENTER BUILDING," it tells its officers as it announces the start of its highest-level mobilisation to downtown Manhattan.

Meanwhile, for many, ordinary life continues. Also at 8.53am, Melissa messages her loved one: "Did you turn the iron off?" and Heather sends a message that reads: "Why don't YOU come sit on MY lap and kiss me :-)".

But elsewhere, anxiety is starting to set in. Numerous notes are sent urging colleagues, friends and relatives to tune in to what is happening. "TURN ON CNN Sat channel 202 ASAP!" says Robert Sargent.

Then, equally swiftly, come the messages pleading for information that will indicate loved ones are safe: "LARRY, CALL BRIAN. WANT TO KNOW IF OUR MEN ARE OKAY, SAW A PLANE HIT BLDG."

At that point, most people thought it was a small plane, and probably an accident, but many were worried none the less. "A SMALL PLANE CRASHED INTO THE WORLD TRADE CTR IN N.Y. JUST NOW. CALL ME, LOVE YOUR WIFE."

Panic sets in only after the south tower is hit at 9.03am. "HUGE explosion just rocked the World Trade Center," comes a text a minute later. "The second tower is now on fire."

Once again, confusion reigned. A message sent at 9.04am said that the fuselage of the first plane at the north tower had caused a second explosion ? misinterpreting the second strike at the south tower.

Through the morning, false leads multiply as terror sets in. A mistaken alarm is put out about a car bomb in downtown Washington, a report of "two Arab males" detained at the presidential retreat at Camp David, and a text that an aircraft had hit the White House.

But the scale and nature of the attacks is also quickly realised. The first mention of a "terrorist attack" comes at 9.05am, just two minutes after the second plane strikes.

By 10.48am, 20 minutes after both the towers have collapsed, the finger is already being pointed at al-Qaida by individual pagers.

"I guess we are not going tonight!" messages Duane. "I want some Bin Landen [sic] ass!"

Defining moments

8.51am THERE WAS SOME KIND OF EXPLOSION AT WORLD TRADE CTR.

8.51am World de Center is on FIRE!!!! No Joke.- Rick.

8.53am CRASH AT WORLD TRADE CENTER. THIS IS NOT A DRIL (sic)

8.56am holy shit! a plane just hit the top of the world trade center! - Kate

9.15am Hey Honey! Can you bring some bagels when you get back? The pork chop is now crying about the World Trade Center plane crash.

9.17am GET OUT OF NEW YORK CALL ME LOVE YOUR WIFE.

9.20am US military has go to a high level DEFCON alert. Fighter aircraft have been scrambled.

9.55am Honey Did you hear about the terrorist hijacking etc? I'm totally freaked. My heart is in my throat.

10.31am ABSOLUTLY UNBELEAVABLE!!! The 2'nd tower ha now just fallen GONE just a billow of debris

10.46am AS A PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE STAY HOME TODAY, DO NOT COME INTO WORK UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. STANDY BY YOUR HOME PHONES AND/OR PAGER

10.46am My goodness, what's happening?

10.46am There is NO WORLD TRADE CENTER, ANYMORE! Honey, stay put and be safe. May G-D help us!

10.47am f you can please call me and let me know where you are going. I am a wreck. love you

10.47am Talk to me... I hoping you are no where near this. Eric

10.48am i love you baby....please becareful....i don't want anything to happen to you - Jennifer

10.54am YOU ARE ON ALERT FOR POSSIBLE DEPLOYMENT - LOCATION UNKNOWN - PACK AND BE READY TO MOVE

12.28pm The carnage/cowardess terroism pains me 4 those that hav left life/those left behind in pain/mourning-WHY, my god WHY? - Louise

'Racist' Michelle Obama picture removed

Hot Girls website apologises over 'monkey' picture that had been appearing at the top of Google Images searches

A blog hosting an offensive image of Michelle Obama with monkey features has removed it and posted an apology.

The image, which has been appearing at the top of search results when the words "Michelle Obama" are put into Google Images, was posted on a blog called Hot Girls, which is hosted by the Google-owned blog service, Blogger.

Hot Girls' owner has today removed the image, which appears to have originally been put up with a blog post on 21 October, and displayed an apology in Chinese with a very loose English translation.

