UK human rights watchdog demands government probe secret service torture allegations

UK human rights watchdog demands torture probe

LONDON — Britain’s justice secretary should conduct an urgent independent investigation into allegations that the country’s secret service was complicit in the torture of Britons held abroad, the government’s human rights watchdog said Saturday.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission said it wrote to Justice Minister Jack Straw this week to complain that the government has not done enough to assure the public that the claims against British spy agencies are unfounded.

The watchdog said it made the demand following revelations that MI5, Britain’s domestic spy agency, knew that terrorism suspect Binyam Mohamed was beaten and shackled in U.S. custody.

It said the case was only one of 25 allegations — including some reported by the United Nations — of British complicity in torture during interrogations abroad.

“Ministers and government agencies are facing very serious allegations of knowing that UK citizens were being tortured, failing to take action to stop that torture and supplying questions to be used in the interrogation of men who were subjected to a high level of ill-treatment,” the watchdog’s chair Trevor Phillips said in a statement.

“It would be inexplicable for the government not to urgently put in place an independent review process to assess the truth, or otherwise, of these allegations,” he said.

Earlier this month, a court forced Britain’s government to disclose a once-secret summary of CIA documents detailing U.S. authorities’ “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” of Mohamed, a British resident and former Guantanamo Bay detainee.

The documents were shared by the CIA with the MI5 during Mohamed’s questioning in Pakistan in May 2002. MI5 chief Jonathan Evans acknowledged they described “unacceptable actions,” but rejected claims his agency had been complicit in the detainee’s alleged torture.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband fought for two years to block publication of the summary, insisting that would violate a long-standing rule that nations don’t disclose intelligence shared by their allies. The rights watchdog said officials were trying to suppress evidence of complicity.

“The government must take the opportunity of an independent review to be as open and transparent with the public as possible,” Philips said.

British police are investigating an MI5 officer over his role in the mistreatment of Mohamed, but no charges have been brought.

They are also probing claims that a British intelligence officer looked on as another terror suspect, Shaker Aamer, had his head beaten against a wall during interrogations while in U.S. custody. Saudi-born Aamer is the last remaining British inmate at Guantanamo Bay.

The Foreign Office on Friday rejected the allegations, made by Aamer’s legal team, as unsubstantiated.