Stinging report to highlight ‘woefully deficient’ accountability of UK security and intelligence agencies, writes Richard Norton-Taylor in London
THE DEMOCRATIC accountability of UK security and intelligence agencies is “woefully deficient” and an independent inquiry must be set up to investigate numerous and detailed allegations of their complicity in torture, a cross-party group of senior MPs and peers will say today.
In a stinging report, they say that, in view of the detailed allegations, ministers can no longer get away with repeating standard denials. They say the government must immediately publish instructions given to UK security service (MI5) and secret service (MI6) officers on the detention and interrogation of suspects abroad. But the report, by the UK parliament’s joint committee on human rights, falls short of stating the agencies have been complicit in torture, thereby breaching British domestic and international law.
Andrew Dismore, the committee’s Labour chairman, said: “If the allegations are true they amount to complicity. They have not been tested but, given the scale and number, simply to issue a blanket denial is not adequate. That is why we are calling for an independent inquiry.”
Among a list of actions that it says would amount to complicity in torture, and therefore in breach of the UK’s legal obligations, the report includes “the provision of questions to such a foreign intelligence service to be put to a detainee who has been, is being, or likely to be tortured”. It also includes “the systematic reception of information known or thought likely to have been obtained from detainees subjected to torture”.
It adds: “For the purposes of state responsibility for complicity in torture . . . ‘complicity’ means simply one state giving assistance to another state in the commission of torture, or acquiescing in such torture, in the knowledge . . . of the circumstances of the torture which is or has been taking place.”
The Guardian newspaper passed to the committee the names of seven out of 11 British or dual nationals detained in Pakistan where British agencies, it says, colluded in, or knew about, their torture or mistreatment.
The newspaper also alerted the committee to the case of Binyam Mohamed, a UK resident who, the UK high court has heard, was held incommunicado in Pakistan before being tortured in Morocco, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.
In a judgment revised after the disclosure of fresh evidence from MI5, the high court said on Friday it was now clear that MI5 “knew the circumstances” of his secret detention at “a covert location”, now known to be Morocco.
In their judgment, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones also revealed that MI5 sent the “US authorities” – believed to be the CIA – questions to ask Mr Mohamed. Over more than two years, MI5 received five reports from the US about Mr Mohamed and gave the US a list of 70 further questions to be put to him.
The judgment contains evidence that appears to come under the complicity criteria spelled out in today’s report.
The report says: “If the government engaged in an arrangement with a country that was known to torture in a widespread way and turned a blind eye to what was going on, systematically receiving and/or relying on the information but not physically participating in the torture, that might well cross the line into complicity.
“Our experience over the past year is that ministers are determined to avoid parliamentary scrutiny and accountability on these matters, refusing requests to give oral evidence; providing a standard answer to some of our written questions, which fails to address the issues; and ignoring other questions entirely. Ministers should not be able to act in this way. The fact that they can do so confirms that the system for ministerial accountability for security and intelligence matters is woefully deficient.”
The Guardian, in a memo to the committee published in its report, said: “The increasingly routine reliance on in-camera hearings and closed judgments threatens to close forever a whole chapter of evidence relating to the British intelligence services’ practices and government policy on those held in other jurisdictions who are often subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
Mr Dismore said: “The recent allegations should be a wake-up call to ministers that the current arrangements are not satisfactory. We look to the government to respond positively to our recomm- endations and not to continue to hide behind their wall of secrecy.”
The UK’s foreign office told the committee: “We unreservedly condemn the use of torture and our clear policy is not to participate in, solicit, encourage, or condone the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment for any purpose.” – (Guardian service)