David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is to be questioned by senior MPs over what he and his officials knew about the ill-treatment and secret interrogation of Binyam Mohamed, the former UK resident recently released from Guantánamo Bay. The move was announced yesterday by the Commons foreign affairs committee, which said it also intends to investigate other key issues where recent evidence has thrown up uncomfortable questions for ministers to answer. They are allegations of British complicity in torture in Pakistan, in the US practice of rendering terror suspects to countries where they risked being tortured, and in the transfer of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The foreign secretary will not be able to refuse to testify before the Commons foreign affairs committee, which was set up to monitor the activities of his department.
I thought of using the English euphemism “economical with the truth”, but that doesn’t capture the brazen statement of the Foreign Secretary yesterday regarding alleged British complicity with the torture of detainees.
The Observer of London has seen an advance copy of a report by Human Rights Watch, to be released next month, which finds that the British domestic intelligence service MI5 had a “systemic” modus operandi in which different agents were deployed to Pakistan to interview different British suspects, many of whom alleged that before interrogation by MI5 they were tortured by the Pakistanis.
At least 10 Britons are identified in the report, which is based on sources within Pakistan’s intelligence bureaus. Human Rights Watch outlined its concerns last October to the Foreign Office but has not received a response.
In a separate article in The Observer, lawyers for Binyam Mohamed (pictured), the British resident still held at Guantanamo Bay, revealed the extent of the “dozens” of beatings he has received at the US detention facility.
UK agents ‘colluded with torture in Pakistan’
MARK TOWNSEND
A shocking new report alleges widespread complicity between British security agents and their Pakistani counterparts who have routinely engaged in the torture of suspects.
Whitehall devised torture policy for terror detainees
A policy governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects in Pakistan that led to British citizens and residents being tortured was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government, according to evidence heard in court. Read the rest of this entry »
Bravo to Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor. Amidst 
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