Events | 2009.07.09
Further evidence of Britain's torture role
Human Rights Watch says Pakistani intelligence officials have confirmed torture took place with full knowledge of British agents
Further evidence of the close involvement of British agents in the torture of British citizens in Pakistan has emerged during a series of interviews with Pakistani intelligence officers.
Researchers from the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) say several Pakistani officials have corroborated accounts of torture given by several victims. The officials not only made clear that their counterparts in British intelligence were fully aware of the methods they were employing during interrogations but claim the British agents were "grateful" it was happening.
In a statement issued today , HRW said senior Pakistani officials had told it "on numerous occasions" that British officials were aware of the mistreatment of a number of terrorism suspects from the UK, including Rangzieb Ahmed and Salahuddin Amin, who are now serving life sentences in the UK, Zeeshan Siddiqui, whose whereabouts is unknown, and Rashid Rauf, who is said to have died in a US missile strike after escaping from custody.
HRW said senior officials in Pakistan had confirmed the "overall authenticity" of the allegations made by Ahmed, from Rochdale, who had three fingernails ripped out of his left hand after MI5 and Greater Manchester police drew up a list of questions and handed them to his Pakistani captors.
The sources said that an account given by Amin, from Luton, of the manner in which he was tortured in between meetings with MI5 officers was "essentially accurate", adding that his was a "high pressure" case in which the demand for information made by both British and American intelligence officers was "insatiable".
HRW says it was told by senior Pakistani officials that the UK and the US were "party" to Amin\'s detention and were "perfectly aware that we were using all means possible to extract information from him and were grateful that we were doing so".
HRW was told by senior Pakistani intelligence officers that their British counterparts were well aware that Siddiqui, from London, was being "processed in the traditional way". These sources said they worked so closely with the British officials that those officials were in effect interrogating Siddiqui even though they were not in the torture chamber.
In other cases, Pakistani agents who were dealing with their British counterparts while torturing British citizens say they were "under pressure to perform" and to extract as much information as possible.
Furthermore, HRW says a British intelligence source has told it that plans to deport one British citizen from Pakistan to the UK and prosecute him for terrorism offences had to be dropped because the individual had been so severely tortured.
The Pakistani interrogators\' accounts of their close working relationship with British intelligence officers are to be detailed in a HRW report later this year.
In today\'s statement it said: "Officials in both the Pakistani and UK governments have privately confirmed to Human Rights Watch that British officials were aware of specific cases of mistreatment, knew that Pakistani intelligence agencies routinely used torture on detained terror suspects and others and failed to intervene to prevent torture in cases involving British citizens and in cases in which it had an investigative interest.
"A well placed official within the UK government told Human Rights Watch that allegations of UK complicity made by Human Rights Watch in testimony to the UK parliament\'s Joint Human Rights Committee in February 2009 were accurate. The official encouraged Human Rights Watch to continue its research into the subject. Another Whitehall source told Human Rights Watch that its research was \'spot on\'.
"According to these UK officials, as a result of co-operation on specific cases, the Pakistani intelligence services shared information from abusive interrogations with British officials, which was used in prosecutions in UK courts and other investigations. UK law enforcement and intelligence officials passed questions to Pakistani officials for use in interrogation sessions in individual cases knowing that these Pakistani officials were using torture."
HRW said there was now a compelling case for a judicial inquiry into Britain\'s role in torture in Pakistan. Brad Adams, HRW\'s Asia director, said: "The prime minister, the foreign secretary, former prime minister Tony Blair and others have repeatedly said that the UK opposes torture. They repeatedly deny allegations that the UK has encouraged torture by Pakistan\'s intelligence agencies. But saying this over and over again doesn\'t make it true. There is now sufficient evidence in the public domain to warrant a judicial inquiry."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/09/british-torture-terror-suspects
