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MI5 facilitated U.S. to torture detenus

LONDON: In a scathing indictment of Britain’s role in the alleged rendition and torture of terror suspects by U.S. authorities, the High Court has held that MI5 actively colluded with U.S. intelligence agencies in their use of illegal methods of interrogation to extract confession from a British resident held at Guantanamo Bay.

Binyam Mohamed (30), who is facing death sentence on terror charges, claims the case against him is based on confession extracted from him under torture. He has alleged that after being arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and the Americans flew him to Morocco where he was beaten and deprived of sleep. He says interrogators in Pakistan told him: “We can’t do what we want here; the Pakistanis can’t do exactly what we want them to do. The Arabs will deal with you.”

Mr. Mohamed, who was born in Ethiopia but lived in Britain, claims an MI5 agent who interviewed him when he was illegally held in Karachi told him that the agency could discuss with Americans “what could be done for him” if he told the truth.

Later, when the Americans refused to disclose his whereabouts to MI5 it supplied them information, including questions, to help them with their interrogation. Commenting on MI5’s role, Lord Justice Thomas observed: “By seeking to interview Binyam Mohamed in the circumstances found in Pakistan and supplying information and questions for his interviews, the relationship between the U.K. and U.S. authorities went far beyond that of a bystander or witness to the alleged wrongdoing.”

The judge said MI5 “facilitated” interrogation by or on behalf of the U.S. government when Mr. Mohamed was being held incommunicado and without access to his lawyer in Pakistan. Under Pakistani laws, the detention was “unlawful” he pointed out.

The court ruled in favour of Mr. Mohamed’s demand that the information held by the British government should be made available to his lawyers to help them prove that his confession was obtained under torture. It asked the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to reconsider its refusal to divulge the information on grounds of national security. The court said the information was “not only necessary but essential for his defence.”

A spokesman for legal rights group Reprieve described the ruling as “momentous” and said: “Compelling the British government to release information that can prove Mr. Mohamed’s innocence is one obvious step towards making up for the years of torture that he has suffered.”

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