UK lawmaker calls for inquiry into torture claims

[David]

AP


LONDON – A senior judge should lead an independent inquiry into allegations that Britain may have been complicit in the torture and extraordinary rendition of terror suspects, a government adviser urged in a report Sunday.

Alex Carlile, a House of Lords member who advises the government on anti-terrorism laws, said an independent study was necessary after repeated allegations about Britain's possible involvement in the mistreatment of detainees held in U.S. custody.

Carlile was quoted as telling Britain's Sunday Times newspaper that a new inquiry should be held in private to hear classified evidence, but publish a public report.

A lawyer for Guantanamo Bay detainee Shaker Aamer, a Saudi-born former British resident, alleged for the first time Sunday that a British security officer was present as Aamer was beaten while held by U.S. forces at Baghram air base in Afghanistan.

"He says that during this abuse a member of the British security services was present in the room who witnessed what was happening," lawyer Zachary Katznelson of the human rights group Reprieve was quoted as saying by the Independent on Sunday newspaper.

Katznelson was not immediately available for comment Sunday.

President George W. Bush's administration had refused to release Aamer to Britain from Guantanamo, citing security concerns.

Ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed alleges he was tortured while held in Pakistan and Morocco and claims British intelligence were aware of his treatment and supplied questions for his interrogators to ask him.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian who moved to Britain when he was a teenager, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. He claims he was tortured both there, and in Morocco — where he alleges he was sent to be detained by U.S. officials.

Mohamed returned to Britain on Feb. 23 — the first Guantanamo detainee released since President Barack Obama took office.

On Thursday, British defense secretary John Hutton acknowledged that British forces in 2004 handed over two terror suspects detained in Iraq to U.S. authorities, who then secretly rendered the men to a facility in Afghanistan.

His admission followed Britain's embarrassing revelation last year that the United States had failed to tell the U.K. it had used the British Indian Ocean island Diego Garcia as a refueling stop for two rendition flights in 2002.

Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of Britain's governing Labour Party, said the government would consider Carlile's proposal.

"There is no way that we are in some way ambivalent about the question of torture. It is absolutely revolting and the thought that rendition is part of that, I think that is abhorrent," Harman told BBC television.

Britain's Attorney General Patricia Scotland is investigating claims that Britain's domestic spy agency MI5 may have acted improperly in Mohamed's case. An MI5 officer interviewed Mohamed in Pakistan, but the officer told a court hearing that he was not aware that Mohamed had been mistreated.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said repeatedly that Britain's intelligence agencies do not condone torture.