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MI5 ‘recruited al-Qaida sympathisers’

August 1st, 2009 | No Comments

Senior Tory says six men were thrown out of security service amid ‘serious concerns’ and demands investigation

A senior Tory MP today called for an investigation into whether MI5 mistakenly recruited al-Qaida sympathisers.

Patrick Mercer, the chairman of the counter-terrorism subcommittee, said six Muslim recruits had been thrown out of the service because of serious concerns over their pasts.

The MP said he was writing to the home secretary, Alan Johnson, to call for an investigation into the matter.

Two of the six men allegedly attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan while the others had unexplained gaps of up to three months in their CVs.

Mercer told the Telegraph that the September 11 2001 terror attacks on the US should have prompted the British government to expand the security services, but this did not happen until the bombings on London’s transport network on 7 July 2005.

“It took an attack on this country for such measures to be started,” he said.

“But at this point it was an unseemly rush of which our enemies, not unsurprisingly, took advantage.”

Mercer added that he was concerned al-Qaida sympathisers who may have infiltrated the security services had not all yet been rooted out.

He said the two recruits who had allegedly been to training camps were not dismissed until after they had been given several weeks of training at MI5, but the others were identified before they started training.

A Home Office spokesman later said: “MI5 takes vetting very seriously indeed. All candidates are required to undergo the most comprehensive process of security vetting in the UK.

“Applicants go through extensive vetting and it is not unusual for a number to drop out or fail at the earliest stages for a variety of reasons.”

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New claim of UK torture complicity

July 27th, 2009 | No Comments

Papers suggest intelligence service knew men were being mistreated

A businessman who was held and mistreated in the United Arab Emirates following the London bombings believes he has evidence that British consular officials asked permission from the UK’s own security services to visit him while he was detained.

Heavily redacted documents seen by the Guardian appear to indicate that the request to visit Alam Ghafoor was made to an unidentified British intelligence officer and not to officials in the UAE.

Ghafoor is one of several British men who allege there has been British complicity in their detention and torture while abroad. The businessman, who is 38 and from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was detained and tortured while on a business trip to Dubai following the London bombings in July 2005.

Ghafoor and his business partner, Mohammed Rafiq Siddique, flew to the UAE on 4 July. They were dragged out of a restaurant as they dined on 21 July. The two British Muslims say they were threatened with torture, deprived of sleep, subjected to stress positions and told they would be killed and fed to dogs.

Ghafoor has obtained copies of correspondence from consular officials to the Foreign Office in London while he was in custody that show those officials were asking someone other than the UAE authorities for permission to see him. Who that person is, and who they represented, is unclear, as their name was censored before the copies were handed over. Some of the reports were so heavily redacted by the time Ghafoor received them that the only words not blanked are his name.

In one email, dated 25 July, 2005, a consular official wrote: “Today I phoned [name withheld] trying to get permission to see them. First [...] told me that there was no need because they would be deported soon. I asked if we could see them today or tomorrow. [...] told me that [...] would check with the UAE authorities… and would let me know. I didn’t hear from [...] since then. Tomorrow I’ll speak to [...] again.”

Ghafoor, who was released without charge on 30 July, is convinced that the individual to which consular officials were turning for permission to see him was a British intelligence officer. At the time of his interrogation, Ghafoor was told that British security services had requested his questioning.

MI5 and MI6 officers who question terrorism suspects they know are being tortured, are acting in line with a secret government interrogation policy, drawn up after the 9/11 attacks. The policy states: “we cannot be party to such ill treatment nor can we be seen to condone it” and that “it is important that you do not engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners.” It also advises intelligence officers that if detainees “are not within our custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene” to prevent torture.

According to Philippe Sands, QC, one of the world’s leading experts in international human rights law, the policy almost certainly breaches international human rights.

When Ghafoor asked why he had been picked up, he was shown a photograph and told he resembled one of the 7/7 suicide bombers and must be related to him. His business partner, Siddique, who was also detained and tortured, says he was told he must have been involved in the bombings – not only did he share a name with the bombers – but he lived in Dewsbury, the same Yorkshire town.

Ghafoor said his interrogators questioned his sexuality, as he is not married, and insulted him because he was unable to wash, saying he smelled. He was also punched in the groin.

One interrogator said to him: “In the morning you will be thrown into a pit and the dogs will tear you to bits and I will watch it and enjoy it.”

Eventually, he agreed to sign a false confession admitting he was a friend of the bombers and had organised the London attacks. “I wrote a false confession and put crazy things in it like ‘I have constant contact with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden’,” he said.

He was told he would be shot by a firing squad the following morning.

When Ghafoor returned home, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. His relationship with his partner broke down and he suffered nightmares, anxiety and paranoia.

Ghafoor is furious that there has been no explanation for his treatment, nor an apology. “I would like to know why I was put through this hell and I would like someone to be accountable.”

Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve, a not-for-profit human rights organisation, said: “It is impossible for the victims of torture to move on without truth and reconciliation, yet the British government seems intent on covering up what it has done.”

He added: “Until recently, the British security services were told to effectively turn a blind eye to torture.”

The Foreign Office said in a statement that Ghafoor and Siddique were not detained at Britain’s request. “British consular staff visited them on July 30, 2005 to ensure their welfare needs were being addressed. Their detention was a matter for the Dubai authorities … they were not detained at the request of the UK government. We do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment for any purpose.

“Wherever allegations of wrongdoing are made, they are taken seriously and investigated as appropriate.”

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Pakistan officials back torture claims

July 9th, 2009 | No Comments

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.”

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Revealed: evidence MI5 tried to hide

July 8th, 2009 | No Comments

MP David Davis’s dramatic parliamentary move exposes treatment of terror suspect

The true depth of British involvement in the torture of terrorism suspects overseas and the manner in which that complicity is concealed behind a cloak of courtroom secrecy was laid bare last night when David Davis MP detailed the way in which one counter-terrorism operation led directly to a man suffering brutal mistreatment.

In a dramatic intervention using the protection of parliamentary privilege, the former shadow home secretary revealed how MI5 and Greater Manchester police effectively sub-contracted the torture of Rangzieb Ahmed to a Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), whose routine use of torture has been widely documented.

This is the first time that the information has entered the public domain. Previously it has been suppressed through the process of secret court hearings and, had the Guardian or other media organisations reported it, they would have exposed themselves to the risk of prosecution for contempt of court.

Davis told MPs that although sufficient evidence had been gathered to ensure Ahmed could be prosecuted for serious terrorism offences, he was permitted to fly from Manchester to Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, in 2006 while under surveillance. He then detailed the way in which the British authorities:

• Tipped off the ISI that Ahmed was on his way.

• Told the ISI he was a terrorist and suggested that he should be detained.

• Were aware of the methods used by the ISI while questioning terrorism suspects.

• Drew up a list of questions for the ISI to put to Ahmed.

• Questioned him themselves after he had been in ISI custody for around 13 days.

The officers from MI5 and MI6 who interrogated Ahmed should have known his detention was unlawful because he had not been brought before a court. Ahmed says he told these officers he was being tortured and that signs of his mistreatment would have been evident.

He says he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep and sexually humiliated. At one point three fingernails were ripped out of his left hand. He says this was done slowly, over a period of days, while he was being asked questions which he believes were handed to the ISI by British and US authorities.

Addressing the Commons last night, Davis said: “A more obvious case of outsourcing of torture, a more obvious case of passive rendition, I cannot imagine. He should have been arrested by the UK in 2006. He was not. The authorities knew he intended to travel to Pakistan, so they should have prevented that. Instead, they suggested the ISI arrest him. They knew he would be tortured, and they organised to construct a list of questions and provide it to the ISI.”

Ahmed was deported to the UK after 13 months in Pakistani custody, prosecuted largely on the basis of evidence gathered before he had travelled to that country, and jailed for life after being found guilty of membership of al-Qaida and directing a terrorist organisation. The jury at Manchester crown court was not told he had been tortured, and some details of the police and MI5 counter-terrorism operation that resulted in his torture would have been heard in camera, before his trial began and after the media and the public had been excluded from court.

Yesterday the Guardian reported that Ahmed alleges he was recently visited by an MI5 officer and a police officer who said they could arrange for his sentence to be reduced, or for him to be paid money, if he withdrew his complaints about torture during his forthcoming appeal and during civil proceedings in which he is suing the British government. Davis said if this claim was true it was “frankly monstrous”.

Ahmed is one of several British citizens and residents who have alleged British complicity in their torture in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and the UAE during the so-called war on terror.

Davis told MPs : “For each case, the government has denied complicity, but at the same time fiercely defended the secrecy of its actions which has made it impossible to put the full facts in the public domain, despite the clear public interest to doing so.”

Ahmed, he said, “was astonishingly not arrested but was allowed to leave the country … the British intelligence agencies wrote to their opposite numbers in Pakistan, the ISI, to suggest that they arrest him”. Davis went on: “The intelligence officer who wrote to the Pakistanis did so in full knowledge of the normal methods used by the ISI against terrorist suspects that it holds.”

Davis said Ahmed was “viciously tortured by the ISI. He [Ahmed] claims among other things, he was beaten with wooden staves, the size of cricket stumps,whipped with a three-foot length of tyre rubber and had three fingernails removed from his left hand. There is a dispute between British intelligence officers as to exactly when his fingernails were removed, but an independent pathologist confirmed it happened during the period when he was in Pakistani custody.”

