14 Feb 2010

British spymaster denies MI5 condones torture

7:29 am on 14 February 2010

The head of Britain's domestic security service, MI5, denies allegations it colluded in the torture of terrorism suspects by the United States.

Jonathan Evans says MI5 did not suppress information about the mistreatment of prisoners in CIA-run detention centres overseas, and Home Secretary Alan Johnson says MI5 neither practises nor condones torture or mistreatment.

Mr Johnson attacked former shadow home secretary David Davis and other critics of MI5, whom he said had been making up false allegations.

Earlier this week, a court ordered the government to disclose what it knew about a British resident, Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, who says British authorities knew he was tortured at the behest of the US authorities during seven years of captivity, mostly in Pakistan.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband had said releasing the material would harm national security but judges ruled that deleted paragraphs, which say his treatment was "cruel, inhuman and degrading" should be released.

The judgment was delivered by the three most senior Court of Appeal judges in England and Wales.

Mr Mohamed, 31, who was granted refugee status in Britain in 1994, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 over a visa irregularity and handed over to US officials. He was secretly flown to Morocco in 2002.