As the clock ticks down on the Yunus Rahmatullah case, the Ministry of Defence has been caught in another mess over its special forces in Iraq. The two cases have regrettable parallels: in both instances the MoD set its face against coming clean about the fate of its prisoners. Now it has been forced to admit the existence of the H1 blacksite, and is still stonewalling over the fate of Yunus Rahmatullah. But the time is fast approaching when the truth - all of it, however ugly - will emerge.

A brief recap: last week we learned that British involvement in Iraq's 'black sites' was far greater than we knew. The MoD was apparently up to its ears in a heretofore unknown secret prison at an airstrip in the desert called H1. We only know about H1 because one man, Tariq Sabri al-Fadhawi, was beaten to death in a Chinook en route. Given that the purpose of the detention facility was to hide prisoners from the International Committee of the Red Cross, it is safe to conclude that the fate of those who reached their destination was equally grim.