It was ‘beyond doubt’ UK knew of American torture
‘Pattern of mistreatment by the United States’
BRITISH spy chiefs tolerated ‘inexcusable’ mistreatment of terror suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks, a damning report found.
In unprecedented detail, it laid bare how UK agents shamefully colluded with the US’s barbaric torture programme during the so-called ‘war on terror’.
MI6, MI5, GCHQ and military intelligence officers were blasted for their role in the kidnap, rendition and abuse of captives.
Parliament’s intelligence watchdog said Britain continued to help the US round up alleged extremists even though they knew they were at risk of being tortured.
The bombshell report by the secretive Intelligence and Security Committee said it was ‘beyond doubt’ that Britain knew hundreds of detainees were subjected to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
The committee found no ‘smoking gun’ proving the spy agencies deliberately overlooked reports of mistreatment and rendition. It also said there was no evidence UK agents themselves abused detainees.
But it detailed hundreds of occasions where Britain indirectly co-operated with allies over the mistreatment of suspects, which included sleep deprivation, stress position and waterboarding, or used intelligence believed to have been gained from torture.
In two cases, UK spies were ‘party to mistreatment administered by others’ while on 13 occasions personnel witnessed at first-hand a detainee being treated.
The report said ‘more could have been done’ by the spy agencies and Tony Blair’s government to try to stop the torture and extraordinary rendition – where suspects are flown to another country for imprisonment and interrogation. Calls mounted for a judge-led inquiry to uncover the unvarnished truth about the UK’s shameful involvement in the scandal.
After 2001, British spies from MI5, MI6 and the Armed Forces interviewed up to 3,000 detainees who were being held by the US in Afghanistan, Iraq or at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
The report said that in 2002 alone there were at least 38 cases of spies witnessing or hearing about mistreatment, including one suspect being transported in a coffin-shaped box on the back of a truck. In one case, the ISC said Ethiopia-born UK resident Binyam Mohamed was held in Pakistan in 2002 and that MI5 and MI6 were informed by US agents he had been subjected to sleep deprivation.
But MI5 failed to act on that information before its own officer arrived to interview Mr Mohamed. The US then secretly moved Mr Mohamed to Morocco, where he was tortured.
Despite this, the ISC report says, the agencies gave questions to the US to be put to him. Mr Mohamed was later returned to the UK.
ISC chairman Dominic Grieve said: ‘The United Kingdom took actions and tolerated others which we regard as inexcusable.’
Rejecting claims that these were ‘isolated incidents’, he said: ‘They may have been isolated incidents to the individual officer witnessing them, but they cannot be considered “isolated” to those in Head Office.
‘It is difficult to comprehend how those at the top of the office did not recognise the pattern of mistreatment by the US.
‘That the US, and others, were mistreating detainees is beyond doubt, as is the fact that the agencies and defence Intelligence were aware of this at an early point.’
The committee examined 40,000 documents and took 50 hours of evidence. But the inquiry was brought to a premature halt after Theresa May refused to allow the panel of MPs and peers to question agents involved in the events.
Human rights group Liberty said the report should spark a fullblown inquiry into Britain’s role in the ‘War on Terror’.
Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Christine Jardine said: ‘If it is the case that UK intelligence was aware of this reprehensible practice by a foreign agency, then there must be a full inquiry.’
Mrs May said British personnel had been working in ‘a new and challenging operating environment’ which some were ‘not prepared’ for. She added that ‘it took too long to recognise that guidance and training for staff was inadequate’.