Davis called on ministers to examine the in camera sections of legal argument before Ahmed’s trial and all relevant police and intelligence agency records; publish current guidelines on interrogation of detainees held overseas; and establish if any intelligence officer was disciplined.

“The judge in the court case intimated that disciplinary action should be considered. Was this done? If not, why not?”

Davis also said there was a pressing need for an inquiry into Britain’s involvement in torture. “The Americans have made a clean breast of their complicity, whilst explicitly not prosecuting the junior officers who were acting under instruction. We have done the opposite. As it stands, we are awaiting a police investigation which will presumably end in the prosecution of frontline officers. At the same time the government is fighting tooth and nail to use state secrecy to cover up both crimes and political embarrassments, to protect those who are the real villains of the piece, those who approved the policies in the first place.”

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MI5 ‘tried to bribe torture victim’

July 7th, 2009 | No Comments

Exclusive: Jailed torture victim says he was offered cash to drop collusion claim

The security service MI5 is being accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice by offering a man inducements to drop his allegation that its officers colluded in his torture.

Rangzieb Ahmed had three of his fingernails ripped out after MI5 and Greater Manchester police (GMP) drew up a list of questions for officers from a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency who had detained him in Pakistan. He was later deported to the UK and jailed for terrorism offences. Ahmed says he was visited in prison by an MI5 officer and a police officer who offered to secure a reduction in his sentence or a payment of money to withdraw his torture complaints when his appeal against conviction is heard later this year. His lawyers have written to the Crown Prosecution Service to complain that the approach was “grossly inappropriate” and amounted to an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

As well as lodging an appeal against his conviction, Ahmed is also suing the British government for damages arising out of his treatment in Pakistan. It is thought that his lawyers are planning to rely to some extent on a judgment made after legal argument that preceded his trial, the full details of which are being kept secret at the request of MI5 and GMP.

In an interview with the Guardian last week, Ahmed, 33, from Rochdale, says he received a visit at Manchester prison last April from a man in his 40s who identified himself as an MI5 officer, accompanied by a man in his mid-30s who said he was a police officer. “They said they wanted my advice about tackling extremism and then said they could offer me protection if I helped them. Then they said, ‘If you withdraw what you are saying about torture, we can make a deal with you to reduce your sentence, or if you want to take money we can give you money.’ “

Ahmed’s solicitor, Tayab Ali, of the London law firm Irvine Thanvi Natas, said: “Any attempt to conceal evidence of torture would amount, in this case, to an attempt to pervert the course of justice, and I would expect the courts to take a very serious view of the matter.”

Asked about the allegation, a Home Office spokesman said: “We don’t comment on matters of security. Security service officers act within the law.”

Ahmed had been under surveillance in Manchester and Dubai before travelling to Pakistan where he was picked up and tortured by that country’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI).

He was deported to Britain 13 months later and prosecuted on the basis of evidence gathered during the surveillance operation. His lawyers argued unsuccessfully that his trial should not proceed because of the torture he had suffered.

Ahmed was convicted of being a member of al-Qaida and directing a terrorist organisation, and jailed for life. What role, if any, MI5 and GMP may have played in his detention is unclear.

The court heard that two British intelligence officers questioned Ahmed while he was in ISI custody, and he says that the signs of the torture he was enduring would have been obvious to them.

The officers would have been operating in line with a government interrogation policy drawn up for MI5 and MI6 officers in the wake of the September 2001 al-Qaida attacks, which permitted them to question people whom they knew were being tortured, and to submit questions to the torturers, as long as they were not seen to condone what was happening.

The existence of the policy remained a secret until earlier this year, when the high court released a transcript of the cross-examination of an MI5 officer who interrogated Binyam Mohamed, a British resident detained in Pakistan in 2002. The attorney general has since called in Scotland Yard to investigate possible criminal conduct on the part of that officer and those who managed him. Last month the Guardian disclosed that Tony Blair knew of the existence of the secret policy. It remains unclear what Blair knew of its consequences, however.

He has been asked repeatedly what role he played in approving it and whether he was aware that it had led to people being tortured. His spokesman responded by saying that he had never authorised the use of torture.

There has been mounting international concern about Britain’s involvement in the torture of detainees held by overseas intelligence agencies during the so-called war on terror. Earlier this year Martin Scheinin, a UN special rapporteur on human rights, reported that British intelligence personnel had “interviewed detainees who were held incommunicado by the Pakistani ISI in so-called safe houses, where they were being tortured”.

Scheinin said: “The active participation by a state through the sending of interrogators or questions, or even the mere presence of intelligence personnel at an interview with a person who is being held in places where he is tortured or subject to other inhuman treatment, can be reasonably understood as implicitly condoning torture.” Several men have alleged that they were questioned by British intelligence officers after being tortured by Pakistani agents. Most of the men were subsequently released without charge. Allegations of British collusion in torture have also been made by British men detained in Egypt, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

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