Fresh questions were raised on Friday night about the behavior of British officials towards terror suspects by the disclosure that MI6 had referred one of its officers to the attorney general over allegations of complicity in torture.
The unprecedented move by Britain’s secret service was disclosed in a letter from British Foreign Secretary David Miliband to his Conservative shadow, William Hague.
He said MI6 had acted on its own initiative, “unprompted by any accusation against MI6 or the individual concerned.”
The specialist crime branch of London’s Metropolitan police said Attorney General Patricia Scotland had asked it to investigate “the conditions under which a non-Briton was held” and the “potential involvement of British personnel.”
Officials were reluctant to say anything more about the case other than it was “unrelated” to that of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who says he was tortured and ill-treated in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantanamo Bay.
The police are separately investigating allegations of what the high court has called “possible criminal wrongdoing” by an officer of the security service MI5 who was involved in Mohamed’s secret interrogation.
Miliband said the government could not comment further on the MI6 case “to avoid prejudice and to protect the individuals involved.”
Officials said the circumstances surrounding the MI6 case had never been referred to in public.
Government sources said they came to the notice of MI6 lawyers as concerns about the activities of both MI5 and MI6 were being raised by the high court, members of parliament and the media.
The court heard growing evidence of Britain’s involvement in the interrogation of detainees and CIA flights transferring them to secret destinations.
There was speculation among human rights groups last night that MI6 was prompted to take action as a result of evidence that will emerge in the US inquiry into the CIA’s interrogation of terror suspects.
MI6 head John Scarlett told the BBC last month that there had been no torture and “no complicity in torture” by the Secret Intelligence Service.
Miliband said in his letter, published yesterday on the Foreign Office Web site, that the government “wholeheartedly condemned torture.”
“We will not condone it. Neither will we ever ask others to do it on our behalf. This is not mere rhetoric but a principled stance consistent with our unequivocal commitment to human rights. We are fortunate to have the best security and intelligence services and armed forces in the world,” he said.
Miliband was responding to a letter Hague wrote to Gordon Brown last month in light of a report by parliament’s joint committee on human rights.
The committee said the government could no longer get away with repeating standard denials of complicity by the security and intelligence agencies.
Hague asked the government to “clarify as a matter of urgency whether you intend to instruct the attorney general to consider ... allegations of UK complicity in the light of the joint committee report, which documents allegations of UK complicity in torture in respect of detainees held in Pakistan, Egypt, and Guantanamo Bay, and in the case of Uzbekistan, raises concerns about the receipt of information which may have been obtained through torture.”
“It is very important that any such allegations are thoroughly investigated,” Hague later added.
Amnesty International UK campaigns director Tim Hancock said: “If the UK authorities are serious about their responsibilities to combat torture, we need a full, impartial and independent investigation into all allegations that UK personnel have colluded with torturers.”
Shami Chakrabarti, director of campaign group Liberty, said: “Criminal investigations into individual officers don’t reveal what ministers knew or authorized ... Only an independent judicial inquiry can get to the bottom of this rotten business.”
Westminster’s intelligence and security committee said that by early 2005, MI5, MI6 and military intelligence officers took part in more than 100 such sessions in Afghanistan and that MI5 and MI6 officers had been involved in a similar number at Guantanamo Bay.
There were about 2,000 interrogations in Iraq involving MI5, MI6, military intelligence and civilians.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS