Ian Cobain

Ian Cobain (born 1960) is a British journalist, best known for his investigation into torture perpetrated by agents of the United Kingdom government, and for his reporting on the culture of secrecy[1][2] surrounding the British state, past[3][4]

Childhood

Ian Cobain was born in Liverpool.

Journalism

A journalist since the early 1980s, Cobain was the senior investigative reporter for The Guardian until August 2018.

He has reported on six wars,[5] including the 1991 Gulf War, and the wars in Afghanistan[6] and Iraq.[7] In September 2005, he revealed that the UK was supporting the CIA’s rendition programme[8] and in 2006, when he joined the BNP as part of an undercover investigation, he ended up being appointed central London organiser for the party, a position he swiftly resigned.[9]

Cobain's 2012 book Cruel Britannia documents a remarkable continuity of British involvement in torture over the last six decades: in Palestine, during and after World War II, in Cyprus, Kenya, Northern Ireland and in extraordinary rendition in the War on Terror.[10][11][12][13][14] David Hare described it as "one of the most shocking and persuasive books of the year", Peter Oborne in The Spectator said, "Carefully researched and well-written… [Cobain] should be congratulated for addressing a subject which much of the rest of Fleet Street has been determined to ignore",[15] and the Sunday Times identified it as a "must-read" and declared it, "a fine study of the role Britain has played in the business of torture". The book won the Paddy Power/Total Politics Debut Political Book of the Year award.[16]

Throughout his journalistic career, Cobain has taken a close interest in the Troubles and the legacy of the conflict. As a result, in 2012, he was retained as an expert witness by lawyers seeking to overturn the murder conviction of Liam Holden, who had been the last man to be sentenced to hang in the UK before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Also in 2012, Cobain investigated allegations of collusion between police and Loyalist paramilitary gunmen who had shot dead six men in a bar in the village of Loughinisland in 1994. A subsequent report by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland confirmed that collusion. In 2014, Cobain drew upon contemporary police records, witness statements and pathologists’ reports to reconstruct events in Ballymurphy in west Belfast in August 1971, when nine men and one woman had been shot dead by British troops. [] A fresh inquest into the deaths was held between late 2018 and early 2020, and verdicts are awaited.

As of 2019, Cobain was a journalist at Middle East Eye.[17]

Censorship

Cobain was rejected from attending the 2019 DSEI international arms sales fair in London Docklands, on the grounds that he tweeted messages unfavourable to the arms trade and DSEI, and because it was "[suspected that] he [would] not write anything positive about DSEI".[17]

Prizes

Cobain has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism and won the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism, as well as two Amnesty International journalism awards,[18] and, with fellow Guardian journalist, Richard Norton-Taylor, a Human Rights Campaign of the Year Award from Liberty, for their "investigation into Britain's complicity in the use of torture".[19]

Works
  • Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture, Portobello Books, 2012. ISBN 184627334X
  • The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation, Portobello Books, 2016. ISBN 1846275830
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References
  1. Cobain, Ian; Bowcott, Owen; Norton-Taylor, Richard (17 April 2012). "Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  2. Cobain, Ian (6 October 2013). "Ministry of Defence holds 66,000 files in breach of 30-year rule". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  3. Cobain, Ian (18 October 2013). "Foreign Office hoarding 1m historic files in secret archive". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  4. Cobain, Ian (26 March 2015). "Why is the crux of the Incedal case a secret? You're not allowed to know". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  5. "Ian Cobain". www.nctj.com. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  6. "KK-FORUM: The Times: American will take no prisoners". The Times. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  7. Cobain, Ian (20 December 2013). "Who in Whitehall approved 'gloves-off' interrogation after 9/11?". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  8. Cobain, Ian; Grey, Stephen; Norton-Taylor, Richard (11 September 2005). "Destination Cairo: human rights fears over CIA flights". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  9. Cobain, Ian (21 December 2006). "Exclusive: inside the secret and sinister world of the BNP". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  10. Kampfner, John (4 November 2012). "Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain – review". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  11. Brooke, Heather (31 January 2013). "The closed circle: Britain's culture of secrecy". New Statesman.
  12. Stafford Smith, Clive (23 November 2012). "Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain - review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  13. Smith, Clive Stafford (23 November 2012). "Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain - review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  14. Howe, Stephen (24 November 2012). "This admirable investigation into torture in the fraying empire will overturn myths". The Independent.
  15. Oborne, Peter (24 November 2012). "Shameful home truths". The Spectator.
  16. Total Politics, Paddy Power & Total Politics Political Book Awards
  17. Akkad, Dania (7 November 2019). "'See if he chases': Why Ian Cobain was actually banned from covering UK arms fair". Middle East Eye. Archived from the original on 9 November 2019. Retrieved 9 November 2019.
  18. "Sivia Casale, Ian Cobain and Malcolm Evans". Archived from the original on 20 June 2013. Retrieved 9 June 2013.
  19. Liberty, List of previous winners
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