Claims of MI5 torture Complicity to be Investigated

The Metropolitan police commissioner has been asked to investigate whether MI5 agents were complicit in the torture of the former Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed, the attorney general, Lady Scotland, said in a written statement (pdf) today.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born UK resident, was questioned after being seized at Karachi airport in April 2002 travelling on a false passport. He was sent to an interrogation centre where, he says, he was hung up for a week by a leather strap around his wrists. Among his interrogators were officials from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Mohamed was flown to Morocco after being held incommunicado in Pakistan, where he was interrogated by an MI5 officer. From Morocco, he was rendered to Kabul's notorious CIA prison where he says he was held in darkness for weeks on end. He says that was the worst time in his seven years in US captivity.