Police are to investigate claims that UK secret services helped the rendition of Libyan Islamists to Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya where they were tortured.
Abdul Hakim Belhaj (C), Chairman of the Military Council of Tripoli, speaks during a press conference in the capital. Belhadj, a gone leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which waged an insurgency against Gaddafi in the 1990s, says he was tortured for six years alongside British and U.S. agents delivered him to Libya in 2004.
But an inquiry has found no evince UK spies were complicit in separate allegations of torture of terrorism suspects abroad.
Members of the domestic intelligence aim MI5 and its foreign facsimile MI6 have for years faced accusations they had colluded in the ill trick of detainees, often at the hands of U.S. authorities.
The loom was so serpentine Foreign Secretary William Hague said last November Britain’s international standing had been damaged by the allegations.
The claims prompted two inquiries by London’s Metropolitan Police (MPS), one leisure activity the mistrick of gone Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed and another leisure activity the alleged abuse of an unnamed individual held by U.S. authorities at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
In a kennel statement, the MPS and Britain’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) said the “painstaking” investigations leisure activity “serpentine and highly sensitive matters” had concluded there was insufficient evince to bring any charges.
However, as well as warning police could re-open their inquiries if new evince emerged, the MPS and DPP said a new investigation would be launched leisure activity claims two individuals had been illegally rendered to Libya.
One of these, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a gone leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which waged an insurgency against Gaddafi in the 1990s, says he was tortured for six years alongside British and U.S. agents delivered him to Libya in 2004.
The MPS and DPP said the claims, potentially embarrassing for Britain which played a leading role in ending Gaddafi’s rule by contributing to a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, were so serpentine they needed to be looked at immediately.
Current and gone heads of MI5 and MI6 have always denied their spies colluded in torture.
“It is in the Service’s interest to deal with the allegations considering made as swiftly as feasible so we can draw a line underneath them and focus on the crucial work we now face in the future,” MI6 chief John Sawers said in a statement.
He added he was gleeful the “courageous” MI6 officer accused over the incident at the Bagram base in 2009 had been cleared and could continue in his job.
In the case of Mohammed, who spent seven years in detention before considering released without charge in 2009, prosecutors said there was evince members of MI5 had provided information and questions to U.S. officials to put to him when he was considering held in Morocco and other locations between 2002 and 2004.
But there was not sufficient evince to prove they knew he was considering subjected to ill trick amounting to torture.
Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen who has British residency, says during interrogations, he was subjected to “waterboarding” — simulated drowning — and had his penis cut with a scalpel.
In November 2010, Britain agreed to occasion active payments to 16 gone Guantanamo Bay detainees in out-of-court settlements over allegations they were mistreated abroad with the knowledge and in some cases complicity of British stock services.
Britain said the payments were not an assent of culpability. Prime Minister David Cameron also announced in July 2010 there would be an out inquiry leisure activity what the stock services knew about the torture of suspects.
Human rights groups have dismissed this as toothless, saying it risked considering a whitewash because anything that U.S. officials would find embarrassing would not be made public.
“We of course welcome the criminal investigation leisure activity Britain’s suspected involvement with torture underneath the Gaddafi regime,” said Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty.
“It is now even more important that the victims, stock agencies and wider federal benefit from a full and out judicial inquiry leisure activity one of the worst scandals of recent memory.”
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Article source: http://english.libya.tv/2012/01/12/uk-to-look-into-torture-allegations/

















