We need inquiry into torture, Davis tells PM
DAVID Davis today presses the Prime Minister to order a judge- led inquiry into Britain’s involvement in the mistreatment of terror suspects – or face the prospect of a legal challenge.
In a major intervention, the former Brexit Secretary calls on Theresa May to set up an independent probe to investigate UK complicity in ‘wicked’ torture and rendition during the so-called ‘war on terror’.
Failing to fulfil the Tory party’s pledge to hold an inquiry, chaired by a senior judge, into the abuse of captives will mean never discovering the truth about some of Britain’s ‘darkest days’, he says.
Mr Davis has backed a hardhitting letter to Downing Street on torture signed by senior MPs.
It comes just weeks after he quit the Cabinet in disgust at Mrs May’s Chequers blueprint for leaving the EU.
He claims today that Government inaction following confirmation that Tony Blair’s New Labour and the security services colluded with the US’s torture programme after 9/11 also contributed to his decision to walk out.
Below, he condemns Mrs May for hindering the search for the truth by preventing British agents from giving crucial evidence to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC).
He says: ‘If the Government rejects the cross-party calls then they will open themselves up to being challenged in the courts. That is an outcome none of us wants to see. We have to hope common sense prevails.’
He says it was ‘amazing’ that Mr Blair and his ministers appeared not to have questioned spy chiefs about their actions, which raised the prospect that they were ‘deliberately avoiding asking them to maintain deniability’.
The new letter, written by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rendition, argues that a judge-led inquiry is the ‘only way to get to the bottom of this shameful episode in our recent history and draw a line under it’.
A damning ISC report in June said British spy chiefs tolerated ‘inexcusable’ mistreatment of terror suspects in the years after 9/11. The 152-page dossier, which took three years to compile, laid bare in unprecedented detail the UK’s complicity in torture and ‘extraordinary rendition’, where suspects are flown to another country for imprisonment and interrogation.
Mrs May said the security and intelligence agencies ‘regretted’ not recognising sooner the ‘unacceptable practices’. But the Government said only that it would give ‘careful consideration’ to holding a judgeled inquiry and make a decision within 60 days – around August 27.
David Cameron supported such an inquiry and appointed judge Sir Peter Gibson in 2010 but the probe was scrapped in 2012 before completing its work.
Maya Foa of human rights charity Reprieve said: ‘The Prime Minister should listen to her colleagues and call an independent judge-led inquiry, to ensure that Britain learns from its mistakes.’