MP says UK did not bow to US pressure on torture report

A British MP has hit back at claims that a report on torture was censored by the United States.

The Times reported on Tuesday that the US government had demanded last-minute changes to the parliamentary report scheduled for release tomorrow, which will detail UK involvement in torture and rendition during the US’s “war on terror”.

It will see the light after more than eight years of delays and complications and is expected to be highly critical of the government and recommend changes in the way UK intelligence agents operate abroad.

But Dominic Grieve, the head of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, which produced the report, refuted the allegations.

Conservative MP Mr Grieve said only one of the report’s 300 pages had been redacted to meet US security concerns.

“On Thursday, I will happily point you to where those asterisks are in the report and you can see for yourself that it is not a central issue, nor a controversial issue,” he said.

“The committee does not agree to redact material in its reports on grounds of embarrassment to anyone. So, I can assure you that the US has not made wholesale redactions to the reports, as suggested.”

Campaigners claimed compliance with the US’s requests will damage the report’s credibility. Human rights group Reprieve, whose founder Clive Stafford-Smith has represented dozens of detainees at the US facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said: “To get to the truth and maintain public confidence, there must be an inquiry that meets the basic test of independence from government and which has the powers and scope necessary to ensure all appropriate evidence is examined.

“The chairperson should have absolute discretion over whether hearings are public and whether any redactions are made to the final report. The inquiry should have full legal powers to compel the production of evidence.”

The inquiry was commissioned in 2010. The tenure of Sir Peter Gibson, the former high court judge chosen to chair the investigation, was cut short in 2012 after the inquiry clashed with police investigations. It was then passed to the ISC.

Alistair Carmichael, a former cabinet minister, said: “I can think of no precedent for a foreign power seeking to interfere in the workings of our committees.”