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UK police to investigate claims intelligence service engaged in torture

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced Friday that the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) has referred allegations of torture by its officers to Attorney General Patricia Scotland and the Metropolitan Police for investigation. In an open letter to Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, Miliband called the "scope and handling" of the investigation "a matter for the police" and noted that the SIS acted "on its own initiative, unprompted by any accusation against the Service or the individual concerned." Hague had written Miliband and Prime Minister Gordon Brown last month, asking whether the government intended to investigate allegations that agents from SIS, commonly called MI6, and its domestic counterpart participated in the torture of detainees in Egypt, Pakistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Hague's letter came in response to a report published in August by the UK Parliament Joint Committee on Human Rights calling for an independent inquiry into allegations regarding government complicity in the torture of UK terrorism suspects. Miliband, joined by Home Secretary Alan Johnson and MI6 Chief John Scarlett, denied the allegations, saying that the UK does not participate in or condone the use of torture. Allegations in the report include the complicity in torture of UK resident Binyam Mohamed before he was brought to Guantanamo Bay. In July, the UK Metropolitan Police Service announced that it was investigating the alleged mistreatment of Mohamed by intelligence officers. Mohamed claims that he was tortured by Pakistani agents and interrogated by FBI and MI5 agents complicit in his abuse. He was transferred to Morocco, allegedly part of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, where he claims that British agents supplied his torturers with questions.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on September 11, 2009 (boomark / email).