The political fallout over revelations of Britain’s complicity in the torture by US forces of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed has embroiled the Brown government and MI5 in equal measure.
Following confirmation by the Court of Appeal last week of Mohamed’s claim that the MI5 intelligence agency was fully aware of the brutal treatment he received, and even provided information and questions to be asked by his torturers, senior political figures, including the attorney general at the time, have demanded that the government provide answers.
Ethiopian-born Mohamed, a British resident, was arrested in Pakistan on April 10, 2002 as he was about to board a flight to Britain. After being imprisoned and tortured in Pakistan, he was turned over to the FBI. A victim of extraordinary rendition at the hands of the CIA, he was flown to Morocco, where he was again tortured, including being slashed with scalpels or razor blades on his chest and penis. He was moved to Afghanistan, where he was frequently tortured in the infamous “Dark Prison” before being finally detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Held at Guantanamo for four years, he again suffered torture and abuse.
Mohamed was finally released in February 2009 without charge, after nearly seven years in captivity. He is now suing the British government.
After the failure of a challenge by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, the Court of Appeal made public seven redacted paragraphs from its earlier findings based on 42 still classified documents, handed over by US intelligence to MI5 and confirming that Mohamed had been tortured.