Extent of UK involvement in torture revealed in secret papers

By IRNA,

London : The extent of the British government’s involvement in the illegal abduction and torture of its own citizens following the 9/11 attacks in the US have been revealed in secret documents.


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Among the most damning disclosures made during court proceedings brought by six former Guantánamo inmates are interrogation reports from MI5 security agents that betray the suffering of a British resident whom they were questioning at a US airbase in Afghanistan.

Another startling document, according to the Guardian newspaper, is chapter 32 of MI6’s general procedural manual, entitled “Detainees and Detention Operations”.

This was said to advise intelligence officers that among the “particular sensitivities” they need to consider before becoming directly involved in an operation to detain a terrorism suspect is the question of whether “detention, rather than killing, is the objective of the operation”.

The disclosure come after Prime Minister David Cameron recently announced an inquiry into whether Britain has been complicit with torture despite repeated denials by the previous Labour government.

The Previously secret papers include a number implicating former prime minister Tony Blair’s office, including overruling Foreign Office attempts to provide consular for his return to the UK with the result that he was “rendered” to Guantánamo.

The Guardian reported Thursday that the documents also show that the Foreign Office decided in January 2002 that the transfer of British citizens from Afghanistan to Guantánamo was its “preferred option”.

In the court proceedings, the government has been responding to disclosure requests by maintaining that it has identified up to 500,000 documents that may be relevant, and says it has deployed 60 lawyers to scrutinise them.

Many of the documents requested by lawyers remained to be handed over with so far only 900 papers disclosed, and these have included batches of press cuttings and copies of government reports that were published several years ago.

“Together they paint a picture of a government that was determined not only to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States as it embarked upon its programme of “extraordinary rendition” and torture of terrorism suspects in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but to actively participate in that programme,” the Guardian said.

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