Google had refused to remove the offensive image from its picture search listings, despite complaints that it is racist, instead opting to run an ad next to it explaining its policy on how search engine results work.

A spokesman for Google said that the Hot Girls blog and image may still temporarily appear when some users make Google Images searches but that it was coming out of the search engine's indexing system.

Earlier today Google's ad explaining why it kept the image in search listings was being sporadically replaced by other ads.

A spokesman for Google UK said the company was looking into why that was happening for some users and that it was not a "deliberate" action to remove the explanation.

"We would generally keep it [the explanation] up for as long as the blog [hosting the content] was up," he added.

Google warned, however, that the image of the US first lady could easily reappear in its listings if another blog posted it.

It is not the first time that Google has taken out explanation ads against search queries. In 2004 when searches for the word "Jew" returned antisemitic website results Google responded with a similar approach.

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Royal succession law outdated, Brown tells MPs

? PM plans to raise issue at Commonwealth meeting
? Boost to campaign to abolish ban on Catholics

The abolition of "outdated" laws that ban Catholics from marrying into the royal family will be raised by Gordon Brown at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting that opens in Trinidad and Tobago on Friday.

In a boost to the campaign to scrap the ban, which dates from the 18th century, the prime minister told MPs the Act of Settlement was outdated. "I think most people recognise the need for change."

Downing Street said in the spring that the prime minister had opened discussions with Buckingham Palace about two reforms: ending the ban on Catholics marrying into the royal family and amending the primogeniture rules to allow older sisters to take precedence over the first-born son of a monarch. The reforms can only be introduced by amending legislation in Britain and in Commonwealth countries where the Queen is head of state.

Brown told MPs: "Change can only be brought about by not just the United Kingdom but all realms where Her Majesty is Queen making a decision to change. That is why it is important to discuss this with all members of the Commonwealth, including countries such as Australia and Canada, and that is the process which will be undertaken in due course."

Tom Watson, a former minister who is a Brown ally, welcomed the discussions. "The prime minister is absolutely right to look at this historic anomaly. You cannot have, in the 21st century, institutionalised prejudice against the millions of Roman Catholics in the UK."

Brown spoke todayin response to a question from Evan Harris, a Liberal Democrat MP, who introduced a private member's bill earlier that would have lifted the ban. Prince Michael of Kent, a first cousin of the Queen and grandson of King George V, removed himself from the line of succession in the 1970s to marry an Austrian Catholic.

The government has no plans to alter the law which states that the monarch must be a Protestant. The monarch is automatically the head of the Church of England, the established church after Henry VIII broke from Rome in the 1530s.

The most urgent reform is the proposal to amend the primogeniture rules. It is widely believed across the political spectrum that it would be unacceptable for a first-born daughter of Prince William to be passed over in the succession in favour of a younger brother.

The constitutional reforms will be discussed in bilateral meetings at the Commonwealth summit because the main items will be climate change, Zimbabwe and greater provision of free healthcare in the developing world.

To underline the importance of the summit, 10 days before the international meeting on climate change in Copenhagen, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, will both fly to Port of Spain.

David Miliband said that climate change would be the "defining theme" of the meeting and could give the Commonwealth, celebrating its 60th anniversary, a new sense of purpose. "This is an opportunity for the Commonwealth to show that it is a living, breathing, thinking network that can bring people together in a common cause," the foreign secretary said.

"It's a unique combination of countries from north, east, south and west, large and small, developed and developing, and it therefore provides a special soft-power network, and the ability to push issues up the agenda and to bridge the divide."

Suggestions of a new focus on climate change come at a time when the Commonwealth is increasingly under fire for being irrelevant.

A damning report published by the Royal Commonwealth Society warns that the Commonwealth "cannot be sustained by warm, fuzzy feelings evoked by a shared history", adding: "Serious work will be needed to convince policymakers and the public alike that this is an association worth supporting.

"The Commonwealth must ask itself at what point 'soft power' becomes too flaccid to achieve anything."

The society's director and co-author of the report, Danny Sriskandarajah, said that he supported the idea of making climate change a central issue for the Commonwealth, but he added: "I'm a little more pessimistic. It would be fantastic if the Commonwealth could come up with a way of adding value by brokering a deal on climate change ? but my fear is that some of its own members don't want the Commonwealth to have a strong voice on climate change."