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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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August 8th,
2009 - MI5 ‘Misled MPs During Torture Inquiry’ |
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MI5 ‘Misled MPs During Torture
Inquiry’ Human rights lawyers question evidence given in Binyam Mohamed case By Robert Verkaik The Independent August 8, 2009 MI5 faces claims that it
misled MPs during a parliamentary investigation into Britain's complicity in
torture and rendition during the "war on terror". The Intelligence and
Security Committee (ISC), which oversees the work of the security service,
MI5, has been asked to reopen a report it concluded two years ago following
damning findings about the activities of secret agents in Pakistan, Morocco
and London. Human rights lawyers have
written to Kim Howells MP, the chairman of the ISC, setting out what they say
are glaring omissions in evidence provided by MI5 in relation to the
detention and torture of the British resident Binyam Mohamed. Last week it emerged in the
High Court that the security service fed questions to the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) while they must have have known Mr Mohamed was
being illegally held in Morocco. Judges in the High Court said that a
security service officer who had interviewed Mr Mohamed in Pakistan had also
visited Morocco during his detention and alleged torture. MI5 has admitted
feeding questions to the CIA, but has always maintained it did not know where
Mr Mohamed was being held. In a letter received by the
committee yesterday, Reprieve, the human rights charity, claimed that secret
agents attempted to cover these "crimes" by neglecting to inform
the ISC - to whom they are accountable - of any of the damning evidence
subsequently extracted by the High Court. Reprieve specifically
alleges that MI5 falsely informed the ISC that officers were
"unaware" that Binyam Mohamed was being tortured in a secret prison
in Morocco from 2003. By comparing the judges' revelations with the ISC
Renditions Report published in 2007, Reprieve claims that the security service
falsely informed the ISC that all contact with Binyam Mohamed ended in 2002.
But it has since emerged MI5 continued to receive information from the CIA on
Mr Mohamed until at least March 2004. Reprieve's director, Clive Stafford
Smith, is calling for the conclusions in the ISC report on rendition to be
re-evaluated from scratch. Mr Stafford Smith said:
"British agents seem to have committed perjury when telling the court
that all efforts to question Binyam ended in February 2003, and they also
misled the ISC, to whom they are supposedly accountable. In fact, the
shameful co-operation with Binyam's torturers was still going on 15 months
later, when Binyam had left the Moroccan torture chamber and arrived in the
'dark prison' in Afghanistan." Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian who
was living in London, was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002 where he claims
he was tortured before being interviewed by an MI5 officer known in court as
Witness B. He was secretly
"rendered" to Morocco where he was tortured again before being
transferred to Bagram in Afghanistan and then Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Mr Mohamed
was freed earlier this year and is attempting to get records of his treatment
released by the Government. MI5 denies colluding in Mr Mohamed's alleged
torture, although the Metropolitan Police has launched its first ever inquiry
into the service after a referral by the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland. External link: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mi5-misled-mps-during-torture-inquiry-1769194.html |