MI5

[Aerlik]

MI5 have "dubious record" on torture


Michael Holden
(UK) Prime Minister Gordon Brown defended the work of MI5 after the Court of Appeal published a judgement strongly criticising the country's security services over the alleged torture of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee.

A senior judge said the MI5 domestic spy agency had a "dubious record" about claims of abuse suffered by Binyam Mohamed at the hands of CIA agents.

His comments were revealed after the court agreed that both a draft and final version of his judgement in the case should be published "in the interests of open justice."

Earlier this month, the court agreed to disclose seven paragraphs relating to secret U.S. intelligence material about Mohamed's treatment.

That ruling came after the High Court decided in 2008 that the government had to detail all the evidence it held against Mohamed except these paragraphs.

However, part of the judgement of senior judge Lord David Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls, was removed after government lawyers saw a draft version and put pressure on the court, arguing that it had gone too far and would damage MI5.

But on Friday the court said both Neuberger's draft and final amended judgement should be made public.

Neuberger said MI5 officials had told MPs in 2005 that they respected human rights and "coercive interrogation techniques were alien" to them.
"Yet, in this case, that does not seem to have been true," the final text of his judgement said.

"As the evidence showed, some security services officials appear to have a dubious record relating to actual involvement, and frankness about any such involvement, with the mistreatment of Mr Mohamed when he was held at the behest of US officials."

SUPPRESSION

Neuberger also said while the good faith of Foreign Secretary David Miliband was not in doubt, it raised questions about legal statements he had made based on advice from MI5 personnel, the Press Association reported.

"Not only is there some reason for distrusting such a statement, given that it is based on security services' advice and information, because of previous, albeit general, assurances in 2005, but also the security services have an interest in the suppression of such information," he said.

Brown said Britain had the "finest intelligence services in the world."

"It is the nature of the work of the intelligence services that they cannot defend themselves against many of the allegations that have been made," he said in a statement.

"But I can -- and I have every confidence that their work does not undermine the principles and values that are the best guarantee of our future security. We do not torture, and we do not ask others to do so on our behalf."

Mohamed's case has already caused embarrassment and difficulties for the government.

The Ethiopian national and British resident was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002, transferred to Afghanistan in 2004 and later moved to Guantanamo Bay. He was never charged and returned to Britain in February last year.

Two weeks ago, the Court of Appeal rejected Miliband's request to judges to keep secret claims that Mohamed had been shackled, subjected to sleep deprivation and suffered "cruel and inhuman treatment" while in U.S. custody.

Miliband warned that releasing the classified information could damage national security and U.S. cooperation on intelligence matters, and U.S. officials described the disclosure as "not helpful."

Days after that ruling, the head of MI5 Jonathan Evans took the unusual step of writing in a newspaper to deny his agency colluded in torture.

(Editing by Steve Addison)


(All my emphasis by the way).  Well, there you have it...as if we Irish didn't know already!