UK sold me out, says Binyam Mohamed

Sunday, 08, Mar 2009 08:57

Binyam Mohamed has produced what he says is incontrovertible evidence UK security services were aware of and colluded in his torture.

The 30-year-old was released from Guantanamo Bay last month after a seven-year ordeal that saw him flown to secret CIA prisons and repeatedly tortured.

Two heavily-redacted telegrams sent from MI5 to the CIA, released to Mr Mohamed's legal team at Guantanamo and seen by the Mail on Sunday, show a heavy involvement in the Muslim convert's treatment.

"This information has been communicated in confidence to the recipient government and shall not be released without the agreement of the British government," a confidential telegram headed 'Request for further detainee questioning' said in November 2002.

Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian national granted British residency in the 1990s, has given his first interview since being released to the Mail on Sunday.

In it he talks of the shocking abuse meted out to him during prison spells in Afghanistan and Morocco.

It was in the latter where he claims torturers slashes his chest and genitals with a scalpel, while at a CIA 'dark' prison in Kabul he was subject to a CD by rapper Eminem being played at "ear-splitting" volumes 24/7.

In his interview with the Sunday newspaper he repeats allegations that British agents were "feeding" his CIA captors with information.

"They started bringing British files to the interrogations - not one, but several of them, thick binders, some of them containing sheaves of photos of people who lived in London and places there like mosques," Mr Mohamed said.

"When I realised that the British were cooperating with the people who were torturing me, I felt completely naked.

"It was when they started asking the questions supplied by the British that my situation worsened. They sold me out."

David Miliband, the UK foreign secretary, has repeatedly stated that the British authorities do not "condone, authorise or cooperate" in torture. Mr Miliband has insisted that 42 documents reportedly proving Mr Mohamed's torture be blocked from release into the public domain because doing so would threaten London's intelligence-sharing relationship with the Pentagon.

But documents obtained through a legal battle in the US show that MI5:

• Knew Binyam Mohamed had not been transferred to any known US base
• Did not know where Binyam Mohamed was being held
• Did supply the CIA with questions and assumed he was under their control
• Were handed a report of what Binyam Mohamed said under torture in 2003
• Interrogated him in Pakistan in May 2002

"The government can no longer continue to claim ignorance," said former shadow home secretary David Davis, who exposed the court ruling to MPs last month.

"It is also time for an independent judicial inquiry. Only then can we have confidence the British government will not allow, condone or collude in torture or inhuman treatment in future."

The Foreign Office has refused to comment on the allegations, claiming that MI5 officers involved could face criminal charges.

"The attorney general is considering an allegation of criminal wrongdoing by British personnel," a spokesman said.

"In these circumstances it would be wrong to make any comment and because of this we cannot discuss the points you raise."